How Your Heart Shapes Your Mind
B
y David Feddes

Is your mind a machine?


What shapes your mind?

Your social setting: Whom do you fit (or fight) with?

Your actions: What is your pattern of behavior?

Your heart: What moves your inner self?


Heart affects knowledge

• An intelligent heart acquires knowledge. (Proverbs 18:15)

• The heart of him who has understanding seeks knowledge. (Proverbs 15:14)

• Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. (Proverbs 4:23)

• My son, give me your heart. (Prov 23:26)

• Who can say, “I have made my heart pure; I am clean from my sin”? (Prov 20:9)

Your taste for a food item may change when your condition changes, even if the food is the same.


Masters of Suspicion

Karl Marx claimed that economic factors determine our thoughts and ideals.

Sigmund Freud claimed that unconscious primal urges dominate our minds.

Friedrich Nietzsche said that a will to power is the motivation behind claims to truth and morality.

• These atheists were wrong to reject God, but they were right to see that many claims to rightness are a mask for hidden drives.


Cosmic authority problem

“I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God... It’s that I hope there is no God! … I have a cosmic authority problem… Darwin enabled modern secular culture to heave a great collective sigh of relief, by apparently providing a way to eliminate purpose, meaning, and design as fundamental features of the world.” (Thomas Nagel)


Heart motives

The heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing. (Pascal)

• What desires move you?

• What worries or scares you?

• What are your inclinations?

• What makes you feel happy?

• What hidden hurts haunt you?

• What directs your decisions?


Inner light or darkness

• The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all his innermost parts. (20:27)

• Haughty eyes and a proud heart, the lamp of the wicked, are sin. (21:4)

• If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! (Matthew 6:23)

• For out of the heart come evil thoughts. (Matthew 15:19-20)


Loving and knowing

• If I’m stuck on myself, I can’t understand things and persons outside myself.

• If I see things only in light of how they fit my agenda, I can’t see them as they are.

• If I’m trapped in my own viewpoint, I can’t understand a different viewpoint.

• Loving God and others is crucial for knowing God and others. We can really know person only if we care about them.

• A loving heart opens my mind.


Same seed, four soils

• Hard, shallow, cluttered, or good

•  Different hearts receive God’s Word in different ways.

• Good soil: “those with a noble and good heart” “hear the word and understand it”


What shapes your mind?

Your social setting: Whom do you fit (or fight) with?

Your actions: What is your pattern of behavior?

Your heart: What moves your inner self?


Real knowledge of God involves a renewed heart, godly actions, and Christian community.


Остання зміна: вівторок 12 травня 2020 11:05 AM