Mind Series

GIVING IT YOUR ALL

MIND

[JESUS FREAKS PAGE 210]

-did you realize all that trouble happened just so you could hold that Bible in your hands?

-in this period of time, it was believed that Latin was the only language the Bible should be written in or read from (and some places still do it). The problem is most people, unless they were rich or kings, did not know Latin. They had to trust someone else to teach the Bible to them, they were unable to read it for themselves. It was even thought that us regular, average people could not, were not smart enough, to understand the Bible or have that relationship with Jesus so we would let the priests or pastors have it and we would blindly follow along

-now we can all use our minds for God, but do we?

**Mark 12:30 -> 30Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength. (NCV)

-yesterday we talked about your heart, how whatever you focus on, whatever your treasure is, that’s where your heart will be, and if we have love, if we have God at the center of our heart, we should be out living it out, we should be showing that love to everyone.

-this morning we focused on the soul, the emotional part of you, your spirit, the part that no one can see and how there are things you can do to love God with your soul. How we can get to know God through our soul but also how we can bless God and live out God’s love through our emotions, sometimes simply by slowing down and calming our soul.

-so this evening we’re on the mind, the brain, the part of Christianity that worries me because it seems we have so many people who just tune out when it comes to matters of faith, like if we think it will destroy our faith.

-so we need you to do this:

1. DON’T SHUT OFF YOUR BRAIN

-God created you with a brain. He didn’t need to. He could have made you a jellyfish. He could still turn you into one if He really wanted to.

-but He didn’t. He made you with intelligence, with reason, with the ability to think.

**Gen. 1:27 -> 27So God created human beings in his image. In the image of God he created them. He created them male and female. (NCV)

-I’ve always found it funny that we use this verse to tell how we have emotions, like God has emotions. How we have a soul and a spirit, like God is Spirit. But for some reason when it comes to we have the ability to think, we have logic, we are able to process thoughts and come to conclusions, people skip that part.

-I mean really think about it. Look around you. God created everything. He figured out how to make gravity work. He made light and designed it, gave it its speed. He put each star in its place with planets around them, forces at work that we don’t even know about yet. God is a thinking God, and intelligent God. Yet when it comes to us relating to God, too many times I’ve heard to go on faith not worry about thinking. That’s stupid!

-the problem is we try to figure out God. We try to define Him in our limited knowledge and for some strange reason He doesn’t fit. It’s like thousands of years ago if you asked someone what the sun was, they said it was a god that birthed us because we can’t have life without it. Years later we figured out it was like a star, but not quite a star and it rotated around earth.

-and now to think these things, we think it’s ludicrous. It’s stupid because our knowledge of the universe has grown. Well, our knowledge of God has grown, but not big enough to where we can figure Him out or explain how God works. And honestly, I don’t think we ever will, God’s pretty smart, understanding Him would take some brain power.

**Ro. 11:33 -> 33How great are God’s riches! How deep are His wisdom and knowledge! Who can explain His decisions? Who can understand His ways? (GNT)

-you are never going to completely understand God.

-but this doesn’t mean you give up on trying to understand, to learning about Him.

-we don’t understand the universe, we probably never will. We don’t know how gravity works, we don’t know what light is, we’re further than we were when people thought the sun was a fire god in the sky, but some days, I don’t think by much.

-and as a side note, this is why we can’t ever seem to understand how God fits in with science; because we know this tiny bit about God and we know this tiny bit about our universe, put them together and they don’t fit for some strange reason. I totally believe that if we understood God 100% and His creation 100% there would be no problem, they would fit together perfectly, but we don’t, and sometimes we need to remember that.