Changed Part 1: Change My Mind
Renewing Your Mind: How to Change the Way You Think Today
Most of us have tried at some point to just think better. We tell ourselves to stop worrying, to stay positive, to let it go; and for a few days it even works. Renewing your mind is not a willpower exercise; it is a complete internal transformation made possible only through the Word of God and the work of the Holy Spirit. That is what Pastor Travis Hearn unpacked on June 1, 2026, opening a brand-new six-week series at Impact Church called "Changed," and the starting point was the mind.
What Does Mind Renewal Actually Mean, and Why Does It Change Everything?
The first thing Pastor Travis Hearn put on the table was blunt and specific: your thoughts shape your life. Not partially. Not occasionally. The Proverbs 4:23 passage says it plainly: "Be careful how you think; your life is shaped by your thoughts." That same verse in another translation reads: "Above all, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life." Guarding your heart, in the language of Scripture, means controlling the intake: what you allow in.
Pastor Travis walked through the progression in stark terms. Your thoughts become your beliefs. Your beliefs become your decisions. Your decisions become your habits. And your habits become your future. The practical implication of that chain is uncomfortable: if your future looks like your past, it is because your thinking has not changed. You can move locations, switch jobs, end a relationship and still carry the same internal world with you everywhere you go. The Israelites left Egypt in a single night, but it took them forty years to get Egypt out of their thinking. That is not a history lesson. That is a warning.
Pastor Travis called this the difference between seeing life as it is versus seeing life as you are. Two people can walk through the identical storm and one comes out bitter while the other comes out better. The difference is not the storm. The difference is the mindset each person brought into it. This is what makes mind renewal so urgent: you do not just need different circumstances. You need a different lens.
Mind renewal begins with guarding your heart against intake that reshapes your thinking without your permission. The practical step Pastor Travis offered was disarmingly simple: for six weeks, cut the spiritual junk food. Turn off the news cycles that feed fear. Unfollow the social media accounts that stir up comparison and anxiety. Stop doom-scrolling. Stop rehearsing self-defeating thoughts you have been repeating about yourself for years. Guard your heart not as a passive posture but as an active daily decision.
If you are ready to take one honest step, pick one specific input today (a show, an account, a habit of thought) and cut it for thirty days. Do not try to overhaul everything at once. Start with one degree.
Why Guarding Your Heart Means Recognizing the Real Battlefield
The second point Pastor Travis Hearn made was the one that reframes everything: the greatest battle in your life is not around you. It is within you. The mind is a battlefield, and the enemy knows it.
2 Corinthians 10:3-5 is where this section lives: "Though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ." That last line is the one Pastor Travis kept returning to, because it is where most people miss the fight entirely.
Guarding your heart means understanding that every stronghold (every pattern of fear, shame, bitterness, or self-destruction) started as a single thought. The devil does not begin with destruction. He begins with deception. A lie, believed long enough, becomes a stronghold. Pastor Travis used three examples from Scripture that are worth sitting with. Eve: the serpent never touched the fruit. He touched her thinking first. Judas: the betrayal did not begin in his hands. It began in his mind. Elijah: he called fire down from heaven on Mount Carmel, and then one threatening message from Jezebel collapsed him completely. Nothing changed around Elijah. Everything changed within him.
Some people spend years trying to bind demons they believe are attacking them from the outside, when the real enemy is the set of lies they are agreeing with on the inside. Lies about their worth. Lies about their future. Lies about whether God has forgotten them. The enemy does not need a thousand lies. He just needs one that you believe, and he will repeat it patiently until it feels like truth.
The thermostat-versus-thermometer illustration from the sermon is worth carrying: a thermometer reflects the environment, but a thermostat sets it. Most people spend their lives reflecting their circumstances. Guarding your heart means deciding to set the atmosphere instead.
The honest step here is to name the lie. Not to argue with it or shame yourself for having it; just name it. Write it down. Bring it into the light, because lies lose power when they are exposed.
What Spiritual Transformation Really Looks Like: Replace, Not Improve
The third point is the one that cuts through every self-help shortcut: you cannot improve your way into a new mind. You have to replace the old one. This is what separates Christianity from every other framework for personal change; it is not self-improvement. It is replacement.
Pastor Travis grounded this in Ephesians 4:22-24, which says to "put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires, to be made new in the attitude of your minds, and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness." Notice what Paul does not say. He does not say add Jesus to your existing life. He says take off the old self. Put on the new one. These are not compatible options you can blend together.
The caterpillar illustration from the sermon makes this concrete. A caterpillar does not improve into a butterfly. Inside the cocoon, it literally dissolves; its body breaks down and reforms into something completely different. A different appetite. A different perspective. Different abilities. A different purpose. The butterfly does not need a seminar on flying. It became something that flies by nature. Spiritual transformation works the same way. When your mind changes, your appetites change. You stop craving what once controlled you. You stop needing approval from every room you walk into because you found acceptance in Jesus Christ. You stop replaying your failures on a loop because you have started seeing yourself through God's promises instead.
Andy Elliott, a business owner who has been part of Impact Church for years, shared his story at the top of this message. He believed in God for years but was still living as though he served a dead one. When he fully surrendered, his wife surrendered. His children surrendered. His entire company's culture began to shift. He did not add Jesus to his old life. He put off the old one and put on the new. That is what spiritual transformation looks like in a real person's actual story.
The honest practical step: stop replaying old problems and start rehearsing God's promises. Literally. Out loud. Whatever you feed grows. Whatever you starve dies.
What Romans 12 Teaches Us About the Mind God Intends You to Have
The anchor verse for this entire series is Romans 12:2, which states: "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is; his good, pleasing and perfect will." Every word in that verse is doing work.
"Do not conform" is active resistance. The pattern of this world has enormous gravity; you do not drift against it. You decide against it, repeatedly, with intention. "Be transformed" signals something that happens to you as you cooperate with God, not something you manufacture through sheer effort. And "the renewing of your mind" is the mechanism: the Word of God and the work of the Holy Spirit re-forming the way you think from the inside out.
Pastor Travis gave a structured framework from the sermon for what this renewing actually looks like in daily practice:
1. Change Your Intake
What it means: Deliberately choose what enters your mind each day; news, social media, music, conversations, and self-talk all qualify as intake that either feeds or starves your transformation.
What to do: Fast one source of spiritual junk food at a time. Replace it with something that builds faith rather than fear.
2. Name the Lies
What it means: Every stronghold in your mind started as a thought you agreed with. You cannot take a thought captive until you identify it clearly enough to call it what it is.
What to do: Write down one lie you have been rehearsing about yourself, your future, or God and set it against what Scripture actually says.
3. Put On the New Self
What it means: Transformation is not subtraction (removing bad habits). It is replacement. The new self requires active investment in what builds it: God's Word, prayer, community, and accountability.
What to do: Identify one person who can hold you accountable to the specific change you are committing to and give them permission to actually do it.
Wherever You Are in the Valley, This Is for You
A lot of people are carrying thought patterns that have been running in the background for years. Some of them are worn out by it. Some of them have quietly stopped believing that real change is actually possible for someone like them. That weight is real. If you are looking for a community that takes this kind of deep, honest, interior work seriously, Impact Church has two locations in the Phoenix Valley — in North Scottsdale and South Scottsdale — and is home to people from across Maricopa County, from Tempe and Chandler to Gilbert and Paradise Valley. Wherever you are coming from, you are welcome here.
You Do Not Have to Stay the Same
The core of what Pastor Travis Hearn preached on June 1, 2026 is not complicated, though it is costly: you cannot become who God intends you to be while continuing to think the way you have always thought. The mind is where transformation begins. The good news, as Romans 12:2 makes clear, is that the renewing of your mind is not something you have to engineer on your own; it is something God does in you as you cooperate with his Word and Spirit.
If something in this message stirred something in you, do not carry it alone. Submit a prayer request and let someone walk with you through it; take the next step here.
If you want to experience this message in person and find out what Impact Church is about, come see us this Sunday; plan your visit below.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Renewing your mind with God's Word is a daily, active practice rather than a one-time event. It means regularly reading and meditating on Scripture so that its truth gradually replaces the patterns of thought shaped by fear, shame, or the world's values. Pastor Travis Hearn describes it as changing your intake: what you consistently feed your mind is what forms your thinking over time. Start with one passage that speaks directly to the lie you find yourself believing most often.
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Taking thoughts captive, as described in 2 Corinthians 10:5, means actively refusing to let every thought that enters your mind move in without examination. Not every thought that arrives belongs to you, and not every thought that arrives is true. The practice means identifying a thought, measuring it against what God says is true, and choosing not to give it a home in your mind if it contradicts Scripture. It is less about willpower and more about developing the reflex to question what you are agreeing with.
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Breaking free from negative thinking patterns begins with recognizing that those patterns did not form overnight. They were built one thought at a time, one compromise at a time, one repeated lie at a time. The path out follows the same incremental logic: one intentional replacement at a time. Guard what you consume, name the specific lie underneath the pattern, find someone who can hold you accountable, and bring the pattern into the light of Scripture rather than managing it in isolation.
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The testimony of Scripture and of real people is that genuine, lasting change is possible; but it is replacement, not improvement. Pastor Travis Hearn describes it through the caterpillar-to-butterfly image: the caterpillar does not get better at being a caterpillar. It dissolves and becomes something entirely different. That kind of transformation is not produced by motivation; it is the result of surrendering the old self and allowing God to form a new one from the inside out. The evidence in someone's life is that their appetites change, not just their behavior.
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Your intake directly shapes your thought life. Pastor Travis Hearn describes this as the principle of "garbage in, garbage out": whatever you consistently allow into your mind (news, social media, music, conversations, self-talk) is building the raw material your thoughts are drawn from. Renewing your mind therefore requires intentional choices about what you consume daily, not just periodic corrections after the damage is done. If fear goes in, fear comes out. If God's Word goes in, faith comes out.
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