If you want to have lasting change in your life, you have to start with your body, and that includes changing the way you think so that you honor God through the things you think and through the things you let into your mind.

Ephesians 4:22b-24 says, “Put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and … put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (NIV).

Notice that there’s a putting off and a putting on. Your health really comes down to stopping some stuff you need to stop doing and starting some stuff you need to start doing. Stop putting negative, hurtful things in your body, and start putting in things that edify.

Stop putting negative, hurtful things into your mind, and start watching and listening to things that edify Jesus and make you more like him. In the renewal of your mind, you’ve got to put off before you can put on.

Let’s say you go to a department store to look for a new coat. You find one and take it into one of those little changing rooms. If you’re wearing a coat already, you don’t go in there and put the new coat on over your old coat. That would be silly, because you’re not going to know if it fits! It makes sense to take off the old one before you put on the new one.

That’s true spiritually and emotionally and mentally, too. You’ve got to take off the old before you can put on the new.