"The unfolding of your words gives light ..." (Psalm 119:130a)

Category: Mind (Page 1 of 2)

The Journey of the Mind

The Journey of the Mind — 1 Peter 4:1-6

Our feet step where our minds have already traveled.

I. I must think correctly about pleasure and pain. (1-2)

II. I must think correctly about passion and purpose. (3-4)

III. I must think correctly about autonomy and accountability. (5-6)

Gird up your loins!

Maybe you’ve heard the expression and wondered about it. The Bible repeatedly refers to girding up one’s loins. After the mental snickering is over, what are we to make of this?

Peter used the expression: “Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 1:13, KJV)

The same idea is found elsewhere in the Bible. It is found on the lips of a prophet (2 Kings 4:29; 9:1) and from God’s own mouth as well (Job 38:3; 40:7; Jer. 1:17).

Just what is meant by “gird up the loins”? And how, then, does one do so with one’s “mind”?

The first question first. In a helpful post (which you can find here) the Art of Manliness website offers us this visual instruction manual …

Here’s another helpful, but less visual, explanation.

Now consider the second question–how are we to do with with our “minds”?

The King James Version is quite literal in its rendering of the original Greek. More recent English Translations have sought to communicate the essence without a literal translation:

  • “gird your minds for action” (NASB)
  • “prepare your minds for action” (NASB Updated)
  • “get your minds ready for action” (NET)
  • “think clearly and exercise self-control” (NLT)
  • “gird up your minds” (RSV)
  • “prepare your minds for action” (NRSV)
  • “preparing your minds for action” (ESV)

Effective, perhaps, but, it seems to lose something of the vividness of the literal rendering!

The call to “gird up the loins” is a call to dress oneself for action—be it heavy labor or the life-and-death struggle of battle. To do so with one’s “mind” is the reminder that as followers of Jesus Christ we are in a battle and that this battle finds its greatest struggles first and foremost in our thinking. God’s call to all His own is to “be renewed in the spirit of your minds” (Eph. 4:23). This is vital because “to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace” (Rom. 8:6). We must “not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom. 12:2).

So let’s get busy with the heavy labor of daily, continually submitting our thoughts to the renewing of our minds by the written Word of God in reliance upon the Holy Spirit. And thus in the moment of battle—which arrives repeatedly every day, many times over—may we be ready for whatever the will of God requires of us.

Calibrating Your Life to God

New Testament scholar J.B. Phillips once wrote a book entitled Your God Is Too Small.  The indication is that there is a direct link between our view of God and the way we think about and conduct ourselves in life. A.W. Tozer said, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” He went on to say that the most foreboding and prophetic “fact about any man is not what he at any given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.

tree sky night star milky way atmosphere galaxy night sky astronomy midnight astronomical object

How big is your God? The writer of Psalm 113 revealed something of his perception of God when he queried, “Who is like the Lord our God, Who is enthroned on high, Who humbles Himself to behold the things that are in heaven and in the earth?” (vv.5-6).

We are told that light travels at 186,000 miles per second. Were we to discover and board a vehicle that could travel at that rate of speed, after lifting off the face of the earth we would pass our moon in approximately one minute. Were we able to continue at such a rate of speed we would blow by our sun in approximately 8.3 minutes. If we wanted to continue on our joy ride it would take us approximately another 80,000 years to reach the far side of our galaxy!

With those phenomenal dimensions fixed in our minds, do with me as someone once invited me … in your mind travel to a far off place. Imagine yourself walking barefoot along miles of sandy beach. After a long walk you take your seat in the warm sand and with your hand reach down and draw up a handful of the grainy substance. You allow the sand to trickle out from between your fingers. They you blow, ever so gently, upon the surface of your palm until one tiny grain of sand is left in your palm. That solitary grain of sand would represent our earth and the grains of sand stretching out for miles on either side of you would represent the number of other planetary bodies in our Milky Way!

Now put your hands together and dust away that grain of sand. Start over. With a new handful of sand, again allow it to run through your fingers. Blow once again until you have one lone grain of sand left in your palm. Now consider that grain to be our Milky Way and all the grains of sand stretching out in the distance in either direction around you to be the approximately one trillion other such galaxies now estimated to exist by our scientists. It is believed that every one of those one trillion galaxies probably averages some one billion stars within it.

How far could you go into God’s creation if you traveled the rest of your days at the speed of light upon your marvelous vehicle? God tells us, through His psalmist, that He is so vast, infinite and beyond our measure that He must stoop to even behold the galaxies He has made. “Who is like the Lord our God, Who is enthroned on high, Who humbles Himself to behold the things that are in heaven and in the earth?”

The prophet Daniel lived in difficult days. He prophesied about even more difficult days yet to come. But in the midst of his troubles and with the revelation from God that even more difficult days were on the way he said that “Those who know their God will display strength and take action” (Daniel 11:32). Far from being overwhelmed by life’s circumstances, those who know their God will display strength and take action! What we think of when we think of God is the most important thing about us.

I hope that this summer you get the chance to be outdoors in God’s vast creation, to look up into a cloudless night sky, to gaze over some scene of natural beauty, to be still, observe, and be amazed. Not primarily at the creation—marvelous as it is—but at the One who created it all, providentially rules over and directs it, and who gave it as a hint at the vast greatness of His infinite being.

Take the moment to sing out from your heart: “O Lord, my God! When I in awesome wonder consider all the worlds Thy hands have made, I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder, Thy power throughout the universe displayed. Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee.  How great Thou art, How great Thou art!”

Entertaining Thoughts

“And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” (Mark 12:30, emphasis added)

“The finest art has always offered transcendence – inviting us to stand outside ourselves and gain perspective. Artistic images, music, and stories engage our rational faculties, which mediate and critique our emotional and visceral responses. Entertainment makes an end run around the intellect, stimulating the nervous system in much the same way as drugs do.” (Lael Arrignton, A Faith and Culture Devotional, 54).

The Way We Think

In the design and plan of God the mind is at the center of all human experience (cf. Prov. 4:23;  Matt. 12:34-35; Mark 7:20-23), and of our relationship to our Creator. Paul’s letter to the Philippians is one line of evidence that powerfully makes this point. Repeatedly and in a variety of ways God, though Paul, emphasizes the significance and power of not just what we think about, but how we think. With the rest of Scripture it calls us not just to Christian thoughts, but to a Christian mind.

mind.Christ

The entire letter might we outlined (even if a bit overly simplistically) around this theme:

  • A United Mind. (1)
    • United in prayer. (1:1-11)
    • United in gospel witness. (1:12-17)
    • United in suffering and serving. (1:18-30)
  • An Unselfish Mind. (2)
    • The example of Christ. (2:1-11)
    • The example of Christ’s servants. (2:12-30)
  • An Undistracted Mind. (3)
    • Undistracted by the past. (3:1-7)
    • Undistracted from Christ. (3:8-16)
    • Undistracted from hope. (3:17-21)
  • An Undivided Mind. (4)
    • Undivided in fellowship. (4:2-3)
    • Undivided in worry. (4:4-9)
    • Undivided in contentment. (4:10-23)

The high point of all this focus upon the centrality of the mind is in Philippians 2:5: “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus” (NKJV).

But Paul is pervasive throughout the letter in making this point. It comes to a beautiful crescendo later in the letter, in what is an encyclopedic call to the way we are to think, as enabled by God through His Spirit: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (4:8, ESV).

As I thought about this beautiful, poetic expression of what the mind of Christ looks like in His people, I thought of how remarkably different is the standard way of thinking in our world. So I wondered, how would the world (and its proponents) write their call to a way of thinking that represents the loves and commitments of the world-system. I think it might go something like this: “Finally, sad comrades, whatever is grimly possible (however unlikely it might be), whatever is degraded, dark and depressing, whatever is askew and cockeyed, whatever is vile, whatever is gruesome, whatever is deplorable, if there is anything wrong, if there is anything that can be complained about, think about these things.”

Hold those two ways of thinking over against one another. If the disposition of the heart is largely established by the direction and devotion of the mind, then is it any wonder the world and its people are as sad and depressed as they so often seem to be. But we must also ask: Does this in some way explain why so many of us who bear the name of Christ find ourselves in such the sad, depressed and anxious state in which we too seem to pass through this world?

May God grant us “the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16) and thus enable us to experience relationship to Him and to His world in a way that is full of the joy of the Lord.

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