Renewing our minds transforms our bodies - and our world.

We come into the world with about 100 billion neurons in our brain. Yet, in the earliest seconds of our lives, very few of them - only about 20% of them - are connected to one another. They have not nearly begun linking in a way that shapes the direction of our bodies and our lives.

Only when we start having human interaction do those connections start forming; the neural connections that start plotting the course of our lives. Connections within our bodies and with one another outside of them.

Thousands of years ago the apostle Paul seemed to understand this connection in a way that predicted what scientists would discover centuries later. The apostle Paul once wrote (Romans 12:1-2):

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Long before scientists understood the mind/body connection, Paul was writing brilliantly about it. Yet, without scientists, we would have never begun to understand the brilliance.

Because in his words, Paul is in one sentence asking us to present our bodies as a living sacrifice, but in the next asking us to renew our minds. These were not two different paragraphs, two different trains of thought. It was one in the same thing: present your bodies a living sacrifice; renew your minds.

At first glance this would seem strange, but the science tells us - no, it's not strange at all.

Paul's words in two verses are packed with enough material to write a book. But I simply want to help you - and me - understand some key elements of Paul's words - and of the science - that may be useful in transforming our lives.

First, we need to understand the mind. The brain is the organ that lives in our bodies. The mind is the conversation our brain has with the body it lives in, and the conversations our bodies have with other human bodies.

A huge component of the mind IS our human interactions.

So when Paul is talking about renewing our mind, a large part of that is the renewal that comes with our interactions with one another. Interactions that help us focus on all that is good and acceptable and perfect. All that is God.

Paul is telling us, when we do that, we transform our bodies into bodies that are a living worship to God. We change the neural patterns in our hearts and in our lungs and in our brains that promote instinctual patterns of calm and love and acceptance and peace.

We change neural patterns in our bodies that promote mercy.

Because it's not lost on me - at all - that when Paul talks about this transformation, very early on he points to the mercies of God as the foundation of this change. Not God's commands and demands, but God's mercies.

I wonder, is that to help us understand that it's the mercies we offer one another that are critical to the renewing of the mind; the transforming of the body.

I mean, think about it, when you are not offered mercy you inherit anxiety. You inherit an anxious and often depressed mind - and brain - and body.

A lack of mercy stands in the way of human minds connecting to one another in a way that is good and acceptable and perfect. It's not good for us - for our minds and bodies - and it's not good for the world.

I believe a renewed mind is a merciful mind.

I believe a merciful mind lives in a body that is your spiritual worship.

Spiritual worship that would help make a very broken world and transformed world.