Matthew 22:37 – “Jesus said to him, ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’”  NKJV

Over the years I have become convinced that many believers have little or no concept of the importance of the mind in our Christian walk.  This passage describes three areas with which we are to love the LORD:  All our hearts, all our soul, and all our mind.  There are a number of words used in the New Testament for ‘the mind’ and the one used in this passage speaks of the ‘entire thought process.’  The idea is that as all our ‘thoughts’ are passing through our ‘minds’ we are to turn them over and reflect upon them.  It is a process of looking at our life and we call that ‘thinking’.

It is a process of turning thoughts over and over in our minds.  I have become firmly convinced that we do not really live the Christian life fully UNTIL we love God with all our minds.  I have encountered some in the Christian faith who seem to believe that the ‘less you think’ the better Christian you are.  We even sing songs that suggest that.  Remember when your first accept Jesus?  You were filled with doubts, fears, problems, and questions and many of us were told:  “It’s not important for you to understand.  Just take it by faith.”  That is true to a degree but also presents a problem.

Romans 12, declares that we are to be TRANSFORMED in our lives by the ‘renewing’ of our minds not the ‘removal’ of our minds.  It is in the renewal of my mind that my transformation is developed.  We begin to think about what God would have us be after which we talk and live it.  It is a process.  Unfortunately, some have tried to ‘live it’ outwardly and failed miserably then come back to try again not understanding that the problem is not in our words or deeds but our minds!  I am not suggesting ‘mind over matter’ or any such thing but stressing the importance of our thoughts.

We ‘are’ today, the result of what we ‘thought’ yesterday and before.  In a great sense, we are our thoughts in action.  Our lives are the concreting of our thoughts.  The outside of the cup is not nearly as important as the inside.  Unless my walking out the Christian life begins in my ‘thought processes’ I will realize little but frustration and failure.  We want to do one thing but we are thinking another and the two never seem to come together so we become trapped in a cycle that never seems to end.

If we are going to walk in what the New Testament calls the WAY, TRUTH, and LIFE we must bring our minds into subjection to the Lordship of Christ.  It is not possible to fully understand the end until you understand the beginning.  We have a body, which is a phenomenal machine.  Inside that machine lives ME and that ME is made in the Image of God.  That was the plan that God would be seen in man but the Fall presented a colossal problem.  To determine who or what I should be I have to look at God.  It is in seeing God that I can comprehend what man was supposed to be. 

In the Garden, Adam and Eve choose to be ruled by their feelings rejecting God’s thoughts and superimposing their own thoughts over His.  It was the choice, not the fruit that was the problem.  Their choice was the result of their thoughts for when they rejected God’s thoughts for their own, they fell.  If you remember the Genesis account, the process moved from what Eve ‘saw’ to her ‘feelings’ to her ‘desire’ to be wise, and then the devil’s suggestion came questioning God and she thought about it.  Their thoughts were governed by ‘what they thought’ rather than ‘what God said.’ 

No wonder Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10 that we are to bring ‘every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.’  If our minds are to be renewed and we are to be transformed by that renewal our thoughts MUST become totally submissive to Christ.  You are not what you think you are but you are what you think.

May the Lord be with you as you go through this day!