Thinking Like Jesus

So there’s that lovely passage in 1 Corinthians 2:11-16 that talks about the Spirit of God knows the mind of God and lays out that there is a connection between accepting God and understanding His mind - and which ends with the stunning verse “but we have the mind of Christ.” Wow. What a statement!

Philippians 2: 5-8 that talks about having the mindset of Christ and goes into detail about what His mindset actually was - and again - what we read is some very heady language and the character of Christ as it’s laid out in this passage is just as mind-blowing as it is in the previous passage.

Brilliant theologians have written whole books on just these verses - and I am not going to attempt to add to that.

What I do want to do is ask you if you have the voice of God in your head? Seems that the first step we can usefully take towards understanding God’s ways and His will for us is to listen to Him. I don’t know about you - but for me that meant surrendering the voice that used to be in my head, you know, the voice with which I speak to myself and maybe you have a voice with which you speak to yourself in your head. I’m told not everyone thinks this way, but many do. I’m just talking about your internal monologue.

And regarding that I’m asking, does it sound like God? Does it sound like the sorts of things God would say? God calls Himself our loving father, and Jesus is our Good Shepherd (Matthew 5-7, Luke 15, John 14) - among many other references in Scripture to God’s love for us, John 3:16 being perhaps the most famous.

Comparison is called the “Thief of Joy” - and I agree with that assessment.

Training myself to think the way God thinks has been a huge Bringer of Joy in my life. It’s also been an excellent way to catch temptations when they’re just a little tiny thought, when they’re easily replaced with truth. Tiny changes in any moment may not seem significant, but they are the building blocks of a transformed life. Much of how we suffer in this life, particularly in the West where we live relatively secure lives free from war and famine, results from being tricked into seeing things differently from how God sees them. We might feel frustrated with how God made us or the life He gave us, but all this has been done in such a way as to perfectly compliment His calling for us and opening our eyes to this can help us see His generous preparation and provision for us in a whole new way. This is another way to describe the way God transforms us. He leads us away from thinking about ourselves, our lives, this world in worldly ways and towards thinking about these things His way.

Got questions? Let’s grab a cuppa and chat!

2020 - Year of Experiencing God's Love

Over thirty years ago I started meeting with college students for Bible study, discipleship, encouragement and accountability. In all those years I’ve never met a Christian who said, “Gosh. I guess I just have too much of God’s love.” Usually, the reality was closer to the opposite, people in trying circumstances and eager to sense more of God’s love and comfort. These weren’t people who lacked faith, rather, these were people with strong faiths who invest in building their faith. I’ve felt this myself, and however much of God’s love I might have ever felt, I’ve never felt so much that I didn’t wish for more.

Christians love challenges to grow in all kinds of ways, Scripture study, service, prayer, accountability and more - all good things of course but I’ve never heard of anyone offering a challenge to help Christ-followers grow in how much of God’s love I walk in on a daily basis. Maybe that was for some good reason but I haven’t heard one yet.

You could say that every spiritual act we engage in connects us with God’s Love but I believe that there’s more available from God for us. Much more. You could essentially say the same about worship and yet every church service includes specifically a worship portion, a sermon from Scripture, giving, and so on. So it strikes me as strange that Christian culture isn’t permeated with a number of practices focused on God’s love. That was after all God’s “raison d’etre” - or at least I believe John 3:16’s declaration that “for God so loved the world is His reason for sending His Son and I believe this plan was begun at the very beginning of everything.

One of the most important passages of the Old Testament is Deuteronomy 6:-9: which includes the words “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” NASB. This isn’t just how God wants us to think of Him this mirrors how His own motivation. It’s how we calibrate ourselves along with His purposes if you will. Jesus’ own reference of this passage not only appears in three of the four Gospels (Matthew 22:34-40, Mark 12:28-34, and Luke 10:25-38). The two greatest commandments are to Love God and Love others. We spend a lot of time talking about so many other commandments, but these often get glossed over or spoken of as if they’re “impractical”.

Jesus raises the bar quite a bit in His teaching as He goes on to say “Love your enemies” in Matthew 5:44, and by the end of that first chapter of the Sermon on the Mount implies that loving all even enemies is essential to the Life God sent Jesus to teach us how to have. Oh, my word! Enemies too? What if there’s a connection between this Love and the Abundant Life He promises us (John 10:10). That abundant life Jesus talks about is another thing I would like more of, how about you?

Some might consider so much love to be indulgent and a way to get out of obedience, but this is not a Biblical reading of Love as Jesus taught it to His followers and as they further wrote of it in their Epistles instructs us that obedience is as essential to love as love is an essential act of obedience. In fact, I believe that they balance one another. Love without obedience loses purpose and focus pretty quickly. And I believe we’re all familiar with what the kind of legalism that results from obedience without Love. I think the best way to see these is as the left leg and right leg, or even left-brain and right brain.

In our wider culture, in our individual lives, I’m afraid I’ve lost count of the times I’ve heard students and alumni struggle with facing legalism and judgment but it’s not been difficult to count the number of times students and alumni have experienced remarkable love.

And yet I am convinced that God has an enormous abundance of His Love ready and available to give us - directly in our times of prayer, study and meditation with Him, as well as in our interactions with one another.

Seems to me like one leg is significantly stronger than the other.

What could happen if we had two equally strong legs? What would it be like to have not just an abiding sense of the value of obeying God’s commands, but also a profound and life-giving sense of His eternal love for us? Can we do this? What if being strong in Love made obedience easier?