When You Think About Intuition

[HKHaugan]

 Faith 14a  When You Think About Intuition

These next three segments will open up the way we love God with all our heart, soul and mind as He directed. We start with the heart for three reasons, it’s core, it’s deceitful and it’s willful. But most importantly, the key truth about the heart is that it is intuitive. It senses, intuits, but can't articulate. That's for the mind and the spirit. The problem is that sin uses intuition for evil not good. We lean toward being willful and self centered in the way we relate to others. Take bullying for example. Bullies looks for vulnerability and weakness in order to use it to their advantage. Bullies are lonely. This is their way to fit in.

On the other side, the weak intuit a way to survive. They get around the bully by running or learning a method to offset the bully's onslaught. When there are gang situations in a neighborhood you use intuition whether or not you are even conscious of it. You know where its safe to go or not go. The wary know the rules. Stay alert to your surroundings and profile others by clothing style, body language and physical appearance.

Intuition plays a big part in growing up. People with like concerns look for acceptance and find it among those like them. It's not an intellectual process you master. It's that unspoken indefinable reality you wind your way through day by day. You look for a safe place, a safe group, another safe person. It's the in-group and out-group process. Peer pressure may describe it generally but it surely is an intuitive process when you go through it personally.

And it doesn't stop when you leave the teen years. The world just gets more complicated, more subtle and a very sophisticated minefield as you make your way through the adult jungle of professional survival. There are the underlying strategies set in motion from the first interview to the first day on the job to the first meeting of department heads, supervisors and colleagues. If you look for career success you learn to read the in's and out's as yon make your way up the ladder to offices and boardrooms. Intuition is the sensor.

Then the day to day interchange you develop in the social whirl. It has its own 'no-man's land.' When you get right down to it there's one thing that drives the whole process, fear. We intuit fear and try our best to overcome it by attempting to interpret its cause. But there comes a point when we have to face it. We intuit its presence and either see there is no end except frustration and depression or begin to see ourselves as spiritual beings. It's then that we can accept our inability to control circumstance. We realize we are facing the spirits of fear and pride. A choice has to be made. A decision to receive the Lord's supervision over all we can't see. That's when our intuition finds its source and the spirits of fear and pride and their perpetrator are neutralized. With Jesus our intuition is spiritually directed to discern the specifics of right from wrong, good from evil and the importance of being an image of God looking forward to grow in faith and serve Him. That's when our world changes not only for ourselves but for everyone else around us.

Intuition is basic to our humanity. Our physical heart beats to keep our life carrying blood system flowing. Our intuitive perceiving heart is the spiritual counterpart. Jesus lists it first followed by the soul and mind (Mt.22:31). The importance of the heart is emphasized throughout Scripture. It's our sensing, intuitive, feeling center. There are over 800 uses of the word ‘heart’ in the KJV and over 700 in the NIV. It is the core of our individuality. It is the engine driving who we are as human beings and images of God. Jesus says the reason He speaks in parables is because of people’s ‘heart’ sight:

“This is why I speak to them in parables: "Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand (Jer.5:21).” In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: " 'You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people's heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them (Is.6:9-10 quoted in Mt.13:13-15 NIV).'”

He tells us that where our treasure is that’s where our heart will be (Mt.6:21). Our heart follows what we believe has the most worth. One example is when detectives trying to discover the source of criminal activity say, ‘Follow the money.’ The heart of a man is who he is, warts and all. If you want to understand it, follow what it values. It’s where our first reactions take place. The heart is what detects, intuits and sends to our mind present experience for course direction.

If you really want to get a feel for Jesus’ concern for the heart, its function, condition and how it matures, the place to go is the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7. Every teaching there is aimed at developing a spiritual heart like His. The Sermon on the Mount is all about its prime functions: intuition, perception and attitude. When Jesus is our treasury, our bank account, our investment portfolio, our equity, our storage unit, then He is our mobile Fort Knox. Our heart and its functions move into every next moment secure in His hands and led by the Holy Spirit.

But there is a series of road blocks along the way called temptation. Sin enters the picture trying to immobilize the heart. According to Jeremiah (17:9), the heart is deceitful above all things. Sin has separated man’s heart from God’s heart. Man’s heart is alone, prideful, sensitive and defensive therefore vulnerable to self-centered motivation. Again Jesus, quoting Isaiah 29:3, cuts to the chase, mincing no words, as He declares, “These people honor me with their lips but their hearts are far from me” and then points to reality telling it like it really is, "It's what comes out of a person that damages the heart: obscenities, lusting, thievery, murder, adultery, greed, depravity, deception, carousing, slander, arrogance, folly—all these breed filth (Mk.7:20-23 My take)." Every human heart is a victim of sin and Jesus is the only healer. A reconciled heart with His heart is freed from the power of sin but still is faced with temptation. The good news is it never has to face it alone. He is always there with His Spirit.

One more thing about the heart. It is the seat of our will. There is no greater contrast between our self-willed heart and that of Jesus when the chips are down in every next moment. His final words in the Garden of Gethsemane, knowing that His suffering and death awaited Him, He prayed to His Father asking, "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will (Mt.26:39 NIV)." At the point of death these words cry out across the centuries of man’s self-willed disobedience and self-centeredness. It is our heart that stands at the crossroads. Will it be willful choice or will we look to His will, the same will that carried Him through death into Resurrection. It is our will that determines whether or not we take up our cross in every next moment and are resurrected to serve Him in that next moment.

Given the obvious importance of the heart and its fallen condition how do we recover? As we have said priorly, if God’s love is to make its way into our heart it can only be done as we obey what He asks of us. Knowing this unsettledness in the heart Jesus gives us a clear answer, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me (Jn.!4:1).” It takes trust. It is trusting Him to redirect our will to His will revealed in the person of Jesus. Our will has to be willing to will what God wills in His will. (Enough wills there?) Here is where we find that our heart is challenged to lock up its pride, stuff it in the back closet and say, “OK Lord Jesus. I’ve been in charge long enough. It’s time to let you drive the car. I am basically a wreck waiting to happen. Forgive me and fill me with your Spirit.” That’s trust. Trust in Jesus, His heart in our heart, the fuel to drive the heart to overcome fear, refuse deceit and cruise with the Spirit in the will of God. The Holy Spirit gives us that discerning intuition as we grow closer to Him.

“Father, not my will but Your will be done.”