Change Your Mind

“Change Your Mind”
by Kathy

Babies and brains are delicate, easy to harm. Some of us had loving parents who were o so careful. Some of us did not. Many bear invisible wounds from childhood.

Life is hard. One child, lame, struggles and falls, alone. Another, sturdier, is supported by loving hands all around.

It’s not fair. Not as the world sees things.

Yet faith leads us to believe God is building our souls. By adversity or by blessings.

It is hard to understand with our natural mind. Only the “mind of Christ” can accept it. And scripture tells us we have the mind of Christ. (I Corinthians 2:16)

Then why do we have so many problems with our “minds”? Depression, anxiety, addiction, ADD, OCD, o my. Labels abound, fixes elude. Only God has medicine powerful enough.

It helped me to understand that the BRAIN is part of the BODY, but the “mind” is part of our SOUL. Big difference. Can’t always change the brain, any more than you can change blue eyes or crooked bones. But you can have the “mind of Christ” by choosing to agree with the Word, thinking like God thinks.

I sometimes joke that I have the “mind of Christ” and the brain of Frankenstein. Can’t always overcome the neurochemical glitches. But learning, implanting, speaking, and thinking God’s truth enables me to serve Him with joy anyway, live above the circumstances that almost crippled me. And, sometimes, amazingly, even gets down to the physical brain and heals it. Silent little miracles of faith.
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind… Romans 12:2
Since scripture tells us to renew our minds, it is plain that God Himself thinks it is possible. Just like invisible GERMS can cause colds and flu, our invisible thoughts can cause all sorts of havoc in our souls. These “cooties” of wrong thinking, thoughts that are contrary to God’s truth, make us prey to all sorts of chemical havoc in the brain as well. But God has provided healing in His Word.
He sent His word and healed them… Psalm 107:20

Long after our broken brains are dust, our souls will retain the fruit of our efforts to plant and use these bits of scripture. God’s truth becomes part of our eternal vocabulary of worship and praise. We will be glad forever.

And we can start now.

Body, Soul and Spirit

There are only two verses in the New Testament that mention all three aspects of humankind:

23 Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Thess 5:23 (ESV)

12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Heb 4:12 (ESV)

As you can see, the word “body” does not appear in Heb. 4:12, but the phrase “joints and marrow” allude to the human body, I think.

There are at least two schools of thought about the human make-up, that we are three-part (tri-chotomous), or we are two-part (di-chotomous). (It sounds like an African animal, or perhaps a sinus condition.)

Dr. Charles Solomon’s “Wheel” Diagram #1

The Greek word for “spirit” is pneuma, and for “soul” the word is psuche, and for “body” the word is soma. None of this is conclusive proof that man is “di” or “tri,” but I am pretty much settled with the tri-chotomous, or tri-unity, the term that Dr. Solomon preferred when he first published the Wheel diagrams.

Well, so what?

Understanding Truth, and thinking Truth is what sets us free from a former way of thinking.

Next posting I’ll try to get into the functions of the pneuma aspect of our makeup.