Files of the Mind

 

I heard a good sermon recently, about “file folders.” I can hear you yawning, but I’m serious. The preacher said we all have those things in our minds, and everything we see, hear, taste, or experience in any way wind up in an appropriately named folder.

 

For instance, many years ago I persuaded my husband to take a tiny taste of olive oil because he was so suspicious of it. Don’t ask me why - I don’t know. But unfortunately, I didn’t realize the oil was rancid. After a good deal of spitting, pseudo-gagging, and recriminations, he filed “olive oil” in his folder entitled, “Things I Really, Really Hate.”

 

Olive oil aside, we all collect file folders in our minds, according to the minister. I believe we begin labeling them when we’re very young and continue stuffing the file cabinet all our lives.

 

Some people never examine the contents of their folders – they consider changing their minds about anything a sign of weakness – it also may mean they were wrong about one or two things. Others, however, find that quite a bit of refiling is needed through the years, even some trashing of entire folders! Potential candidates for the waste basket: “Prejudices” (may be several stuffed folders), “People I Can’t Stand/Forgive” (hopefully not multiples), “Things I KNOW I’m Right About,” “My Unchangeable Interpretations of Scripture,” and so on.

 

We must invite a supervisor for the file cabinet of our minds, Someone to make sure our records please the Lord of our souls! In agreement with God’s Word, the Holy Spirit refiles, adds new folders and gets rid of contaminated ones. Thank you Jesus.

 

Tremble!

A quote - not an exact quote - by a man named Tremper Longman from Kent Jobe’s Sunday’s sermon: The inbreaking of the kingdom always results in the restoration of creation. 

 Makes chill bumps on me! Whenever the Divine pushes through the veil of humanity and makes himself known in some way, it ought to make us tremble in addition to breaking out in a few bumps.

 Jesus broke through the veil when he entered Mary’s womb, and again when he broke forth from that nest  into the night air in the stable. Tremble!!

 We all have experienced the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God into our fallen existence when the Holy Spirit enters into us when we accept Jesus as Master forever. Tremble!!

 And praise the Lord! We will experience the final inbreaking of the Kingdom on that day when these bodies of “dirt packed hard” (Mike Ireland) are transformed in the twinkling of an eye to be exactly like the glorious body of Jesus, our Savior and Redeemer. Tremble!!

Jesus, All in All

“For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Anyone who eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. I live because of the living Father who sent me; in the same way, anyone who feeds on me will live because of me” (John 6:55-57). Unless I accept Jesus completely, and not just one or two agreeable things about him, I will have no spiritual life. I must regularly, continually “feed” on him. 

It isn’t a matter of “going to church” Sunday after Sunday – that’s not necessarily proof that I am feeding on Jesus. The true food and the true drink are unpacked to look like this: I take the Lord’s perspective on everything and everyone. I absorb his attitudes, I love what he loves, and reject everything he rejects. What he pursues, I pursue. It’s choosing to spend my days making every single characteristic about Jesus a permanent part of who I am. 

Am I doing it well? Oh, no, so feebly at times! I get caught up in so much – junk! I never plan to get distracted, it just seems to happen. But, praise his name, I come to myself as the prodigal son did and ask God to allow me to come back to his table filled with the bread from heaven! He always says yes. 

 “Why are we so dispirited by our infirmities, when we know that Jehovah is our strength and our song, He also has become our salvation? I tell you, brethren, we do not possess our possessions. We are like an Israelite who should say, 'Yes, those terraces of land are mine. Those vineyards and olives and figs and pomegranates are mine. Those fields of wheat and barley are mine; yet I am starving.” Why do you not drink the blood of the grapes? He answers, “I can scarcely tell you why, but so it is—I walk through the vineyards, and I admire the clusters, but I never taste them. I gather the harvest, and I thrash it on the barn-floor, but I never grind it into corn, nor comfort my heart with a morsel of bread.' I trust the children of God will not copy this madness. Let our prayer be that we may use and enjoy to the utmost all that the Lord has given us in His grace.” (C. Spurgeon) 

 To put this in today’s lingo, to fail to feed on Jesus Christ means we sit in a church house most Sundays, perhaps some even eating a pinch of bread and sip of grape juice, singing, obediently bowing our heads in prayer at the proper time, dropping something in the collection basket and listening to a guy talk about John 6 (feeding on the body and blood of Jesus Christ) and wondering what in the sam hill that means. Like the starving Israelite, never tasting of the grapes, figs, olives and pomegranates that are ours, never using the wheat or barley available to us for the bread that sustains life – just living each day on the top ½ inch of spiritual life, never truly knowing/experiencing the living, risen Lord. 

Do any of us ever come to know Jesus perfectly in this life? Paul answered that when he said, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face” (1 Cor 13:12). Seeing and knowing completely is a joy reserved for heaven. However, that truth does not keep us from a full, rich, intimate relationship right now with the one who died for us! Jesus made this promise in John 14:23: ‘All who love me will do what I say. My Father will love them, and we will come and make our home with each of them.” Sounds like pretty close company to me.