The Christian Mind

GOD? What Do You Want From Me? [Part 2]


Spiritual Blog -

1 John 4:7-11 – “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”  NKJV

 

             Imagine a God who is Omniscient (all knowing) who does not like us.  That is a horrific thought, right?  Most of us have or have had a secret(s) that we were ashamed to confess even to our closest friends but God KNOWS everything about us and knows our thoughts even before we think them.  The terror that would accompany the thought that God who knows all about us and does not even like us would drive us suicidal.  He would be an infinite monster!

The Bible never says:  God HAS Power or Love it says HE IS!  Love is not something apart from Him it is WHO HE IS.  But what is Love?  What is Love as it is spoken of here in this passage?  Love, in the English language has become almost a worthless word for we apply it to so many things and give it some many shades of meaning.  What do we think of when we say or hear Love?

Let me suggest a possibility:  It means that we reach out to someone we can reasonably count on that is in our class.  Before you get self-righteous and pious, that is exactly what most of us do much of the time if not all the time.  In European history when a member of a royal family fell in love with a commoner they were fired.  If the king fell for a commoner and married them he would be required to give up his throne.  Likewise when we humans fall in love we tend to keep within our self-imposed boundaries.  Naturally we do not talk about it and possibly refuse to admit it but we do it.

When we say LOVE what do we mean?  If I love a person I am acknowledging that person calls forth my highest admiration and when I look at them I admire them.  We are so captivated by them that when we talk about them they are elevated to a level of worship in our eyes and minds.  We adore them!  Likewise when we LOVE someone it means they answer to what I feel is beauty (eye of the beholder).  Beauty is something that happens in our heads and that is what we usually understand to be love.

But when it comes to God and the Bible declares:  “God is Love” many assume that God is Love in the same way we love.  Virtually every religion in existence has a concept of God based on human love.  However, if God loves like we love how would that work out?  Think with me through some problems with that concept:

  • He cannot find anyone in His Class so immediately we are eliminated. If he were to get friendly with us he would be fired as being God so we are out in the cold.
  • He cannot find anyone in harmony with Him (before salvation) so our disharmony disqualifies us. He is love and holiness and we are selfish and have no plans to change (before salvation).
  • He cannot find any human that would elicit in Him a sense that says about us, ‘That is the best person I know’ for our righteousness are as filthy rags and there is none good (before salvation).

         The dilemma for us is that if God loves like we love we are TOAST!  It is over! We are without hope and hopeless lost forever!   I heard a most appropriate illustration that explains this beautifully:

A missionary went to a witch-doctor and said:  “You preach to me. I come to you with a problem. How would you tell me to reach the Most High God?  I know you have many gods, but I want to reach the Big One, the Most High God.”  The witch-doctor said: “First, you have a big problem, because the Most High God is not interested in you for you are not good enough for him.”  That’s where their religion begins!  Sadly, we have heard the same thing in much more sophisticated terms in church.  We have been told, in so many ways, that we are not good enough for God and He is not interested.

When the Bible says:  God is Love it means that He does not reach out to someone in His class but reaches out to Whosoever Will or reaches down to mankind.  Human love reaches up but God’s love reaches down.  God loves the lost, hopeless, messed up, twisted, distorted, bent, wicked, evil and sinful man and offers LIFE, LOVE and LIBERTY through Jesus!  That is the Gospel message.  What does God want from us?  He wants to dwell in us and with us and manifest Himself through us!

God bless you as you go through this day!

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DO WE UNDERSTAND THE IMPORTANCE OF THE MIND???


Spiritual Blog - Thinking

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 the process of turning thoughts over and over in our minds.  I have become firmly convinced that we do not really live the Christina 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 accepted 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 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 the 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!

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IMPORTANCE OF THE MIND…


Spiritual Blog - Mind

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 Christina 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 accepted 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.

Spiritual Blog - Thinking

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 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.

spiritual Blog - Choices

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 the 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 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!

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