Think....

On Tuesday and Wednesday nights, through our Outdoor Ministry we have been offering the class entitled, "The ME I Want to Be." This is a book series by John Ortberg (see July blog for notes I posted). This past week we were focusing on Renewing the Mind.

As I was reading through the material and thinking, Matthew 22:37 came to my mind, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind..." I couldn't help but wrestle through this passage. For the most part, we do a good job of understanding the heart issue and the soul issue. But the mind? The word "all" speaks of us fully engaging all three. We are to be fully engaged with the heart, soul, and mind. The heart represents the volitional and emotional side of our faith experience and the soul represents our human life as a whole. The mind is our thinking capacity. It's the place we wrestle, question, ponder, explore, and stretch as we seek to follow the life of Christ.

In his recent book, Think, John Piper says, "Loving God with all our mind means wholly engaging our thinking to do all it can to awaken and express the heartfelt fullness of treasuring God above all things." This is a great expression of thinking. While we enjoy hearing and reading the words of people we agree with, we have to learn to read and hear the thoughts of others so that we can discern and understand what the will of God is. It's the thoughts of scripture and others that challenge us and allows us to fully engage in a process that awakens our thoughts. Thinking also allows us to remain connected to God and have a greater love for God. In order for us to love God, we have to know God. Therefore, thinking and loving are a connected spiritual practices.

God has given us the mind to think. And he ask us to fully engage the mind through thinking. By thinking, we can "know the truth and beauty and worth of God through Jesus and treasure him above all things and spend our lives expressing this in as many ways as our minds can pursue." Engage the mind God has given you. Stretch your thought process through the scriptures, writings of others, and learn to love Him fully.