Do You Have a Security System?

[HKHaugan]

Faith 17 Do You Have a Security System?

It seems that almost every show you see on TV contains an ad for a security system. In those ads there is always a frightened victim, a strong offering of protection and a system that guarantees it. Keep that thought in mind as we deal with the mind.

Jesus says that we must love God with our heart, our soul and our mind. We have looked at heart and soul briefly but what about the mind? How do we think ‘love?’ How do we reason ‘love?” How do we intellectualize ‘love’ especially when Scripture has made it clear that God is love? And how do the three work together? I’m glad you asked those questions. To answer let’s look at how we function as persons.

We meet someone or find ourselves in a new place with new people. We have an immediate impression. How do we react? Depending on your past experience which is lodged in our heart as pleasure, pain, openness, fear, wariness, anger, attractiveness, inner needs and so on, we throw up the cover that we in our spirit believe will get us through the next moment. Our mind is evaluating and, like a computer, is quickly adjusting so that our conditioned form of greeting emerges. All the while our three-part mechanism is interacting. In our aloneness the heart and soul are depending on the mind to sort out appearance, manner, body and personality language, presence of others, general environment and social atmosphere, carefully calculating every next move. In Ecclesiastes we are told that God made man simple but man complicated it (7:29). We are complicated aren’t we?

Note how our whole being is involved. But note especially the caution we use. We don’t just open up as we really are inside. Wouldn’t it be great if we were spontaneously confident and self-assured? Why aren’t we? While there may be more, here are three reasons.

First, every meeting, every situation, every experience we come into is different than the last. Every one is brand new. Even in the routine of tasks and jobs there are constant changes be they slight or drastic. We live in an ‘every-next-moment’ world that pre-judges every response in terms of the right and wrong categories of the group in which we find ourselves. This world lives under a ‘fit-in or else’ dictatorship. And those moments contain unpredictable contents. Things may be similar but are never the same. We have to be alert all the time.

Second, we have to learn adjustment. To live in this world we have to be trained. We need guidance. We need someone to show us how our hearts and souls can find a pattern of response in the midst of a world of alone people whose inner hearts and souls are wary and adjusting to every next moment like us.

Third, the fact that we need a personal, spiritual and emotional point of reference to make it through everyday life calls for a mind security system. We need an understanding, a mindset, a way of seeing the world in a reasoned and orderly form that enables our heart and soul to move spontaneously, confidently and in control. We need principles we can trust for the heart, have faith in for the spirit and believe in for the mind.

The very thinking approach I have just used to get to this point is based on the mind security system found in the Scripture. The Scripture is the thinking man’s guide to grounding the alone mind, the alone heart and the alone spirit. In it are contained the principles, the biographies, the poetry, the challenges, the definitions, the relational structures and the spiritual foundation that brings the heart, soul and mind into perfect working order. Grounding them in the person of Jesus Christ, as He was grounded in this world for our sake, gives us the personal, spiritual and mind balance that secures, restores and develops the image of God in us. It is that spiritual relationship with Him that brings the mind into full working order.

But why Jesus Christ?

He is the only person who has ever lived in this world who never knew aloneness, was never afraid, was always totally confident, always knew what to say, was never hesitant, reluctant or proud when He spoke. He didn’t need a security system, walked in complete confidence, was perfect in every dimension of thought and emotion. His every movement was in the Spirit. He never knew doubt. He never had to ponder about what to do next. He just reacted spontaneously in every next moment. He never had to say, “Let me think about that question and get back to you on that.” He defined and demonstrated love in a completely new and challenging way. It’s deepest form being how He willingly faced death for others and to seal that perfection, rose from the dead to show He was who He said He was---God---“Before Abraham was born, I Am (Jn.8:58 NIV).”

So to where does all this bring our minds? Where the mind was intended in Creation and that is in Jesus as He thinks, believes, trusts and is faithful. He is the security for the way the mind is best enabled to think and work in concert with the heart and the spirit. Scripture is the manual for the mind that brings the Holy Spirit to specify the movement of our heart and spirit. That movement in the Spirit of God through Scripture provides the balance that is in Jesus. Paul make this quite evident in his first letter to the Corinthian Christians, “We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words (1Cor.2:12-13 NIV).” In Rom.12:1 he tells us to be transformed by the renewal of our minds and in Philippians 2:5 “Have this mind in you which was in Christ Jesus…” and confidently in 1Cor.2:16, “But we have the mind of Christ.”

The whole issue of the heart, spirit and mind is wrapped up in the person of Jesus. He is the One, the only One, who has the balance that brings security, confidence and order in who we are and how we act. He is the focus and the balance.