The Mind of Christ

 To Go Out of You're Mind and Into Christ's

Author: Jo-Anne Leroux

In our writing on self expression, we've identified reasoning as being an attribute of self, life lived out of the soul.  Things must make sense.  My very first encounter with God was a result of doubting my own reasoning. I was 25 years old and troubled.  Home for Easter, I was sunning myself in the back yard and my mother called out, "Would you like a book to read?"  "Sure!"  It turned out to be the bible in the form of a story.  As I read through the Old Testament, I came to the story of Daniel in the lions den.  The part where Daniel was thrown in with the Lions stopped me.  It made no sense that anyone could be in with Lions and not touched.  Suddenly a thought came, which I recognize today as the voice of God.  "What if just because it makes no sense, this does not mean it's not true?  What if???"

Upon my return home, in the privacy of my bedroom, I cried out to God.  "If you are real... if you're up there, I need you now."  I had a four day, Holy Ghost, blow out encounter with the living God.  He walked me through my life from birth and showed me how He had made me, why people who had hurt me did it, and so on.  So much revelation came flooded in; I could not function for days.   God was renewing my mind.  I saw my experiences from the Lord's perspective and died to mine.  I gained peace that day.  God was real and He was for me.  This was the beginning of a long journey, kingdom-bound.

Proverbs 3:5 tells us to "trust the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding."  But we do lean on it, don't we?  We rely on our understanding to such a degree that we even interpret the scriptures through it.  Take, for example, our striving to be the best we can be.  This appears to be a good thing.  So we set about to become a good Christian.  We do all kinds of good works that a Christian would do... feed the poor, go on missions, help at the church and so on.  We are satisfied with ourselves and others approve.  There seems to be no end of needy people who require our time.  They will lean on us, depend on us, exult us or despise us depending on how well we perform.  We may be submitted to our pastor, certain we are being obedient to God by doing as he says.   We find ourselves experiencing overload, stress and possibly burn out.

Yet scripture tells us to do good.  "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven." Matthew 5:15-17     What could possibly be wrong with this picture?  Everything seems so reasonable.  Note the beginning of that scripture.  Let your light shine!!  We have no light apart from living out of the Spirit of Christ.

Because the unsanctified soul deceives us, Jesus tells us how we can tell if we are living out of His Spirit.  "Therefore by their fruits you will know them."  Mathew 7:20   If we are bearing the fruits of the Spirit, we will have love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control Galatians 5:22-3  and we will be impartial and sincere. James 3:17. NIV.   James refers to this as heavenly wisdom.  We are not impartial or sincere in our fallen nature.  We'll have a self-serving motive to gain approval, generally hidden from ourselves. 

When we draw our significance from man, our actions will appear the same as those done with pure heavenly motives, but the results are very temporal and conditional on man's approval and worldly success.   Even if we have man's approval, we unlikely feel blessed, but will reason that we should.  I recall moving into a neighbourhood in Ottawa when the children were young.  One of my neighbours could not do enough for me.  She brought me casseroles, minded the kids, offered to run errands... it just went on.  I kept reasoning that I should feel grateful and felt guilty for wanting her to go away.  Her motive, you see, was to secure my friendship, not to bless me.

The test of authentic spiritual fruit bearing comes through trials.  A trial will reveal the true condition of our character.   We are not to condemn ourselves if we don't bear good fruit, but the Lord allows them to help us bring to light that which needs to die so He can live in us.  Our hidden agendas must be unseated from the throne of our hearts if we want to go deep into Jesus and be transformed into His image.  How desperately He loves us and how desperately we need our Savior. 

To have the mind of Christ, we must be in Him and Him in us.  We need to allow the Holy Spirit to make us aware of when we are reasoning and the fruit's gone bad.  Then we can choose to let go of our own understanding and lay hold of Christ. 

This is such a valuable key.  Take the leap.  The Lord will transform your mind to His.  His wisdom will be available to you.  Pity for the lost will be exchanged for compassion, control for command.  You will have rest in Him for His yoke is light.  He will entrust you with His supernatural power to love and heal.  Your light will overtake the darkness.

We don't want to hear those words, "I never knew you" in Mathew 7:23 NIV.