Jesus
replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your
soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment."
(Matt. 22:37-38)
Therefore,
prep your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the
grace to be -given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. (1 Peter 1:13)
No people can be
prepared unless they are growing mentally.
Religion today is up against the
most complex problems, both within ourselves
and within society, for our faith
is being challenged from the side of psychology and of economics. It will not do
to say with social reformer Charles H. Parkhurst that "skepticism is the
friction caused by a small brain trying
to absorb a great idea." We must be able to show how the "great idea"-God-is great
and dynamic enough to
meet a world need.
Today, Christians
are being forced to think because they
have come to grips with making a new
world. Our faith must function
there, or it will be discarded as
irrelevant. The kingdom concept demands it. We are grateful for what uneducated
Christians have done, but this is no time for ignorant piety. The world suffers
almost as much from wrong ideas as from wrong wills. Wrong ideas in history
have produced as much havoc as wrong
intentions. Christians, there fore,
must think straight as well as act straight.
Therefore, grow in mind.
Try to read at least fifty pages of some book each day. If your mind ceases to grow,
your soul will cease to grow. You will become the victim of set phrases and stereotyped
ideas caught in mental ruts. A new book will help jolt you out. The
seventeenth-century philosopher Spinoza spoke of "an intellectual love of God,"
and Jesus spoke of loving God "with all your mind"-a phrase He added
to the Old Testament quotation (see Deut. 6:5). It must have been important. It
is.
0 Christ, help us this day to conquer some new worthy
idea and harness it to the purposes of Your kingdom. Save our minds from ruts. Amen.
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