Read Online What is the Point?: Discovering Life's Deeper Meaning and Purpose by Misty Edwards - Free Book Online
Authors: Misty Edwards
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larger one. The internal world is vast and limitless. It is where the Spirit lives and it is where Jesus’s eyes of fire are looking (Rev. 2:18). He measures us by what we do in our follow-through, as well as by what we do in our hearts. It is both internal and external, but I fear most of us neglect the inside, and the inside is what shapes the outside. I will develop this further in the coming chapters.
T HE M IND
Have you ever tried to love God with all of your mind? The mind is so sacred, yet we severely and criminally waste it. The human mind is of great value, and it is at the mercy of the free will of the man or woman who possesses it. What we choose to put in our minds shapes our hearts and our emotions, and this shapes our decisions and our entire life experience. The mind is one of the crucial, defining things about humans. I am not just talking about the intellect, in the sense of our IQ, but the things we behold with our minds, we become. This means that the things we fill our minds with, we become like.
It is incomprehensible to me the amount of time we spend watching TV, movies, searching the web, watching YouTube videos, and just marinating our brains in sitcom humor and raw stupidity in the name of “rest” or “entertainment.” We do not understand that hours and hours of this plants seeds into the soil of our minds that are not immediately reaped, but over time the fruit of this kind of waste will be seen as our minds grow dull, causing our spirits to grow dull. (See Galatians 6:8.) A dullness in spirit causes our connection with the Lord to grow dull, leading to despair and meaninglessness, which leads to sin.
It all starts in the mind. The amount of time spent on meaningless things is so devastating. I believe when we get to heaven, one of our primary regrets will be the amount of worthless things we gave our minds to. One day all will be clear, and we will see the gift that God gave us in giving the sacred space of the mind. We will take a few steps back and see how we squandered it and the potential we had to encounter God that we did not take, and we will feel regret.
I don’t want to have regret on that day. I don’t want to have regret tonight as I go to bed and close my eyes, only to see the video games I played the previous four hours before the light went out, or worse, the immorality I was watching or the coarse jesting I was hearing. You cannot get these things out of your mind once you put them in, and yet we just walk through the wet cement of our minds leaving a mess that will dry and take the mercy of God and a shocking sledgehammer to break up and renew. I want to feel the dignity that has been given to me, that I am not at the mercy of vain imagination and worthless things.
It is not easy. I am prone to laziness and ease. I want to “check out” and just “hang out” for a while. I cannot tell you how many young people who started out fiery for God who I have seen lose their way in pursuing God with wholeheartedness, because they lost the reins of their minds through entertainment or hours spent in vain debate. It is hard to get someone who chooses to go down this path to turn around because they lose their vision for depth in God and lose their vision for purpose. It is hard to get them out of their aimless state. I have fear about this because of my own propensity to idleness and to foolishness. Loving God with all of your mind is not a small thing. In your mind is a perpetual conversation you cannot turn off. It is a perpetual movie screen that you cannot escape. You cannot go to “nothing” and empty your mind. You cannot turn it off, even when you sleep.
It is the theater where God wants to be seen by you, but very few people will ever look at Him here. I have such compulsive, addictive tendencies that I will literally spend hours in Google searches only to realize I have wasted that sacred space of my mind. I will get lost in the social networking world, where I am
T HE M IND
Have you ever tried to love God with all of your mind? The mind is so sacred, yet we severely and criminally waste it. The human mind is of great value, and it is at the mercy of the free will of the man or woman who possesses it. What we choose to put in our minds shapes our hearts and our emotions, and this shapes our decisions and our entire life experience. The mind is one of the crucial, defining things about humans. I am not just talking about the intellect, in the sense of our IQ, but the things we behold with our minds, we become. This means that the things we fill our minds with, we become like.
It is incomprehensible to me the amount of time we spend watching TV, movies, searching the web, watching YouTube videos, and just marinating our brains in sitcom humor and raw stupidity in the name of “rest” or “entertainment.” We do not understand that hours and hours of this plants seeds into the soil of our minds that are not immediately reaped, but over time the fruit of this kind of waste will be seen as our minds grow dull, causing our spirits to grow dull. (See Galatians 6:8.) A dullness in spirit causes our connection with the Lord to grow dull, leading to despair and meaninglessness, which leads to sin.
It all starts in the mind. The amount of time spent on meaningless things is so devastating. I believe when we get to heaven, one of our primary regrets will be the amount of worthless things we gave our minds to. One day all will be clear, and we will see the gift that God gave us in giving the sacred space of the mind. We will take a few steps back and see how we squandered it and the potential we had to encounter God that we did not take, and we will feel regret.
I don’t want to have regret on that day. I don’t want to have regret tonight as I go to bed and close my eyes, only to see the video games I played the previous four hours before the light went out, or worse, the immorality I was watching or the coarse jesting I was hearing. You cannot get these things out of your mind once you put them in, and yet we just walk through the wet cement of our minds leaving a mess that will dry and take the mercy of God and a shocking sledgehammer to break up and renew. I want to feel the dignity that has been given to me, that I am not at the mercy of vain imagination and worthless things.
It is not easy. I am prone to laziness and ease. I want to “check out” and just “hang out” for a while. I cannot tell you how many young people who started out fiery for God who I have seen lose their way in pursuing God with wholeheartedness, because they lost the reins of their minds through entertainment or hours spent in vain debate. It is hard to get someone who chooses to go down this path to turn around because they lose their vision for depth in God and lose their vision for purpose. It is hard to get them out of their aimless state. I have fear about this because of my own propensity to idleness and to foolishness. Loving God with all of your mind is not a small thing. In your mind is a perpetual conversation you cannot turn off. It is a perpetual movie screen that you cannot escape. You cannot go to “nothing” and empty your mind. You cannot turn it off, even when you sleep.
It is the theater where God wants to be seen by you, but very few people will ever look at Him here. I have such compulsive, addictive tendencies that I will literally spend hours in Google searches only to realize I have wasted that sacred space of my mind. I will get lost in the social networking world, where I am
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