Heart, Mind, Soul ... & Sunglasses
We've been studying James in our community group over this semester and tonight we got to chapter 3 versus 13-18 which deals with the disparity between heavenly and earthly wisdom.
Having a philosopher as discussion leader, inevitably, we wandered into territory addressing the classic debate "what is the heart?" Mike had a great point concerning how imperitive it is that we as Christians know how we define the heart, mind, and soul since the greatest command is loving God with your heart, loving Him with your mind, and loving Him with your soul.
So here we go ...
Going backwards ... the soul (which I keep typing as "sould" for some reason) is the piece that keeps the heart, mind, and spirit in harmony and is the essence of the person. Each soul (I did it again) has a body that eventually dies and releases the soul (which is eternal) - it is our personality, our reasoning capabilities, that which allows us to love ... which gets around to the three components.
The spirit is actually the simplest (to put into definition terms - however, since this is literally God living in us, then it is also the most complex - crazy how He tends to do this) of the three: either it's dead or alive, and can only be awakened by its creator through the power of His Spirit - it is the Spirit of God living inside man.
I view the mind as really the entryway to our whole being - it is the tool that processes everything we hear, see, and experience. The mind has valuable reasoning capability and is the house of creativity allowing for the contribution of logical thought to those matters which demand clarity of expression or further development/articulation of reality.
The heart (this is really rough here ... but worth writing out I think) is that foundation of truths that you really believe at your core: those you've gathered over a whole lifetime of joy, of grief, love - those truths which govern your illicited primary response to actions/opportunities and wind up evoking an emotion which can yield a good/bad response depending on the state of your heart.
I'm just blown away at how Christ's death on the cross really makes us whole - gives us the ability to be like Christ in our inner persons through the gift of the Spirit that lives inside us as some sort of regulatory mechanism guiding our mind through complex reasoning and somewhat deciphering mysteries of the heart (which I am so far from understanding).
James is so encouraging, yet overwhelmingly challenging because he tells us that we really can be like Christ - what a message - the realization as we get closer and closer to just how far we are from Him brings us closer ... yeah.
Amazing grace.
* Sunglasses: Well ... on to something completely non-deep, I was running around Lake Fayetteville (it was so gorgeous!) today and saw a tree with some sunglasses on about 6' up - it was a great joy to see that smiling tree around mile 5! Magical.
Having a philosopher as discussion leader, inevitably, we wandered into territory addressing the classic debate "what is the heart?" Mike had a great point concerning how imperitive it is that we as Christians know how we define the heart, mind, and soul since the greatest command is loving God with your heart, loving Him with your mind, and loving Him with your soul.
So here we go ...
Going backwards ... the soul (which I keep typing as "sould" for some reason) is the piece that keeps the heart, mind, and spirit in harmony and is the essence of the person. Each soul (I did it again) has a body that eventually dies and releases the soul (which is eternal) - it is our personality, our reasoning capabilities, that which allows us to love ... which gets around to the three components.
The spirit is actually the simplest (to put into definition terms - however, since this is literally God living in us, then it is also the most complex - crazy how He tends to do this) of the three: either it's dead or alive, and can only be awakened by its creator through the power of His Spirit - it is the Spirit of God living inside man.
I view the mind as really the entryway to our whole being - it is the tool that processes everything we hear, see, and experience. The mind has valuable reasoning capability and is the house of creativity allowing for the contribution of logical thought to those matters which demand clarity of expression or further development/articulation of reality.
The heart (this is really rough here ... but worth writing out I think) is that foundation of truths that you really believe at your core: those you've gathered over a whole lifetime of joy, of grief, love - those truths which govern your illicited primary response to actions/opportunities and wind up evoking an emotion which can yield a good/bad response depending on the state of your heart.
I'm just blown away at how Christ's death on the cross really makes us whole - gives us the ability to be like Christ in our inner persons through the gift of the Spirit that lives inside us as some sort of regulatory mechanism guiding our mind through complex reasoning and somewhat deciphering mysteries of the heart (which I am so far from understanding).
James is so encouraging, yet overwhelmingly challenging because he tells us that we really can be like Christ - what a message - the realization as we get closer and closer to just how far we are from Him brings us closer ... yeah.
Amazing grace.
* Sunglasses: Well ... on to something completely non-deep, I was running around Lake Fayetteville (it was so gorgeous!) today and saw a tree with some sunglasses on about 6' up - it was a great joy to see that smiling tree around mile 5! Magical.
posted by Shelly at 12:27 AM
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