Earthquake, Mindquake, Heartquake

[HKHaugan]

Last time we dealt with conformity. Conformity to the world is slavery. Conformity to Jesus Christ is freedom. That’s the first of Paul’s maxims to cure the human heart in its quest for truth.

The second maxim is a direct challenge to where we, before Christ, trusted the world with the way to live, ---“Be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” The switch, from being a slave to the world to being a disciple of Jesus, requires a drastic mind shift. It’s like the geological tectonic slide we call an earthquake when seismic plates are moved by an internal force beneath. What we need is a ‘mindquake’ and this is where the Word of God comes in. When the mind is spiritually engaged it leads us to a deeper move, a move of the heart. For us it’s the force of the Holy Spirit ‘earthquaking’ the heart when we received Jesus as Savior and Lord. You might want to call it a ‘heartquake.’

Our spiritual tectonic plates are the strongholds which our mind and heart collaborated to build. Strongholds are really attitudes we built to survive the world’s pressures, attitudes that we developed apart from God. When the world controlled our mind we sorted out experience that kept us believing we were in control. Relational life was all about learning to develop protective and aggressive attitudes that would keep us acceptable and marketable according to secular standards. Religion was one recognized way we kept spiritual ideas in the box of our personal agenda. But they began to rumble and tumble when we were exposed to the Word of God. Those plates started moving. Even though we may have heard it for an extended period the Spirit of God would not let us rest and He broke through our resistant walls. It was His grace, both gentle and probing, that was working through the Word and we found that “Faith comes by hearing and hearing comes by the Word of God (Rom.10:17).” The ‘mindquake’ was bringing a ‘heartquake.’

We began to understand why Jesus prayed that we would be sanctified by the truth which is the Word of God (Jn.17:17). Being sanctified is being ‘earthquaked.’ An eruption in the heart drives us away from the world and its ego-caressing temptation to plumb Scripture which results not so much in change as it does in transformation.

Change is a shift. Transformation is an earthquake.

Ask any alcoholic or drug addict who has come to Christ. They will tell you about transformation through some kind of healing. How about convicts finding Christ while in prison? Others, who have had emotional trauma, found release from their mental anguish through a touch from the Word. Those with physical disease who may not have been physically healed but found faith in Jesus and His spiritual healing in their conversion. Then there are those cynical intellectuals whose minds registered the same spiritual tectonic shift and they realized the reality of having been given a deeper intellectual world view in Scripture.

It’s interesting how the Bible is called the ‘living Word.’ For believers it was the realization (the Holy Spirit’s nudging) coming through the Word that made sense at the moment they were reading it. Many can read the Word and nothing happens. But for those who were touched in the heart and then read it, growth began, eyes were opened and the intellect began its clicking with the ‘oh-now-I-see’s.‘ The Bible’s Parables, historic records of faith and teachings are no longer quaint stories but spiritual realities when truth becomes more than an intellectual quest.

Truth is the living Person of Jesus giving live testimony about a life that trumps biological existence with its eternal stamp. For the Apostles there was no separation between the living Jesus and His Word. John was a witness that “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth (Jn.1:14).”

The Word brings a fragrance, a spiritual aroma, that falls over a moment, an event, an interpersonal exchange. It’s a moment of light, His light and it’s not subject to man’s control. This is no longer change. This is transformation. This is a move of the heart and mind, from the world’s ego arena into spiritual reality, eternal reality. It is the gateway to realizing one’s being an image of God who has a family of like-hearted and like-minded spiritual brothers and sisters with an eternal destiny. That destiny is guided by the Holy Spirit, prompted by the Lord Jesus and leading us into the Kingdom of Heaven. And it’s all right there in the Word, alive and well. Jesus puts an exclamation point on this when He says, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away (Mk.13:31).”

Here we have what Paul experienced when he said, “ What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so 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, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, for, “Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ (1Cor.2:12-16).”

To trust Paul’s revelation is to open up an eternal pathway to Heaven. But it isn’t something we wait for. It isn’t something we change our mind to do. It’s being transformed by a scripturally renewed mind. It’s for right now. Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life and have it to the full (Jn.10:10).” His eternal life starts for us when we accept Him as personal Savior and Lord. Thus when John was close to finishing his Gospel he said there was a lot more that could be said. “But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name (Jn.20:31).”