Tag Archives: the mind

The Effective Life

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Pack up your television, cell phone, radio, the social circus, and all the gossip you can carry. Make the trip to prayer with all these things. I guarantee you your prayer time will be useless.  

All those things require the senses and the mind of the flesh. But prayer requires your soul alone.  


You can’t navigate a ship if you stay under deck. You’ll certainly drift if you stay in the ship’s lounge watching TV. You have to go topside to use all the navigational equipment. You have to be topside to enjoy the journey. If you wanted to watch TV you could’ve stayed home.  


The same is true with the ship of your body. You have to set your mind on the Spirit of God. The flesh cannot perceive the Spirit of God, but the soul can. You have to use your mind to make a choice.    


You can’t just ask God to come in and teach you. You have to go to the front door, open it, see the Spirit of God face-to-face, and allow him a place to sit in your mind. Then you can hear him. Then you can work with him. Then you can learn from him. It’s only then that the things of Christ get accomplished.  


Now the question comes: what preoccupies your day, the flesh or the soul. If your answer is the flesh then how can you hear the voice of God? And what preoccupies your time of prayer? That’s a much deeper question.  


Drop all your “stuff” and answer the door.  

The Mind is Slave to the Soul

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The mind is a very fertile and powerful organ among the members of our body.  Regardless our state of affairs, it is able to rise to the occasion.  Though it is not the source of decision.

If a man is depressed, the mind can drive him to death.  If a man is joyful, no Depression can touch him.  If a man strives to accomplish a task, within the reach of his body, his mind will quicken.  If he determines to say, “No I will not”, his mind will shutdown possibilities.  The man is soul.  The body is the place where the soul lives.  The mind is therefore, the slave of the soul.

Within the boundaries of man (within the nature of constraints God has placed on this world), the mind is able to accomplish the things the soul desires.  This can be bad or good.  For if a man’s soul is darkened, so his mind will be darkened.  But if a man’s soul reaches for God, his mind also will reach for God.

God will respond to the soul who desires him.  Though the mind is full of wickedness, God can cause righteousness to grow.  But let the man, in his soul, first search diligently for what is God.  Let him also continue in this searching as he sees the fruit of God appear.

If I go to an apple tree, in its season of fruit, I do not expect to find skunks growing on it.  If I have planted the apple tree I will be quite miffed at its produce.  I will cut it down and burn it to ashes.  It will not matter if the tree has produced apples for years.  I have no use for skunks.  There is no place for them among my things.  And though they do exist, independent of my orchard, I will not grow them willingly.

Can we expect less of God who plants righteousness?  If a soul has once desired the holiness of God, receives what God graciously gives, then turns to embrace wickedness, can we expect God to embrace that soul?

The righteousness of God will cease in our things.  Though they will continue for a little while, as we have developed a habit, they will dissipate overtime.  In the place of the righteousness of God, we will find the fruit of wickedness.  How can we expect that to be received by God?

Let us be wise and press the mind to accomplish.  What our soul desires, the mind is forced to endure.  Therefore if we desire God, let us continue to desire more of God.  If he has blessed us with a crop of righteousness for a small desire how much more for complete desire?

Man is not body.  Man is soul clothed in a body.  The deception is complete enough to keep the fool a fool. 

No man has seen his soul.  But any man can readily see his body.  Most people believe the body is who they are.  They have not noticed the subtle difference between the decaying nature of the mind and the eternal nature of the soul.  They are caught in a deception, and there they will remain eternally.

The body cannot do the will of God if the man’s soul is in rebellion.  But let the man look up and desire his maker, and he will see marked difference in his life.  The problem is, most people do not understand this.  So when they once receive the grace of God, they fall back to the desires of the body.

If a man’s body is healed by God, men consider it a miracle.  But the real miracle happens when a man’s soul agrees with God, and of the body is forced to obey.  The mind will do as the soul commands.  Will the soul do as God commands?