Advent 8 The Image of God:Mind, Heart and Spirit

[HKHaugan]

In my trips to get new glasses the same procedure greets me. I'm put through a series of tests where the eye examiner probes with light techniques to determine the health of my eyes. Then a focus test is given to measure the strength of vision and a prescription is arrived at to make glasses that adjust sight to a relative 20/20 focus.

Advent is a good season to use the light of the Word to shine on our mind, heart and spirit and test their strength for spiritual insight and action. From the light of the Word we get the Light of the World. What is our world into which we inject the Word? Let's start with the mind.

Advent's theme, the Second Coming, is one of the rays of the Light that gets us to think about what to expect when He returns. What will He find? Are we keeping God's thoughts before us? Do we need a bit of a refresher course? We use the phrase 'keep in mind' to preface our concern when we sense something may be going off course. The Second Coming of Jesus keeps our mind in focus. So 'keep in mind' is precisely the counsel we need to elevate our thinking from moment to moment especially when it comes to where we are in the world, in our family, in the Body of Christ, on the job and wherever we go. To know He will return is a focus when we ask about the influences that shape our day to day thinking? The media? People we admire? Books we have read? Conclusions we make based on observation? Gossip? Politics? Health? Family issues? Do we filter them through the Word?

For Paul the mind was always in a state of transformation, of renewal and refreshing in the Word. He had an aggressive stance expressed like this: “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God and take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ (2Cor.l0:5).” It seems Paul's mind never took a vacation. Nor should ours. The Second Coming is an exciting expectation enabling us to take every thought captive and make it work to His glory.

Every day we come up against worldly philosophies looking for admirers. Inside every person is a search for truth. For us truth is a set of absolute ideas we trust to understand what it means to be and act as a human being. Everyday we come into contact with secular thought systems attempting to find comfort in the ability to answer the questions of who we are, our meaning and purpose, our morality and destiny. People will find a world view. The mind is a restless worker that never sleeps. The mind of Christ

The secular mind, that is, a mind that doesn't think biblically, has a problem. It will define and rationalize a thinking structure even if it may appear absurd. But because of its origin from an imperfect searching mind its immediate condition brings three preexisting conditions. First, it has no life. It is simply a set of organized thoughts. Second, not having life, it has no personal substance. It is simply thought without personality. Third, it is not spiritual. There is no spirit in a thought system devised by man that can cross the barriers of human physical, emotional and intellectual limitations which are due to sin. Only a living spiritual reality can penetrate these limitations. We want to quickly inject here that the same is true for religion. Thought produced by religion may be close but it too falls short since it is usually the result of human spiritual need to handle their built in abilities to believe, trust and have faith. Abraham Lincoln caught a glimpse of this condition when he said “You can fool some of the people some of the time and some of the people all the time but you can't fool all the people all the time.”

We need something external to this broken world. We need a living standard of intellectual, personal and interpersonal perfection. This is where Jesus, God the Son and His revelation comes in. He comes from outside the world and the individual human mind. He comes in the Holy Spirit. He comes in the Bible as God's personal revelation of His reality, how He thinks and what He thinks when it comes to existence both material and personal. Its basic premise about existence is that what is seen is temporary and what is unseen is eternal both being wrapped up in Jesus the Christ (2Cor.4:18).

Jesus, God the Son, resurrected and alive, verifies that the Scripture is the means by which our mind connects with God's mind, heart and Spirit. It is the Spirit of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, that brings Him and the words of Scripture to life through faith. Scripture apart from God is just words until faith, the working nature of God, brings them to life as they direct how we see Him, ourselves and one another. Scripture works because it is the revelation of a living mind, not a dead philosopher or intellectual 'flash-in-the pan' who lingers fad-like for a decade. Fads fade finally. Living truth stands above the world even when its adherents fail. Truth will be attacked by every form of copy, opposite and the wiles of compromised leadership. Jesus Christ is the truth who has become the way and the life for those who have found faith in Him. He is love not intimidation. He is a choice not a feared concept enforced by crazed terrorists. He appeals to the heart not physical survival. He is the eternal truth from eternity to make the present a means to the future. He “...is the same yesterday, today and forever (Heb.13:8).” When all is said and done we'll find we can't wait for the Second Coming of Jesus. “Come Lord Jesus (Rev.22:20).”

Next, the heart.