Head and Heart: Yearning For The Mind of Christ

How does one write down all the details of a very active walk with God when life feels like a rubber band being stretched and released and stretched some more? During the pull and release process the strands snap back with a stinging wound, to the point you just say keep pulling, it's easier during the stretch phase than feeling the pain of the re-coil.

Walking with God for most of my life has taught me He does want to fine tune His creation. The refining tool he uses; trials, tests, suffering, all have purpose in bringing His work into finer focus. Artists, potters, metal smiths know this process well and they know getting there isn't pretty.

Even when you are pliable in God's hands, there is pain involved in the shaping of your material structure. Pressing and pushing on your form with just enough pressure seems unbearable, the smelting fire drains you but you let Him do it regardless because He knows the outcome.

It is always an issue of full, unguarded, helpless trust to allow the handiwork of God in your life. When He redeemed you and called you His child you were no longer your own (Galatians 2:20). You are now His to do with as He pleases. We tend to forget that from time to time when the refining process gets tough.

Rubber Band 

Head and Heart: A Struggle

There are times when we've studied the scripture, read it, committed it to heart as an act of worship, as a discipline, as a rote item to check off a list or for the sheer beauty of it. Countless reasons can enter my mind as to why the Bible is important in our walk with God. Every effort we make is a good effort.

We must remember though that the Holy Spirit brings a dynamic to our time with scriptures that only He can do. Before I get ahead of myself, I must talk about head knowledge and heart knowledge.

I was reading Thomas Jefferson's letter to Maria Cosway, his romantic interest while traveling abroad the other day, titled Head and Heart, when I realized how Christians tend to fall into the battle over which one is right as they follow Christ. We can read the scripture and come away with an academic, historical, literary understanding of the text. This is the Head knowledge we all are capable of obtaining. We also can read the scripture and come away with a poetic, emotional, circumstantial understanding of the text. This is the Heart knowledge we are all capable of obtaining.  Sometimes we go into reading the scripture with preconceived Head and Heart knowledge obscuring the study with our very human views and experiences.  This Head and Heart knowledge sure can leave us in a pickle. Thomas Jefferson certainly felt like a mini war was going on inside Him.

This is the beauty of the Holy Spirit's work. He is the only one that is able to take that Head and Heart knowledge and balance it so it makes sense and when that happens you are ALIVE. He is our teacher, our guide (Hebrews 4:12). He is able to make us understand the depths of God. He is what makes us spiritually ALIVE. He connects the Head and the Heart in harmony, making the make-up of the redeemed soul strong. He is our balancer.

How does he do this amazing connections that brings wholeness? It does take a Head and Heart that is willing to submit fully to His still small voice. Once we learn to listen to Him and trust that He is about changing us for the better, rectifying the truth within the Head and Heart will take an act of obedience, either through performing a task, a submission of will or even a sacrifice of some sort. All this 'giving up' of self is ALWAYS replaced with Christ likeness. A much better deal than the mini-battles inside of us or the way of death which is spiritual blindness.

Head and Heart: Belief Starts in the Mind and Leads to Faith (complete trust in God)

The imbalance of the Head leads to arrogance, pride and worshipping your intelligence. The imbalance of the Heart leads to emotional instability, anxiety, depression.  Without taking every thought captive to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5), we can find ourselves in wrong thought processes for both realms of the mind.

Let us not be like 2 Timothy 3:7, always learning but never coming to a knowledge of the truth.
Let us not be like James 1:6 doubters who are tossed about like the waves of the sea.

Let us fully prostrate our whole person and allow 2 Timothy 1:7 to reign in our lives. "For the Spirit of God does not make us timid but gives us power, love and self discipline."

The Holy Spirit's amazing work balances the Head and the Heart through cleansing and testing to equip us for an abundant life.

Head and Heart: Healthy Symbiosis

When we allow the Holy Spirit to change us, teach us, through the submission of our entire being to Him, we are changed into beautiful vessels who shine the light of God's truth into a dark world.  We become healthy in mind, (Head and Heart). God uses the emotions and intellect He gave you to experience Him to the fullest with benefits beyond our comprehension!

Verses to THINK upon

Ephesians 2:10

Matthew 5:8

Acts 15:9

Psalms 51:10

Let's Be Clear About Fresh Water

Have you ever had a moment when reading articles on a subject, something just doesn't sit right with you, so you read them again and stop to think about why they rubbed you the wrong way. Most of the time you can let it go and move on but this particular statement keeps nudging me in the side. It will even creep into my thoughts in order to spur me on in researching why I don't like it. So here goes my little rant on why the statement, 'fresh water is finite' irritated me enough to write about it.

First, I must clarify a few things to help give context to my reasoning on this issue. Let's start with the definition of finite.

Finite: Having limits or bounds. Synonyms: limited, determinate, fixed, restricted. "There is a finite amount of water in the system."

On the surface, the statement, 'fresh water is finite' is true. So why did these articles irritate me when they were discussing this fact.  After researching the water cycle and other science related facts about water, it hit me, it wasn't the actual statement that irritated me it was the context the statement was being used in.

Many articles subtly discussed the issue as if the last drop of fresh water was literally at the end of the barrel and mankind was on the brink of extinction. Some even vaguely mentioned population control as being a solution to our water problem. Others were a little less dramatic but used an emotional based slant for their argument to save the world. I smelled an agenda at hand by using a surface truth to manipulate an outcome.  See this article for reference. Note: I do not reject the problem solving needed in order for civilization to be responsible users of natural resources, I can just do without the fear mongering and half-truths which make you feel bad about using what God created for our benefit. I like to remind readers that God made it very clear He RENEWS (this word connotes an ongoing process) the earth, something we should rejoice in and give due respect to.

Setting agendas and politics aside, let me explain why I call it a surface truth. I call it a surface truth because there is more to the story that goes beyond finite boundaries and shows a miraculous truth so encompassing we should sit in awe of it. It's simple in it's beauty, complex in its' vast details, it is observable and plain to see, so reliable yet we can easily loose our focus on the entire truth and just focus on the surface truth which tends to lead to stagnation.

Fresh water is limited but God made a water cycle so intricate it is renewed daily, monthly, yearly. In fact, it has kept decades and centuries of populations going despite its' mis-use and abuse. I always take a stance towards being responsible and smart with what God has given us, we should always be mindful of the errors finite humans tend to succumb to concerning the natural resources God provides without fail.

Notice how I said finite humans. Water may have finite attributes but God designed and provided the water system to produce exactly what is needed in the past, present and future. An infinite God made this 'finite' system work the way He did with precision and as God tends to do, with an element of need, so the finite humans will learn to trust and follow His ways. It really is a beautiful picture of His amazing love and mercy for humankind.

I have to go off on a tangent here. When I observe the many ways in which God's system delivers fresh water to the earth I am awed by the beauty He made sure to work into His plan. Look at the many ways he shows His glory; vapor, mist, rain, sleet, snow and ice through the processes of evaporation, condensation, precipitation and transpiration where the water goes through a filtration process and comes out clean every time.  I also think of Romans 1:19-20, which states God's truth is plain for all to see through what He made, yet this is suppressed and ignored (my translation). In our day and age of Science and Nature worship, the water cycle has been one of those truths that has begun to be mishandled for ulterior purposes.

Since propaganda has its' grip on the definition of water I'd like to extend what I think of as a less muddled, closer to the whole truth definition of water.  I hope this makes things clear.

Fresh water in its pre-determined quota is infinitely renewable (despite the plethora of variances it experiences through its cycle). Fresh water is a miracle.

The definition of the word miracle according to the WWW is, "an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs." Maybe it's a stretch to some people to call fresh water a miracle but I'll let you be the judge of that. Read this well written description of the water cycle by Jeannette Walls from her book Half Broke Horses, a memoir of her families life as Ranchers (Ranchers tend to know how nature works) and you make the call.

"Sometimes over supper, when Jim got home after a storm, the kids would describe their escapades in the water and mud, and Jim would recount his vast store of water lore and water history. Once the world was nothing but water, he explained, and you wouldn't think it to look at us, but human beings were mostly water. The miraculous thing about water, he said, was that it never came to an end. All the water on the earth had been here since the beginning of time, it had just moved around rivers and lakes and oceans to clouds and rain and puddles and then sunk through the soil to underground streams, to springs, and wells, where it got drunk by people and animals and went back to rivers and lakes and oceans.

The water you kids were playing in, he said, had probably been to Africa and the North Pole. Genghis khan or Saint Peter or even Jesus himself might have drunk it. Cleopatra might have bathed in it. Crazy Horse might have watered his pony with it. Sometimes water was liquid. Sometimes it was rock hard-ice. Sometimes it was soft-snow. Sometimes it was visible but weightless- clouds. And sometimes it was completely invisible-vapor- floating up into the sky like the souls of dead people. There was nothing like water in the world, Jim said. It made the desert bloom but also turned rich bottom land into swamp. Without it we'd die, but it could also kill us, and that was why we loved it, even craved it, but also feared it. Never take water for granted, Jim said. Always cherish it. Always beware of it."

Further Reading on Water

Green Builders Journal, Water-An Infinite Or Finite Resource? by Herb Gardner

Science in the Bible: The Water Cycle by Cheri Fields

Psalms 135:7

Ecclesiastes 1:7

Ecclesiastes 11:3a

Amos 9:6b

Jeremiah 10:13

Isaiah 55:8-11

Job 36:27-28

Job 37: 16

Job 38:16

Genesis 1:1

Remember how I mentioned humans were finite? Take this into consideration, our infinite God who designed the water cycle for beneficial purposes also designed humans for a purpose. Can you guess what that purpose is? If you read my blog, the word relationship may be a clue, a relationship with eternal benefits.

THIS IS AWESOME. GOD'S PEOPLE (ISRAEL) USING HIS RESOURCE WISELY!
Must Read: Let There Be Water

Reflections Between Heaven and Earth

'Reflections Between Heaven and Earth'
 Photo by: Chandra Brown

Description:

'Reflections between Heaven and Earth' displays realism and impressionistic subtly through mixed images. Blending of natural elements are balanced with varied color and textured layers.

Deuteronomy 10:14 - "Heaven and the heaven of heavens belong to the Lord your God, the earth with all that is in it."

Backwards Comet

My daughter and I have been reading Inspired Evidence, Only One Reality by Julie Von Vett and Bruce Malone for our morning jump start for school. It is written in the form of a daily devotional and it's main focus is Science.

September 10th's entry really got our 'geek' going. The subject matter is Cosmology and the topic was evidence for the formation of the Universe by our Creator God.

The widely accepted theory for the beginning of the Universe is the Big Bang Theory; The Nebula Hypothesis is the widely accepted theory for the formation of the Solar System and Planetary Bodies, both are heavily set in the evolutionary belief system.

The Nebula Theory in a nutshell
"In this model, a giant cloud in space made up of mainly spinning, ionized gas with a magnetic field is believed to have pulled together by gravity into the sun, planets and other objects in our solar system." 

In order for this model to work, the results should show the planetary objects orbiting in the same direction. 

The discovery of a comet defying the Nebular Hypothesis gave astrophysicists a puzzling dilemma. This iconoclast is called 'Dracula' (2008 KV42) and it was orbiting backwards around the sun, something that should not be possible according to the widely held theory. At first the scientists thought they were mistaken but another backwards orbiting comet was showing supportive evidence that what they were seeing was not a single anomaly, it's name is 2002- XU93. 

Photo By: Elsie esq.
Halley at Perihelion

This information (although old in the science world, but new to me) makes this science nerd really excited.  First, there are holes in the Nebula Theory that when scrutinized only helps point towards a creation model; one of which is, The Law of Conservation of Angular Momentum. The law can be described by the movement of spinning.  When a dancer or ice skater begins to spin with open arms (the birth of a spin) it is a slow movement, as they keep turning (youth) they bring their arms closer into their body causing the spin to speed up and the radius of the circle to become smaller. If the formation of the Solar System began with a large cloud of dust spinning and using gravity to create planetary bodies the result should be fast spinning bodies. For general information, scientists believe the Sun to be a slow rotating body and the planets faster rotating bodies in a Universe thought to be very old; in order for that statement to be fact according to the Nebula Theory, the Sun should be on a faster rotation schedule.  (For further detailed explanation on this matter click here)

All this information just makes my head swim, thoughts are pinging off my brain at an amazing speed, there is so much to write about concerning the realm of Science, but I'll refrain and save that for another post. 

If you clicked on all the links and read the material, I hope you can see the evidence points strongly towards the honesty found in Hebrews 11:3- " BY FAITH, we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible." 

I am rejoicing in Psalms 33:9 - "for He SPOKE, and it came to be; He commanded and it stood firm."