On Mind and Heart

The transformative impact of the Gospel is holistic. That is, the Good News of God's loving rescue operation in Christ's finished Cross Work applied to the believer, brings radical change to the whole person. All our faculties of mind, heart, soul and strength of will are, because of the empowerment of grace, brought into a dynamic process understood as sanctification. The fact of our being declared righteous (justification),  having received by faith the accrediting to our account Christ's righteousness, is foundational to our live-a-day progression toward becoming more like Jesus (sanctification, cf.  2 Cor. 3:18) In grammatical terms the INDICATIVE mood is framework for the IMPERFECT and IMPERATIVE moods. The Gospel thus brings us to the place where we live in real Reality. That which is objectively true is the atmosphere in which we "work out our salvation with fear and trembling." A practical benefit is that we are able to wait upon the Lord, with the inner work of the Holy Spirit working in us long-suffering character.  As the lyrics of the hymn state, we "trust and obey for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus, than to trust and obey."

This dynamic life of trusting obedience expresses that our existential experience (moment-by-moment awareness) is a constant interplay of the mind (thoughts) and our heart (core being & emotions). I know myself to be too prone to validation by emotions (cf. Debby Boone's question: "If it feels so right, how can it be wrong?"). Therefore I need the more reliable grounding of God's objective truth and principles revealed in the Scriptures.

At 17 years of age I learned to fly small aircraft. One of my lessons involved learning to rely upon the data and indicators in the instruments, such as the artificial horizon, altimeter and airspeed indicator. My instructor put us into some fairly scary situations where the physical feeling produced by my inner ear would contradict what the instruments said. My instructor convinced me that there is a time when it is appropriate to vote against one's feelings (physical sensations) to trust the objective truth of the instruments. In similar fashion the constant necessity is to bring our emotional heartfelt responses under the scrutiny and liberating sway of truth (cf. John 8:32)  For my purposes, I understand that something is true because it is revealed in Scripture and/or is consistent with real Reality as God designed it to be.

Having grown up in the American culture which puts a premium on experience (witness that a $5.00 Starbucks coffee is as much about the whole experience as the aroma and taste of java), I am grateful that I can humbly recognize that any momentary emotional reaction to a given situation, should be tempered by the realization that I may not have all the data at hand.

At the same time I celebrate recent treatments that express the validity of our emotions and heartfelt responses to the truth. In particular, I have recently been encouraged by John Piper's Desiring God, Meditations of a Christian Hedonist. Piper asserts that we have a biblical warrant for experiencing joy knowing God as he is revealed in Scripture inasmuch as we have been created for just such a relationship with our Triune God.

See you at the Potter's wheel!  
G.K. Sexton

"Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart." -- Psalm 37:4