Rewiring Our Brains

Decades ago, Dutch believer and concentration camp survivor Corrie Ten Boom recalled one experience of watching her older sister Betsie.  “I remember that when I was in a concentration camp, we were pushed together in a room with 700 people.  The room was built for 200.  Some people started to fight.  Other people joined them. And at last, it was a chaos.  We heard swearing and beating.   And Betsie my sister said, “Corrie, let’s pray. This is dangerous.”  And she prayed, and she prayed, and she prayed.  I will never forget it.   And when she prayed, it was as if a storm laid down.  We heard less swearing and beating.  At last, it was absolutely quiet.”

“And then Betsie said, “Thank You, Lord. Amen.”

“Do you see what happened?”  Corrie pointed out.  “There was a room of 700 prisoners in danger.  And there was one woman who prayed,” she said in her thick Dutch accent in an interview.  Betsie knew what to do.

Corrie and Betsie were placed in an extremely difficult situation, but through her years of growing in relationship with Christ, of studying the Bible, and incessantly praying, Betsie was ready.  She knew to pray.  She had been changed by praying.

As we learn and practice and choose to pray to God and follow Him into situations over and over again, praying literally rewires our brains.  We are not just stronger by it, or smarter, but God is physically connecting and reconnecting microscopic cells.   

Praying, reading scripture, and worshiping are not just something we do, but they are doing something to us.  It physically and spiritually changes us.  The act of praying does not just help us to think differently or allow God to transform our hearts, but it actually physically rewires our brains.

Every day as we go about our lives, whether we realize it or not, we are living out the reality of neuroscience – the physical way our brains work. Whatever we do, for better or for worse, our actions, choices, and practices, develop neural pathways in our brains, connecting and reconnecting a vast network of neurons.

Our brains can change physically in ways that “move us toward Christlikeness,” observes Dr. Laura Barwegen, a professor at Wheaton College. “Beginning in the womb, neurons [our brain cells] grow thin branches, or dendrites, that link one neuron to another. Neurons can develop thousands of these links over our lifetimes. These connections enable us to blink and breathe, and they give rise to the thoughts, emotions, attitudes, and behavioral patterns that make us who we are.”

And so, those connections are strengthened through intentionally exercising those pathways and building on past experience.  What we choose in a particular situation becomes a physical response for when that situation comes up again.

Our attitudes and actions connect and reconnect those little life-changing neurons.  Not just revealing “this is the way to handle this particular situation,” not just being mindful but having the mind of Christ in familiar situations and in the unexpected.   Quite literally, our minds are being changed by seeking God through praying and reading Scripture.

When we choose to pray, something physically changes within us.  The very act of praying is choosing to take a different pathway.  And like a trail through a thicket soon becomes a familiar path, and then a well-worn way through the wilderness, developing into a trusted road, we know what to do in difficulty:  we can pray.

When we pray, God reveals different dimensions that are already there.  We see differently what is before us.  We spiritually, emotionally, and physically respond differently. When we pray, listen, meditate on His Word, and worship God, something changes in how we approach the familiar and the unexpected, the ordinary and the extraordinary, the mundane and the difficult. God engraves in our hearts what He repeats over and over in Scripture:  Do not fear.  I am with you.

If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old has passed away.  Behold, the new has come. 2 Corinthians 5. 17   We can live that way.  What pathways are we walking, what practices and defaults do we choose?  We can pray.  Or we can let worry, fear, and anxiety distract us, drain us, and physically raise our blood pressure.

We don’t often think that by praying about something, we are being changed physically in the process. God does not just make inroads into our hearts, but rewires our brains.  And in desperate split-second situations or long times of suffering and pain, our default by praying leads us on different neural pathways, right to Him.

Praying spills over from one incident into innumerable other occasions. How we respond prepares us, equips us, opens us to the next situation, a little wiser, a lot stronger, and found in Him.

I can’t even go out for a short run without it changing me in multiple ways.  What if praying did the same?  Would we pray differently?