The Mountain

Psalm 125:1 NIV

Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion,

which cannot be shaken but endures forever.

How Does Your Faith Look?

Imagine a mountain of any sort.  It could be snow-capped, rising above the peaks of a dozen other mountains or a hill that stands out in flat desert wasteland.  The mountain can have a city sitting upon it or be a barren rock where few plants grow.  What does that mountain signify to you?  Does it trigger memories from your past or create an image of what you would like your life to be?  What do you think of when you look at the mountain and how does it impact your senses?  Are you drawn in a mysterious way to the mountains or are they frightening because of their immensity and the danger many mountains present to those who climb them.

Many important events happened on mountains in the Bible and mountains often symbolized theological themes in the Bible.   Abraham had one lasting memory of a mountain, Moses several.  Peter, James and John never forgot what they experienced on a mountain and someday it will be a mount upon which our Lord will return.  Perhaps what makes a mountain so captivating is its great power and steadfastness.  Mountains simply are not moved.  Another quality of the greatest of mountains is their endurance.  The Psalmist has this in mind when he compares the believer who puts His faith in God to Mount Zion. Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever. (Psalm 125:1 NIV)  The next verse gives a brilliant picture of how God protects us.  As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people both now and forevermore. (Psalm 125:2 NIV)

Like Mount Zion, the person who trusts in God lasts forever but just as the mountains surround Jerusalem, God guards His people and protects them.  So we have the believer being like a specific mountain, Mt. Zion and the Lord being like the range of mountains around Jerusalem which contains Mt. Zion.  We are like a mighty mountain, the Bible tells us, if we put our trust in God.  But even more importantly, it is the Lord who is a mountain of protection for His people.  We will pause here and consider these two points carefully.

Many have lost their way because they get these two declarations confused and miss the point of them altogether.  Our faith is not in our faith.  It is in Christ who saves us from all that Sin creates.  If your faith is in your faith, you will certainly be shaken because at some point your faith will be shaken.  Your faith can be knocked down and wrecked by trials too great for you but your salvation is not dependent on your faith.  It is dependent on God whose salvation it is.  Like what happens when a great wave of the ocean strikes you, you can find yourself knocked off your feet spiritually by someone who talks you out of what you believe about God and convinces you that you are naive to think Christ can save you.  A book you read might be so persuasive in its arguments against the presence of God that you can doubt His existence.  Some person you trusted who built up your faith in Christ may commit a terrible sin and suddenly you wonder if Christianity itself is true.  If your faith is in your faith, you can become like a house built upon sandy ground that falls apart when a horrific storm beats against it.  Consider these examples of faith in faith.

When the Apostle Peter boldly proclaimed that even if all the other disciples fall away from staying with Christ, he never would, Peter was showing his faith in his faith.  Peter declared, "Even if all fall away, I will not." (Mark 14:29 NIV)  We know of course that Peter did fall away and his boast comes across as pure bluster to us but at the time, Peter was supremely confident that he could and would if necessary die with Christ if Jesus’ dire prediction came to pass.  He had faith in his faith.  It is one thing to have faith in God, another altogether to have faith in one’s faith in God.

James and John angrily called for Christ to let them pray for fire to come down from heaven and destroy the Samaritans in a particular village that did not want Christ and them to stay there. And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem.  When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, "Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?" (Luke 9:52-54 NIV)  Here is the terrible problem with spiritual pride.  Although it may be grounded in God-thinking, it isn’t grounded in God.  James and John had plenty of faith in their ability to pray and by praying, bring down fire from heaven.  They clearly though had not much faith in God’s ability to remake and reorder lives.  It was clearly impossible in their minds for God to do anything much with the people living in the Samaritan village.  They were too far gone to be redeemed.  Jesus however thought differently and did something about it.

Let me illustrate the difference between faith in one’s faith and faith in God from a recent experience of mine.  I was working at a school as a P.E. instructor and somewhere on the school grounds lost a bracelet I was wearing.  I had been working with the kids both on a large grassy field as well as an asphalt play yard.  I searched everywhere I had been for the bracelet to no avail. As I looked to the ground, my heart looked to the heavens and I asked God to show me where the bracelet was but I still didn’t find it.  Finally, because the children were at recess, there were staff members of the school walking about supervising the kids.  I asked one of the workers if she had seen my bracelet but she told me she hadn’t.  However she encouraged me to not give up on finding the bracelet.  She had recently lost a small, diamond studded earring and searched high and low for it but the earring was nowhere to be found.  One day she spotted it in her driveway, completely undamaged.  Somehow it had gone unscathed, despite the number of times cars were parked in the driveway.  She told me not to give up on finding the bracelet.  I must admit, that I had quit thinking God would show me where the bracelet was and just smiled and thanked the woman for her encouragement.  Less than five minutes later, a girl who had been walking with the recess duty woman came to me with my bracelet.  It was not my faith that brought that bracelet back to me but rather the God of my faith that returned it in such a miraculous way.

When Jonah was sent by God to tell the people of Assyria in Nineveh that judgment was coming, he did not want to go because he thought the Lord would be easy on them.  If they asked God for forgiveness, Jonah believed God would let them off without any punishment for all the wicked things the people of that country had done.  Jonah’s faith was in his religion of right and wrong and punishments and rewards but not in God who is really God.  He did not think God could really fix all those Assyrians in Nineveh and make them a blessing to the world.  His faith in the religion of making people pay for what they do wrong was strong but His faith in the God who is really God was weak and broken.

Our Lord’s declaration to two blind men that Jesus healed is widely misunderstood.  As Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed him, calling out, "Have mercy on us, Son of David!"   When he had gone indoors, the blind men came to him, and he asked them, "Do you believe that I am able to do this?"   "Yes, Lord," they replied. Then he touched their eyes and said, "According to your faith will it be done to you"; and their sight was restored. (Matthew 9:27-30 NIV)  Jesus was not telling the men that they were healed because they had enough faith to get a healing.  They were healed because their faith was in Christ to heal them and He did it.

God does not want you to work up our faith and try to blow it up like a balloon so that you can get the things you want.  He simply tells you to trust Him in every matter.  There is so much you try to fix and so many problems you stress over because you don’t know how to solve them and the Lord tells you to settle down and trust Him with it.  Rather than fuss over something that bothers you, first go to Christ and the Holy Spirit may put a solution in your heart that will take care of your problem.  Perhaps He will begin working in someone else who will lift the problem off your shoulders.  God could simply give you peace while you wait for a solution.  God does not care one bit how great or small your faith is.  He simply wants what faith you have to be in Him.  Here is something you can say to remind you of how great God’s love is for you and how willing He is to help you.  Make this simple statement as you face the trials before you.  “Jesus is my Savior.  I put my faith in Him.”

Psychological Effect of Redemption The Will

Philippians 2:13 NIV

…for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.

What Determines Your Actions?

When I asked Mary Jo to marry me, it was an important moment for her.  She had to make a decision that clearly would dramatically impact her life.  No one else could decide for her although others could influence her decision.  Her parents may not have been happy to have me as their son-in-law but they weren’t the ones given the responsibility of saying “yes” or “no” to my proposal.  Mary Jo might have had many factors weighing on her when I “popped the question”.  She could have thought about my extremely good looks and my hilarious sense of humor and that might have influenced her.  She might also have considered how poor I was, how limited my earning power was as well as all my quirky ideas and how skinny I was and been pushed the other way.  Unconscious forces within her might have impacted her opinion of me, determining factors that she could not explain.  Perhaps early childhood experiences with taller men influenced Mary Jo’s decision.  Maybe fears or lusts or angry feelings had an effect on how she responded.  In the end though, it was her will and hers alone that acted upon my question of marriage.

You have a will, the part of your personality that decides for you what you shall do.  It is what closes the deal.  All day you make decisions.  Your passions influence how your will acts.  You have done things simply because you were angry or broken-hearted or elated.  Your conscious thinking impacts how your will responds to what you face.  You think about things, weigh the evidence and ponder what is happening and how it affects what you might do.  Your unconscious thoughts influence your will.  Sometimes childhood trauma, a destructive forgotten relationship or a humiliating experience will without your conscious knowledge determine the direction your will takes.  Because your heart is poisoned by sin, the will you possess is also damaged by Sin.  For obvious reasons, a healthy and effective will is critical to your well-being because what you decide can have lasting ramifications for you and those you love.

Let us think of the will as the part of us that creates the outward push of self.  When you reach outside yourself and act upon what is percolating within you; that is the will making the determination. Your will drives your actions.  We see this in Philippians 2: 13 in which the Bible says,”…for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.” (Philippians 2:13 NIV)  The will is linked to whatever you do or decide you won’t do.  The Lord’s intention for you is that your will would be free to do as it wishes.  You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. (Galatians 5:13 NIV)  However, with a free will, we can be wicked and cruel, selfish and filthy or loving and kind, truthful and generous.  It is our will that decides what we shall do.

What is amazing is that the God of the universe does not usurp your will.  Christ asked the two blind men who begged Him for help, "What do you want me to do for you?" (Matthew 20:32 NIV)  When two disciples of John the Baptist started tagging along behind Jesus, He asked them, "What do you want?" (John 1:38 NIV) The assumption underlying God’s relationship with us is that we are free to choose it or not.  “But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord." (Joshua 24:15 NIV)  The very call of Jesus to Andrew and Peter was, “Come follow me”.  (Mark 1:17 NIV) It seems that they did not have to follow Jesus if they didn’t want to do so, if they weren’t interested in being “fishers of men”. Even when the Bible calls to us, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved…", the will is left to decide how to respond.(Acts 16:31 NIV)

Consider the strange account of King David and his affair with Bathsheba.  The decision David made to sleep with her had disastrous ramifications for him.  It certainly impacted his family as well as those who saw him as a spiritual leader.  How did it affect God’s plans for David and the good He wanted David to accomplish?  The affair did not just hurt David’s reputation but God’s too.  What kind of God chooses men like David to lead His nation?  Given all the bad David’s act of Sin brought, it is interesting that God did not stop him somehow.  But David had a will that God was not willing to usurp even if it meant a disaster would be averted by doing so.  God has made us sovereign in the Will we have been given.  We are free to have Him as Lord or not, free to follow Him or not.

The will does not act in a vacuum however and in many ways it is a slave to forces beyond it.  Saul, the newly crowned king of Israel had been told by God through the prophet Samuel to wait seven days until Samuel returned before offering a sacrifice to God in preparation for the war that was about to begin.  He did wait for seven days but he did not wait long enough for Samuel to return and against God’s will, Saul and his soldiers offered a burnt offering to God.  Some of us have bought expensive presents for people we love even though they have told us not to do it and usually it works out well anyway.  In this case, it didn’t for Saul.  God punished Saul for his disobedience.

At the risk of making it seem that Saul should not have been held accountable for his rebellious act, we must consider the forces working upon Saul’s will.  First, there were his conscious thoughts.  He looked about and saw a great army of Philistines before him who were battle tested and far superior in numbers and weaponry.  As the Bible puts it, they were “as numerous as the sand on the seashore.” (1 Samuel 13: 5) Not only that, his own soldiers were going off and hiding in caves and behind bushes and in cisterns.  It seemed unreasonable to Saul as he considered the situation, not to hurry and offer the sacrifice so that he might gain God’s favor because if he waited much longer, nearly his entire army would desert him and the Philistines would attack.  Saul’s passion was pressuring his will certainly as fear began to overwhelm him.  He may have been angry too with Samuel for taking so long.  Consider Saul’s unconscious thoughts that pushed up against his will.  It was not that long ago that Saul was made king and even though Samuel had told him that he was God’s choice to be king, when it was time to present him to the nation, Saul hid among the baggage gathered off to the side.  When originally informed of God’s plans for him, Saul referred to himself as from one of the most insignificant of all the families among the Israelites.  How this impacted Saul unconsciously, we cannot say but it had to have some effect.  From birth, he saw himself as not good enough, as inadequate and incapable of accomplishing much in life.  Even when assured that God believed he could be king, Saul couldn’t buy it.  This embedded way of seeing himself made it difficult for Saul to accept the challenge of courageously trusting God.

What our Lord did for us as Savior was to take out of us the corruption of our will.  The Sin that makes the will unstable and untrustworthy is removed from it through Christ crucified.  It can function as God intended when He gave Adam the challenge of rejecting the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  What is more, with Christ joined to us, we can have a will that agrees with God on everything.  Philippians 2: 13 reminds us that now, with Christ as part of us, it is God who works in you to will and to act in conjunction with what He wants.  In other words, God gives your will backbone to withstand the sort of pressures Saul faced. 

There is one powerful force that works on the will that must now be given its due consideration.  Our body, our physical desires can and have made the will a slave.  There is a supernatural component to the will that alters altogether the way we can live.  Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.  And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-11 NIV)  There is a tremendous promise here that we must take into account when we consider all those acts that it seems our bodies force us to perform.  It is seen, and we cannot say this strongly enough, that with Christ taking out of us our Sin and the Holy Spirit a part of us, the body cannot force our will into anything.  The will is altogether free in Christ to withstand even the most powerful urges of the body.  We must face this statement head on.  Either God is for us and we are able to fight off any addiction or behavior pattern that our will rejects or the Scripture is a mythology littered with colossal empty promises.

How can you ever know if your will, joined with Christ is strong enough to make free decisions that honor Christ and make your life good?  Jesus offers you an experiment to try.  Find out just how powerful Christ is and how effective His work is in you.  He says without pushing you, "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.  But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”  (Matthew 7:13-14 NIV)  Impose your will upon every single desire that goes against what God is saying to do.  The will is like a great muscle. You must train it to follow God or it will be a slave to your passions, your body, your conscious or unconscious thoughts.  If you take your will in through the narrow gate you might find the way hard and uncomfortable and even some times unreasonable and maybe boring.  But as you train your will to follow Christ, something will happen to you that may surprise you.  God’s peace and contentment will begin to take over your heart and a joy that is supernatural will creep into you also.  The term the Bible uses for this experience is “life” and it is promised to those who bend their will to that of God.  Eventually as you train your will to follow Christ, God’s will becomes your will and you will be “the will of God”.

Passions

Hosea 7:6 NIV

Their hearts are like an oven; they approach him with intrigue.  Their passion smolders all night; in the morning it blazes like a flaming fire.

What Is The Source Of Your Passion?

A few weeks ago I was coming out of the church parking lot and traffic on my side of the road was packed.  Two lanes merge into one right at the driveway of the parking lot and no one was moving due to the stop light at the cross street on the next block.  Normally I just inch into the traffic and drivers let me through.  After all, they aren’t going anywhere and I am not trying to get ahead of them.  I just want to cross into the lane going the other way.  As I began to work my way into the traffic, the first car waved for me to come through and so I started but then all of a sudden, the driver in the car in the second lane quickly lurched forward to block my way through her lane.  At first I could not believe what I had just seen.  Why did she do that?  What good did it do her to not let me through?  Was she crazy?  I did not recognize her and when I stared into her head, she would not look my way.  There I sat in my little car, blocking one lane of traffic but unable to let that lane move forward because I was prevented from going on into the other side of the road.  As soon as the traffic light turned green and the woman was able to move forward and clear the way for me, I wondered at my temper.  What had happened to it?  Why didn’t I get mad at the woman for being rude to me?  More importantly, what if I did get angry and try to retaliate.  What would I have done?

Unless you are a robot, you have passion.  It could be blocked or stymied by your will but you have access to passion, a treasure trove of it.  What you do about your passion is up to you.  It can be poisoned by sin and become a source of tremendous turmoil for you or it can be transformed by God into a valuable part of your personality.  Many are afraid of the passion they possess and try to keep it in check by either fighting against it or attempting to dismantle it.  Others are controlled by their passions and like Legion with his many demons, find themselves taken captive by their passions and made a slave of them.  Perhaps you have known people who showed no emotions and although they seem passionless, it is more likely that they live in constant fear of being dominated by passions that scare them.  Shows like Star Trek romanticize the passionless person and yet that is a mistake.  Passion is a critical part of who we are and how we have been made.  To discount or discredit your passion is like rejecting your lungs or hating your blood vessels.  What we need is an approach to our passions that is not only reasonable but even beneficial.  That is what we shall consider today.

Passions can be defined psychologically as the ruling forces within the heart that drive our actions. They are the powerhouse motors we possess that get us going.  They push us into actions that our will alone can’t initiate.  Without passion we live and act mechanically; just going through the motions of daily life without ever leaving our comfort zone.  Biblically, the heart is the center of who we are.  It is the root of our thinking, our will and our passions.  Sometimes in the Old Testament a term which in the Hebrew is translated kidneys or “reins” is used but it is essentially the same as the heart.  When you read the term heart in the Bible, don’t think of it as the pumping muscle in your chest but as the idea of you and who you are internally.  The heart however, which is the source of the passions, is broken by sin.  As we see in Jeremiah 17: 9, The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.  Who can understand it? (NIV)

The question of course is rhetorical.  Our hearts are a great mystery to us and nearly unfathomable.  Sin has corrupted them to the core and whether it is the damage brought about by the sins we commit or the sins committed against us, they are a wreck of what God intended them to be.  Each of us is stymied by the heart we have.  We may change a certain behavior or alter some habits, but in the end, there are depths to the heart that make a mess of our “good intentions”.  Paul, in speaking of the heart and its warping of passion said, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” (Romans 7: 15 NIV)  This a universal experience.  Whether you are from Asia or Africa or Australia, you have acted in ways that were unfathomable to you and maybe even embarrassing.  Why is that?  It is because your heart is warped and unpredictable.

Jesus has a strong take on how damaged your heart is.  For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. (Matthew 15:19 NIV)   You cannot count on a heart that is so unstable and wrecked.  Any sin imaginable can come out of you and without warning.  Out of this pot come your passions; unpredictable and unreliable.  It is possible though to not be dominated by the passions coming out of your sin damaged and corrupted heart.  The Bible says, So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. (Galatians 5:16 NIV) “Desires” is nothing more than your passions as they flow out of the sin percolating in your heart.  There is nothing laughable about what is possible with a heart such as the one you and I possess.  The worst that humanity has to offer is there in your heart and my heart and the passions can drive them out of us like dynamite.

Before we have been born again with Christ living through us, all we have to rein in our corrupted passions is the conscience.  Depending on how strong or weak our conscience is morally and how developed it is will determine what our passions drive us to do.  Of course, as is hinted in Romans 7, the law also can constrain our passions.  But when we have been transformed by the power of Christ crucified into Christians, there is a new force working in us.  For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. (Galatians 5:17 NIV)  The Holy Spirit wages war with the corruption in the heart and this can have tremendous psychological ramifications.

Some of the most anxious and depressed individuals are often Christians who struggle to accept the changes God wants to make in them.  Anger and stress manifest themselves in believers who don’t want Christ to change everything in the heart.  Galatians 5:19-21 provides an ugly picture of what comes out of the heart that is not converted fully by Christ.  The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. (NIV)  The only curb other than conscience against such behavior is the fear of being caught for doing something bad.  We can hold back some of this ugliness but eventually anything we see in this list of fruit produced by corrupted passions can come out of us without warning.  We find we are angry or bitter or jealous and we say that isn’t us but it is us.  All of this is floating about in the heart unchanged by the work of Christ.  This is the fruit of passion developed in a sin corrupted heart.

We discover in Galatians 5: 22 what God can do with our passions when He remakes them.  They can produce a lifestyle straight out of heaven.  But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. (Galatians 5:22-23 NIV)  How can our passion begin to develop these qualities?  Romans 5: 5 gives us a hint at the mechanism God utilizes for the transformation of our passions.  And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. (NIV)  How can the passion in your heart be changed into something that generates the goodness of God in you?  It can only happen when God’s own love is poured into your heart by the Holy Spirit. 

Do

There is a critical moment when the Lord speaks to us and we respond to His message.  Either we do what He tells us to do or we don't and our reaction is critical to a wide-ranging spectrum or circumstances rooted in real time.  The Hebrews had an evening to decide what they were going to do about the command to enter the Promised Land and they choose to balk at it.  Paul in a split second, as he stood before Festus the Roman governor, demanded that his case be heard before the court in Rome, knowing already that the Lord wanted him in Rome.  It goes the other way also.  When the Lord demands we stop doing something, our decision there can have dramatic and long lasting ramifications.  Was there not a point when the Lord's word warned David the King to stop gazing at Bathsheba as she was bathing and even later to not send for her, knowing full well she was married?  Did Job's friends never feel a  tinge of guilt as they berated Job for imagined sins when they were sent to him only to comfort him?  There is a parenthesis of time when we can be God's or not.  Imagine what could have been if the great city of Nineveh had maintained its allegiance to God when Jonah proclaimed the coming judgment.  There might have been two centers of outreach to the world through which the Lord's word would have been declared.  You have critical moments when what you do will make all the difference in how God is perceived and received by those about you.  Do not ask God to help you do what He has directed.  He won't.  You must act in the strength He has already given you.  A plant must break through the ground for the stem to be strong enough to survive the forces it will face as it extends itself.  A butterfly will only have wings of sufficient strength if it tears through the cocoon on its own.  You are strong enough to do what the Spirit has told you to do.  For your own sake and for the good of countless others, you must do it.

Hear, O Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your fathers, promised you.  Deuteronomy 6: 3 NIV

Guilt

In the United States and many parts of the world, it is considered prudish to have less than seven sexual partners.  No longer is promiscuity considered morally wrong, at least as it pertains to a standard derived from something less than the Bible.  There are other areas of behavior that are morally repugnant to a large portion of the population that would be odd concerns to any era but our own.  Feelings of guilt have not left us; they simply have become attached to new morality tenets that have surfaced in our time.    Would a couple ever before have felt guilty about having another child yet now many do!  Has there ever been an age where so much angst has been suffered over the military strength of one's own nation?  When did we start feeling guilty about expressing faith in Christ?  It is moral to send naked pictures of oneself by text but immoral to pass those naked pictures along to others.  There is a moral code to our world and it shifts about like seismic fissures.  The natural course is to make morality match one's behavior rather than the other way around.  In a social order that decides it is moral, what need is there for a God who dies for one's sins?  A god who powers success might be interesting or a deity that settles emotional instability could garner a following but a true Savior who wrecks ones inner world by becoming Lord is anathema to  moral self-determinists.  Satan does not want a guilty sinner and does his best to keep the fretting over right and wrong from the soul.  But once a man or woman faces the mirror of God's own justice and gains a fresh insight into what really is right and wrong, the sham is uncovered and the healthy guilt of the Holy Spirit descends.    We try so hard to be done with guilt but guilt is a window through which the light of God shines into the heart and reveals the true need of every soul, the need for Christ to bring salvation to the totality of life.

When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment: 

John 16:8 NIV

Unconscious Thought Part 2

Psychological Effect of Redemption

Ephesians 1: 7 NIV

In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins…

What Does God Have “in Mind” For You?

For perhaps several hundred years, many involved in creative arts such as painting, sculpting, storytelling and songwriting have been aware of some unseen force within them that affects their ingenuity.  Even mechanics and mathematicians have been intrigued by the surprising insight they mysteriously develop as they try to solve a problem.  The author Tom Clancy has this to say about the effect his subconscious thinking has upon his writing.  “I think about the characters I've created, and then I sit down and start typing and see what they will do. There's a lot of subconscious thought that goes on. It amazes me to find out, a few chapters later, why I put someone in a certain place when I did.”    We use the expression, “I need to sleep on it” to indicate the need to wait before making a decision but also because we realize that something mysterious happens to how we think about things when we actually do sleep. 

One of the most unattended difficulties we face is our complete ignorance in regard to the effect of our unconscious thinking upon our daily activities.  Does it impact your decisions?  What role does it play on your moods?  Is it influential in the sorts of relationships you develop and maintain?  Is it possible to control and direct your unconscious thoughts to your advantage?  One of the rarely considered aspects to thinking fully through Christ as part of you is the impact that has upon the unconscious world.  Later we shall discuss the supernatural forces working within us but for today we will consider only what role Christ plays in impacting our unconscious thoughts.

Who doesn’t like the potential of a special degree of insight and understanding buried within unconscious thinking if Christ is part of the heart?  It must be reminded however that for every person, unconscious thinking is corrupted by Sin.  Degenerate and volatile forces of evil  work below the surface of our conscious thinking and that has caused us all sorts of problems and even pain.  Paul the Apostle described this perfectly in Romans 7.  I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.  And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.  As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.  I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.  For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing.  Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. (Romans 7:15-20 NIV)

This unseen force, the work of Sin within our unconscious that fights against even our best intentions is so familiar to us that when we read what Paul has to say, it almost feels like he is reporting on our own minds.  But this is universal, the inability to live according to our highest values and principles.  What our conscious thinking attempts, our corrupted unconscious undermines.  There is hope though and it is a real and trustworthy hope.  Redemption, a technical term in the Bible that speaks of the work Christ did for us by being crucified and raised from the dead is how God takes out of us the Sin that corrupts our inner being.  In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. (Ephesians 1:7-8 NIV)  To understand just how crucial this is in regard to the unconscious, we must remember that the term here which is translated “forgiveness”  has as its primary meaning, “to put away”.  What Christ did by dying for us is to take away from us the Sin that is within us.  This brings us a real freedom to our unconscious thinking, not just to our conscious decision making.

Before Jesus Christ died for us, Psalm 51: 6 was a far off dream.  Now it is possible for you.  Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place. (Psalm 51:6 NIV)  As we learned earlier, truth is the translation of a Hebrew word that describes firmness, stability.  God is now free to take the chaos out of our unconscious thinking and remove the corruption from it.  How does He straighten out our unconscious inner world?  He puts into it His wisdom, or to use the Psalmist’s expression, teaches “wisdom in the inmost place.”  What once was a combustible combination of bitter memories, warped patterns of thinking and a corrupted manner of perceiving what you are encountering, your heart, for once has the potential of bringing you peace, joy and encouragement in a supernatural form.

Hebrews 4: 12-13 tells insists that God is able to dig into the deepest parts of your soul where no psychologist or mental health worker can explore.  For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.  Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account. (Hebrews 4:12-13 NIV) With no sinful act or sinful damage able to withstand the cleansing and healing work of Christ in the heart, the Lord searches, processes, evaluates and takes out of darkness everything that wrecks you, all through the Cross.  What is He unable to see in your heart?  What is impossible for Christ to heal in your heart?  What wrecked habit or painful memory can He not make right?  With humanity, it is impossible to clear up all this and make your heart right but as Jesus told the disciples, "What is impossible with men is possible with God." (Luke 18:27 NIV)

The Cross of Christ is the greatest miracle seen in history for through it, we are brought out of the wreck Sin has cost us and by it, God can work His way through the darkest and deepest parts of your heart and fix it all.  The Bible uses the metaphor of light to express what God does in us.  For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:6 NIV)  You might question this.  Can Jesus Christ do what some of the greatest psychologists and psychiatrists in history haven’t been able to accomplish?  Well yes He can!  If you let Him have full access to you.    The work of Christ in the heart is quite simple.  He retakes it and remakes it for the glory of God in you.  By His light, Christ eliminates the darkness of your heart.  In other words, He heals all the damage caused by Sin in the inner parts of your life.

It does not take deep insight to realize that something is thoroughly wrong with the created order.  From top to bottom, our world is broken and we are broken too.  For too long we all lived with our brokenness.  We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.  Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.  For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has?  But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. (Romans 8:22-25 NIV)  Like the rest of creation, there is inward sighing in you, deep places where there is moaning at how it has been.  The damage caused by Sin is great and for some horrific.  Yet, you don’t have to be broken any longer.  God has a new way of life for you. 

There is a wonderful promise found in the Bible and it must be considered before you move on with what you are doing.  In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.  And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will. (Romans 8:26-27 NIV)  Outwardly, you may not show any signs of damage or turmoil.  Nothing seems wrong but inwardly there is sighing and groaning.  At those spots, those secret spots, the Holy Spirit works in you.  In the deep places, He knows what hurts, what is traumatized and damaged and there He intercedes for you.  Where surgeons cannot enter and human machines cannot reach, our Lord heals, He calms, He soothes.  Without permission, the Spirit will leave you alone but at your call, He touches the angry, inflamed, lonely, infected, ruined places in your heart and He heals them.  The places of the heart where you have lost your childhood, your innocence, where the dreams you once had were stripped from you, God will heal too.  He will give you a new dream deep in your heart and new love to make your heart whole.  With your permission, the Holy Spirit will heal the damage in your heart.

Each evening, before you go to sleep, invite Christ to heal the parts of your mind you can’t explore.  Ask Him to be in charge of your dreaming and purify it.  Let your last thought before you fall asleep be of your Lord alive in you remaking your inner parts and repairing all the damage caused by the sins of the world.  Remember He won’t just come in and do whatever He wants.  Our Lord “stands at the door” of your heart and it is you who must let Him enter.

Unconscious Thought

Part 1

Jeremiah 17:10 NIV

"I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve."

What Do You Know About Yourself?

The past few weeks I have been aware of long and elaborate dreams that seem to last through the night.  In them are people I can’t ever remember seeing but they impact me in some dramatic way as my dream progresses.  The dreams aren’t frightening but sometimes they are troubling.  I have difficulty in many trying to find my way somewhere or I get confused about what I need to do.  The plotlines within my dreams are complex and the characters speak and act in surprising ways that don’t remind me of any of my recent experiences.  I could not write stories that are as creative and interesting as my dreams and so I wonder how they come about and what the source of them is.  Of course they could be sent to me by God or they may simply be the product of unconscious thinking that is working even while I am asleep.  One thing is certain.  There is much about me that I do not understand, especially what is found deep in my heart.

Perhaps you are like me and find yourself wondering what to make of the hidden parts of your mind.  It seems so complex and strange, like a cave filled with mysterious creatures, indecipherable writings and strange pictures on the walls.  Unpredictable forces are at work within you that push you about like a bully on the playground.  Do you just let them have their way with you, impacting what you feel about things and how you react to situations?  Can you do something about the internal forces that affect your life in hidden ways?  Should you be concerned about them or live as if your unconscious thoughts don’t matter?  What does the Bible have to say about the unconscious world?

Two terms in the Bible, when combined, are what describe the place of our “inner world”.  The first Hebrew term, lev, is generally translated heart and is what modern culture thinks of as the mind.  The second, Kilya is difficult to translate but in older English Bibles is called the “reins” or “kidneys”.  It is the inner place of the self; the deep part of us that includes our thinking, our unconscious world, our passion and our will.  Jeremiah 17: 10 puts both these terms together and reminds us that God has access to all the hidden places of the inner being.  "I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve." (Jeremiah 17:10 NIV)

Add caption

You don’t need proof that there are depths to you that you cannot explore with just the mental skills available to you.  You have dreams you can’t explain.  You experience emotions that do not have a recognizable source.  Memories suddenly pop to the surface without warning.  A smell or a taste of something brings back to mind an experience you have long forgotten.  The Bible says that God has made that deep, unseen world.  For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. (Psalm 139:13 NIV)  “Inmost being” is the translation of our Hebrew word, “Kilya” or kidneys, the place where your thoughts are found.  The very next verse proclaims that the way God put together your inmost being is wonderful.  I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. (Psalm 139:14 NIV)  What Freud and many in the psychoanalytic field saw as the enemy of happiness, the unconscious world found in each person, the Bible says is a great benefit or even a tremendous treasure.

We do though face a great problem when it comes to our unconscious thought life.  It is corrupted.  Jeremiah 17:9 says this about the heart.  The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.  Who can understand it?  (Jeremiah 17:9 NIV)  The effect of Sin at every area of our thinking, both conscious as well as unconscious, is devastating.  It impacts us at every turn in life from how we feel about things to the way we make our decisions.  Our heart is wrecked and we cannot trust it to effectively take us through life.  No one, not Freud or Jung or Watson or any of the “thinkers” in the study of psychology understand fully the chaos found in the heart.

There is an interesting term the Bible uses to describe God’s plan for us.  Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place. (Psalm 51:6 NIV)  The word translated “truth” is the Hebrew word “emeth” and means firmness, reliability, faithfulness.  As the heart is now, you cannot count on it.  The thoughts that are generated by the heart are at best unreliable; at worst destructive.  You cannot count on what comes out of your heart and have confidence that what comes out of it will be good.  God’s plan for you is to make your heart trustworthy and the thoughts in it productive and beneficial to your being.  The only way that is possible is if God gets at the root of the problem, the Sin that corrupts the heart.

We are reminded in Jeremiah 17: 10, that only God is the great psychologist because He is capable of seeing into the deepest and most broken parts of the heart and knowing what to do about it.  "I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind…”  The prayer of the Psalmist takes this ability of God into account.  Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. (Psalm 139:23 NIV)  Why is this important?   What does the psalmist really want?  We have no tools for figuring out the effect of our unconscious thinking upon what we do and how we react to things.  God though does and yet He will not simply take over your unconscious like some hypnotist if we don’t want Him there.  He waits for our praying to begin working in us at the unconscious level. 

Consider carefully God’s ability to do something about your unconscious mind.  Psalm 51: 6 insists, you teach me wisdom in the inmost place.  This is not just insight into how to fix a lawn mower.  You and I want much more than that in the inmost place, in the unconscious parts of the heart.  You want the supernatural thinking of God that combats the broken thinking of your unconscious mind.  "Where then does wisdom come from?  Where does understanding dwell? ... God understands the way to it and he alone knows where it dwells, (Job 28:20, 23 NIV)  With your permission, God will reshape and remake your unconscious mind so that His wisdom rises up out of it.

Consider the irony found in Isaiah 44. He (a carpenter) cut down cedars, or perhaps took a cypress or oak.  He let it grow among the trees of the forest, or planted a pine, and the rain made it grow.  It is man's fuel for burning; some of it he takes and warms himself, he kindles a fire and bakes bread.  But he also fashions a god and worships it; he makes an idol and bows down to it.  Half of the wood he burns in the fire; over it he prepares his meal, he roasts his meat and eats his fill.  He also warms himself and says, "Ah! I am warm; I see the fire."  From the rest he makes a god, his idol; he bows down to it and worships.  He prays to it and says, "Save me; you are my god." (Isaiah 44: 14-17 NIV)  Of course this points out the ridiculous nature of idol construction!  With part of the wood the carpenter carves an idol and from the rest of the very same wood he builds a fire and warms his cold feet.  Your unconscious built within your heart is much like this.  Part of it generates lustful feelings.  “I want this and I want it now!”  It can incite bitter anger as well as deep depression.  Another part of the unconscious produces inspiring thoughts, actions and plans.  You might treat these ideas as if they come from God but they may not be from Him.  They may simply be a product of a corrupted unconscious.    The unconscious is the power behind many of our opinions, actions and creative ideas and tragically, you can treat them as the ruling force of your life, a god.  Some of the most horrifying people of history were ruled by an unconscious they neither understood nor could control.  They thought though that everything they did was good and right.  We too can be fooled by a heart that is not seen or understood.  Our unconscious is both a danger to us and a support.  Next week we shall look at what can be done to have an unconscious that works for us and not against us.

Miracles Today

We think of the healings of the blind, the raising of the dead and the removal of the Assyrians from Jerusalem as first order miracles when in fact they are minor supernatural events compared to the matters of the heart.  Jesus' demands of us are plainly beyond human capabilities and yet He still holds them up to us as how we are to live.  He warns us that anyone who murders is subject to judgment and none of us would argue that point.  But then he goes on to say that if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First be reconciled to your brother before returning with your gift.  Above all else, we are to keep our lives free of conflict with our fellow children of God.  This seems absurd and even unnatural but that is the normal pattern of behavior within God's Kingdom.  How can we manage such expectations?  We can't.  We must operate within the sphere of Christ where inside the human heart, both in its conscious and unconscious parts He breaks apart the barriers between people.  At every turn we are to pray and be guided by the Holy Spirit in how to respond to what we face with our fellow broken human beings.  We may lack the faith needed for reconciliation but God does not excuse our spiritual laziness.  Get back up, pray for Christ to heal the psychological wounds and eventually the relationship will be restored.  There is your part and there is God's part.  Your part is to forgive the offence you hold.  His part is to take out of the hearts of others the weight of your offending actions.  The great miracles are always the ones that put people back together into a love relationship based in forgiveness and reconciliation.  For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 5:20 NIV

Chaos to Order

Genesis 1:2 NIV

 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

What Do You Do About the Chaos?

Several years ago I was leading a Bible Study in a home and when we finished, I walked out to my van but it wasn’t there.  Up and down the street I wandered, hoping I had just forgotten where I parked but the truth was that it was gone.  Someone had stolen it while I was “doing God’s work”.  Inside it was my laptop, an IPod and my digital camera.  I am not sure what hurt the most, the loss of the van which I often had griped about or the fact that it happened while I was hopefully pleasing God.  The chaos in my head was I am certain easily seen as I struggled to make sense of what had just happened. This was unreasonable and not fair and infuriating.  It did not seem right that God would let this happen to me.  

Chaos comes to all of us some time or another. It is usually unexpected and unnerving.  Some seem to manage chaos well but others of us have a tough time coping with it.  We like order.  We want to know what to expect and have a plan in place when troubles come.  Perhaps you handle chaos well.  You rather like chaos and the adrenalin rush it brings.  But it might be that the unexpected storm rattles you.  Suddenly you crack your tooth or you lose your wallet or you get in a car wreck.  In a world broken by sin and thrown into chaos as a result of the rebellion of humanity, we can never assume everything will go smoothly or all our plans will come to pass as we hope.  It is more than just “drama” that you face; it is without warning out and out madness.

Before God created humanity and the creatures of the earth, the Bible says that the world was literally as the Hebrew words indicate, chaotic and disordered.  Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. (Genesis 1:2 NIV)  It was in this state of disarray that the Lord in six days structured the universe and brought to the earth order.  Water was in its place.  Land was separated from the oceans.  Day and night were structured and species of land, air and sea creatures were separated from each other.  Everything was put in place and love and peace ruled the earth.  But then Adam sinned and the world was again in chaos with animals attacking each other, diseases bringing terror and humanity unstable and tossed about by anger and lust and jealousy.

Into this world entered God.  Jesus Christ was born of a virgin and built His life in an isolated part of the world that was largely ignored by all the great civilizations.  God by coming to us, did so in order to make the world once more rational and in every way good.  Jesus had a single mission; to take out of you and me sin and by doing so remove the chaos of Sin from the world. David perfectly describes the chaos of this world and how difficult it can get for you.  …my eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul and my body with grief.  My life is consumed by anguish and my years by groaning; my strength fails because of my affliction, and my bones grow weak. (Psalm 31:9-10 NIV)

Not every day is like this but enough are to paint a picture of how far chaos can go in this world.  It is frustrating and sometimes overwhelming; the chaos we encounter and like I struggled trying to make sense of the loss of my van, it is normal to wonder why there is so much chaos.  After Jesus sent His disciples off in a boat to cross the Sea of Galilee with Jesus peacefully asleep, chaos erupted.   Without warning, a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. (Matthew 8: 24 NIV)  It astounded the disciples that Jesus could sleep through all that wild commotion but privately many of them must have wondered why God let such a great storm come upon them when they were doing God’s work. 

While He was teaching some in the crowd mentioned the tragic slaughter of some Galileans by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate.  It seems that they wanted Jesus to explain why God let them be killed.  Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices.  Jesus answered, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way?  I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.  Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them — do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem?” (Luke 13:1-5 NIV)  Jesus does not welcome at all the hunt for blame when tragedy strikes!  Yes, the world is filled with both sinners and chaos but one person’s sin is not the cause of the chaos we find.  The disciples had a similar question for Jesus when they came upon a man who had been born blind.  His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" (John 9:2 NIV) Jesus’ response was perhaps not what they expected. "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.” (John 9:3 NIV)

When we look at the chaos all about us, we are asking the wrong question if we are trying to draw a straight line cause-and-effect relationship between who we are and what we face.  The assumption or at least the expectation must be in every case that chaos is to be expected but every time chaos occurs, we must look for God to see what He does.  Why the storm?  Why the massacre?  Why the blindness?  We cannot give an explanation for it other than that we live in a wrecked and chaotic world.  But when you see chaos, always look about for God too.

There is an illustration of how you can gradually develop this approach to chaos.  During a different storm on the same lake, Peter, along with the other disciples was in a boat crossing the Sea of Galilee when a storm developed and the winds began to blow strongly.  The chaos however went beyond the storm.  During the fourth watch of the night Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake.  When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. "It's a ghost," they said, and cried out in fear. (Matthew 14:25-26 NIV)  Jesus though reassured them.  But Jesus immediately said to them: "Take courage! It is I.  Don't be afraid." (Matthew 14: 27 NIV)  Famously, Peter, trusting Jesus to take care of him, got out of the boat and started walking on the water just like he saw Jesus doing.  At that moment, Peter recognized the chaos but looked for God in it.  Soon though, the storm was all he saw and he started sinking into the water.  Chaos has that effect on us.  We can let it overwhelm our sensitivity to God.

Peter had another opportunity to look past the chaos and see God in it but he didn’t make use of the opportunity.  When Jesus was arrested by the Jewish leaders, Peter thought all was lost and even though our Lord told him and the others that this was part of God’s plan, Peter panicked when He saw Jesus beaten and humiliated.  Three times he denied to the people watching with him that he even knew Jesus.  It was a lost cause to Peter and he could not see God in what was happening.  In just a couple years though, Peter was not so lost.

What turned everything around for Peter was that Jesus rose from the dead after He was crucified and as for all other true Christians, the Holy Spirit became a part of his personality.  From that point forward, all the mental strength and moral power of God was a part of him and can be a part of you too, Peter could never get completely lost in chaos.  Although it may not seem traumatic like being caught in a storm or watching as Christ was being beaten there was nonetheless a tremendous challenge Peter faced after the Holy Spirit came on him and the others the day of Pentecost.  The disciples started facing persecution.  James the Apostle was executed for his faith in Christ as was the deacon Stephen and Peter was more than once arrested and threatened with death.  Peter had started to make a regular practice of trying to see God in whatever he faced and after having moved away from Jerusalem he stayed with some friends in the Roman dominated town of Caesarea.  While there, some messengers came to him from a Roman centurion, asking Peter to come to the centurion’s home.  There were two problems with the invitation.  One, Peter was Jewish and Jewish people did not go into the homes of those who weren’t Jewish. More importantly though it was a centurion who wanted to see Peter and this was a great challenge for Peter.  It was the Roman soldiers who executed Jesus.  This quite possibly could have been a threat.  What was Peter to do?  Would he trust Christ within the chaos of going to see the Centurion or let his fear rule him and stay home?

The decision Peter finally made enabled Peter to see God in the chaos he faced.  Before that, God was in the storm, He was there to trust too but he did not see it.  After that, God was in the crucifixion of Christ and He was there to trust but Peter didn’t see it then either.  Now, the invitation to go to the centurion’s house, although frightening and risky had God there too just like with the other two chaotic moments.  There is a crisis of faith for you every time you face chaos.  Do you believe God will see you through this?  Will you trust Him to help you and carry you?  Do you believe He loves you and that the chaos you have now will be worked out by Christ and that although it might be hard now and very hard, He will stay with you no matter how rough it gets?  Peter had to go through some rugged and painful experiences before he became convinced that the Lord was good enough to trust within the storm and not just when the warm and gentle breezes were blowing.  God’s peace is not theoretical, it is practical.  It is of no use if you cannot have God’s peace when chaos comes.  Your chaos is your opportunity to test the Lord’s power to see you through it and as you trust Christ in the chaos, He is proven to be good and really good.  When you see Him there, in the middle of your chaos, you will learn and learn completely, that your Lord is bigger, and stronger and kinder than you ever imagined.

Getting it Done

The rise of civilization came through the murderous line of Cain.  It was his descendants who gave themselves to the arts, tool-making and warfare.  Cain was the inspiration behind the first recorded example of honor killing.  Organized ranching and farming was developed by the line of Cain as were the proliferation of cities.  The world order began with one man's determination to do away with his chief rival and create a monopoly for himself.  The line of Seth out of which came Noah and his family, was known for a solitary accomplishment.  One from their number, "walked with God".    If you assess all that has been accomplished since Adam sinned and transformed the course of human history, you must decide how to properly evaluate everything that has taken place.  Does it look more like it came from Cain or Abel?  Are your accomplishments along the lines of Seth or his older brother Cain?  What we decide is "getting things done" may rather be the unraveling of our Lord's agenda.  It is strange to think that the impoverished widow who gave her few pennies to the offering accomplished far more than Herod who led the reconstruction of the Temple of Jerusalem.  What we call civilization may be nothing of the sort.  Whether we consider the construction of Babel or Solomon's great palace, it seems that civilized thinking rarely generates a civilized heart.  Start with your mind on Christ and do whatever you can to keep it on Him throughout your day.  Then, whatever you do,  work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men... (Colossians 3:23 NIV)