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

Anger On Tap

I was rummaging through boxed up memories I have deep in the attic when I came across some old journals, I was skimming through them laughing at some of the youthful, sometimes silly, sometimes profound things I thought about as a young girl. Underneath the juvenile volumes I saw my black tap shoes and brought them out of the box to show my daughter a relic from my past. Dancing was my youthful passion and it flooded me with sentimental, good feelings. It also brought up a saying I like to fling out there in jest when someone in the family has a bad encounter during the day. They'll tell of their humiliating ordeal and I'll quip in a mobster tone, "You want I go do a tap dance on their head." At least it makes them smile for a moment.

Photo by: Chandra Brown

My little saying got me thinking about the advice that abounds for releasing anger and stress in this crazy, rat-race, non-stop world. Doctors say exercise, religion says meditate, mothers say take deep breaths, psychiatrists say talk about it, educators say listen to calming music.  This advice has one common thread, divert the negative energy elsewhere.

I asked my daughter how she deals with anger and stress, she says, "Kick something or ripping up paper helps her. "

This woman says, use humor to divert that negative energy. Do the opposite of what you're feeling and turn that emotion upside down; Laugh instead.

What are some funny quips your family uses to get through the 'angries'?

Nancy Sinatra had her boots, Chandra has her tap shoes.

 

For more 'Anger Management' check out this funny song…click here.