With much fear and hesitation, here I go. 😂 After 7 months of the Dandelion Report, I’m adding a podcast to the mix and stepping out in this very “piglet” style faith. I pray it’s a blessing. xo
Full Transcript
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Renewing the Mind in Romans 12:2
[00:00:00] Hi everyone. My name is Julie Chenell and I am here on YouTube because I am beginning a new project based on the scripture verse, Romans 12, two. I have felt in my spirit and in my mind that there are things that I am learning that the Lord is showing me that I need to share with others. I am on this channel with.
Much hesitation and reservation. I do not have a name for this channel. I do not have really a tagline or an elevator speech. In fact, as someone who is a business coach and who is taught to think of everything through a marketing lens and you know, marketing copy, this is very much not that. I don’t know exactly what is going [00:01:00] to come of all of this, but the scripture, Romans 12, two, has been tumbling over in my head over and over, and I think that it is relevant for this stage and period in the world for Christians and even for those who might be seeking and curious about Jesus.
And what he came for. So I wanna read that scripture to you first, just to kind of give you some backdrop. The scripture in Romans says, 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.
This is a scripture that is undergirding this entire channel. What does it mean to renew our mind? What does it mean to not be conformed [00:02:00] to the world that we live in? What does it mean to test and discern God’s will? Those three things seem incredibly important and relevant right now in the current climate that we are in.
For those of you who don’t know, I. Grew up as a conservative Christian. I went to a Christian college. I majored in biblical studies before transferring into psychology, and I lived the Christian life until 2012, 2013, when I had a very dramatic falling away of my faith. I lost my church, my friends, much of my faith, and proceeded to deconstruct over the next 10 to 12 years.
The whole time that I was in that state, I was not in fellowship or communion with God. I would occasionally pray, usually when it was stressful or, or you [00:03:00] know, critical. I had this sense that I knew Jesus was the Messiah, but I had no ability to back it up. I didn’t really know anything else, and I did start to fall into existential dread.
I had a dramatic turning back to my faith. In February, March of 2025. And when I say dramatic, I don’t mean that the Lord spoke to me audibly, but I had what can only be described as the spirit taking a lot of the shackles off of my eyes and delivering me from the dread and the fear and the torment that was plaguing me about questions about the afterlife and the meaning of life.
And ever since then, in that, that day in February, I have been. Absolutely unashamedly, clung to the, to the hem of his garment. I have been reading, I have been in prayer, I have been in worship. I’ve been writing on a Substack newsletter [00:04:00] called The Dandelion Report and just writing the things that I’m studying, that I’m learning what I’m seeing.
And for those of you who know me, I am not a fan of video and YouTube and podcasts like. This is not my, my modality at all. I love to write, so to get up here and get on video is terrifying. Even though I know I do it all the time. I don’t think people realize how much resistance I have, but over the last month, I have felt a heaviness in my heart and my spirit that I continually have brought before God asking, what are you doing?
Why do I feel this? What is happening inside of me, and I feel a very strong urge to speak and to share for whoever it’s for. I, it’s not my job to make this, have a good marketing angle or to, , pick a good title and branding. That is not what I’m [00:05:00] doing here. What I’m doing here is walking in obedience to what I feel like the Lord has said that I am to do.
I wanna go into Romans 12 two a little bit deeper now because I think this is the crux of what I’m supposed to share and what I want people who are listening to understand about why I am starting this channel and what I’m doing. So let’s head over to Romans 12 here and take a look.
Okay, let’s begin with the very first part of verse two. It says, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. So when we think about conforming to this world, we think about following the world’s rules, the world’s laws, the world’s ideology. If we were born in any other time [00:06:00] in life, there might be one or two or three worldviews presented to you, depending on where you lived before the internet and before.
, Electricity, even depending on where you were born, that would determine the worldview that you would have. Now that we are in the time of the internet and the time where we can hear any type of worldview, crazy or not crazy, when you think about conforming to this world, the word that comes to mind for me is confused.
Because all worldviews are presented to us. Not only that, but worldviews are getting muddy. People are picking and choosing from different worldviews and creating these custom worldview that are not built on sound [00:07:00] logic. There’s a great book called The Story of Reality, and in it, the author talks about how each worldview.
In life, you know, whether it’s an atheistic worldview or a, you know, Buddhist or what have you, they, it’s like a puzzle, right? And what’s happening is, you know, if you had an actual puzzle, you would need all the pieces of that puzzle, right? To make that picture, to see the big picture. But what’s happening is people are borrowing from other puzzles and like hacking it together.
So when the scripture says, do not be conformed to this world. It’s basically saying, watch that your worldview is not put on you by the world. And that is very, very scary today because worldviews are not necessarily based in logic, reason, sound thinking. They’re often fueled by algorithms and loud voices, and you can get a [00:08:00] very, very messed up worldview by letting the world conform your mind.
The second part of that first sentence is be transformed by the renewal of your mind. Now the word transform means to literally like turn into a different shape, if you will. So if you think about a caterpillar gets transformed into a butterfly, it becomes something different. We are surrounded by information.
And we have basically the world’s knowledge at our fingertips, right? And so all that information is sitting around us, but we decide what information we’re gonna draw into us. And the information that we put inside of us actually changes who we are. It changes how we think. It changes how we behave. It changes what we believe.
It changes how we feel. And so the goal here is to be transformed. And it’s interesting because Paul says, by the [00:09:00] renewal of your mind, and I think that in religion especially, people think of it as this very emotional, faith-based experience. They don’t think about the mind, they don’t think about, logic and reason, and they think, oh, it’s, it’s just like this feeling, this gut feeling.
Yeah. One of the, one of , the things about my returning to Jesus was that it was very much a mind experience. I didn’t have an emotional, , sobbing, crying, , alter call. I didn’t, I didn’t have there, there was no music. It was a work of the mind that transformed me, that brought me back. And I think it’s interesting that Paul here is singing be transformed by the renewal of your mind.
And that’s something I love to look at things from a logical perspective, from sound principles of thinking. [00:10:00] And here in the scripture it’s saying that that is actually what’s going to transform you. And, you know, I asked, chat, GBTI looked up some of the, Greek for some of these words and be transformed specifically is the same route as the word metamorphosis.
And what’s interesting about that is it’s passive, which means that this is not done by your sheer effort, but by something being done to you. The good news about this is that you don’t have to like work your way into understanding God better, because what the scripture is saying is that he will transform you.
He will renew your mind based on the posture that you have. So if you say, Hey, I’m willing, I want to be renewed. I want to not be conformed to this world. I want renewal, he’s going to do that work in you. [00:11:00] And renewing is comes from, , the origin of that word is like to make new again, to restore, to renovate.
So this is ongoing. This is not something that just happens once and then boom, you’re renewed. Okay? And it was not meant to, to suggest, we’re just thinking positive thoughts. It is an ongoing renovation done by God through the Holy Spirit. But it also means putting a posture of allowing it and understanding that God uses the mind as a way to instill principles and to give you discernment so that you can avoid being conformed to the world.
So the next part of the verse is. That by testing, you may discern what is the will of God. The beautiful part about this verse is that it means that we can know [00:12:00] the will of God now, not in full, but it means that God is opening up opportunity for us to know what his will is. And when it says testing, it doesn’t mean putting the Lord to the test.
In the way you think of that, it actually means taking what happens. So what happens in the world, what happens in politics, what happens in your relationships? What happens in your, in your feelings, and putting it to the test, meaning test that experience against the authority of scripture against who God says he is.
And that by doing so, you can discern that thing and whether or not it’s in alignment with the will of God or not, that’s what this verse is saying. And then it ends with what is good and acceptable and perfect because we know that God is good and we know that God wants to, make all things work together for good, for those who love [00:13:00] God.
So the goal. Of this is to really take things that are going on in the world, experiences, what’s happening in, you know, in politics, in society, in our own lives, in our own minds, and to allow God to transform us through the renewing of our mind. And that’s what I wanna do here. That is my, that is my goal.
That is my commitment. And that is what I’m gonna be sharing with you here.
The last thing I wanna say here today is, what do I mean? When I say mind or, or what does, what does the scripture even say when it is talking about your mind and the mind in, in that time period when Paul was writing was linked to your, to your moral compass, right? So it’s letting God shape the lens, like the glasses through which you evaluate [00:14:00] things like right and wrong.
What is true? What is false? What is worthy and what is unworthy? And that’s what we’re gonna focus on, is like, how do we get the, the, our moral compass aligned with scripture? How do we get our glasses so that we can see what God says about things so that we can test those experience against the authority of scripture?
All right. If this sounds like something that is interesting to you, something that you wanna follow along, I would of course love to see, you subscribe and comment. Below what things are specifically troubling your spirit these days? I don’t have a promise yet for how frequently I will post. I do not know where this is leading.
Like I said, I don’t really have a name or a brand. I’m just walking in obedience and I thank you to those of you who, , are gonna come along and [00:15:00] may God bless you. And, , may your renewal of your mind begin right now today. God bless.
