Navigating the Mind Field

Then he touched their eyes, saying, According to your faith be it done to you. -- Matthew 9:29

I think Jesus knew what He was talking about.  I am not going to go all New-agey deepaking on you, but I do believe my life has unfurled according to the things I believe, whether I was always fully aware of those beliefs or not.  I am in the Way, and the Way is in me, and He is working all this out. 

We can have toxic beliefs hiding back there out of sight -- booby-trap beliefs.  They are lying there quietly and unnoticed until we do, think, feel, or experience something that trips the trigger and BOOM!  We have no idea where that came from.  Wouldn’t it be good if we could sweep our subconscious minds to find those tripwires and mines?  How do you suppose we would go about that? 

There is a positive way in that as we embrace more and more of the truth of the Bible and traditional Christian teaching.  We study the Word and that exposes and disarms some of those booby-trap beliefs.  We replace bad ideas and bad theology with good theology and a right understanding of who God is and of His infinite love for us. 

Another way is through prayer.  We have talked about this from time to time.  Suppose you knew someone who came to you for advice.  He or she started talking about the problem and all the issues around it, all the bad outcomes, and everything that is wrong.  Then when the person finished he simply got up and left.  You might not have the answer or you might.  The person is never going to know because you never got to a chance to say anything.   Too often for too many of us, that’s the prayer model we follow.  That is one belief we need to get right.  A lot of us do not expect God to speak to us so we never bother to listen. 

What if we went to God and said, “Open the eyes of my heart, Lord.  Open my ears to hear Your Voice.”? If we wait before the Lord, listening and meditating upon His Word, it could be that He would, in some way, expose some of the erroneous beliefs and axioms the world has built into our thinking.  I am pretty confident that He will, that He, in fact, longs to deliver us from the potential destruction of lies and disbelief. 

The world is going to believe in its idols.  Right now, Caesar seems to be the obsession of those who are conformed to the fashions of the flesh and the fleshly mind.  Government will create heaven on earth.  This is especially true during this political season.  Some leader has the answer to all our problems if we can just vote the right person into office.  Except it never happens.  The mark of our insanity is plain:  we keep trying again and again, every two or four years. 

Believing the truth about ourselves and reality delivers us from the alluring delusion of a utopian society.  Strangely enough, though, if we were to, as individuals, live righteously and responsibly by biblical truth and biblical principles in our everyday lives, we would find ourselves a lot closer to heaven while on this earthly journey.