Overcoming the natural thought process or spirit vs. the flesh

It has been truly interesting learning a new language and ministering among a different culture. It is amazing how differently various groups of people can view the same events. One of the things that really makes me laugh is what happens when you think in one language and try to communicate in another.
For example, sometime back I saw a sign on a building that said "auto serv". The first thought that crossed my mind was that it was some kind of garage. However in spanish "auto" means self. The owner was trying to convey that it was a self service gas station. (Yeah the gas pump should have given it away, but nobody accused me of being smart)
I was talking to a little girl on the church van the other day. Her parents and baby brother and sister only speak spanish, but this little 5 year old girl is thoroughly bilingual. I asked her how old her brother and sister were. She responded "she has 2 and he has 3". She was speaking in English but thinking in Spanish. That's how they tell you how old they are.
I'm going through the same process in reverse. I'm listening to spanish preaching tapes and radio and reading spanish books, whatever I can do to train my mind to think in a new language.
Anyway, this all set me to thinking. How often does a christian, who is by definition a new creation, live his new spiritual life still thinking like the old fleshly man? The Bible tells us that the flesh cannot understand the things of the spirit. We have to learn to think in a new way.
Somebody attacks us and we immediately want to fight back. That's a christian that has yet to learn to think like a new spiritual man. We struggle with putting God first, (the ten commandments tell us that God is a jealous God) we have not yet learned to think like the new man.
We'll never be perfect as long as we live here, but we are in a growing process. I truly believe we'll be a lot less frustrated when we set aside the way we used to think when we belonged to the world, and begin to see things through the eyes of the Spirit.