We can cram our minds with facts and figures. Some are particularly adept at recalling phone numbers. Others seem to know the profiles of every NHL hockey player since the beginning of time. Some can spew out tedious baseball stats or basketball scores. Some retain recipes. Others use their minds to store trivia about politics. A few are fixated on celebrities – who’s breaking up, who’s flirting, who’s starring in what movies, etc.

Some might ask if people are genetically predisposed to retain such critical pieces of information. But they say the likelihood is: we fill our minds with stuff that is either of great interest to us or with information we deem to be important, even if it is boring.

Do you know someone who always seems to have a spiritual meditation or thought to pass along to you? So, do you think they are genetically predisposed towards a Bible thought? Or is it something else?

At the close of the Old Testament it is refreshing to read about a remnant people of Israel who…

“feared the Lord and who thought upon His Name.” Malachi 3:16

The word ‘thought’ is not a mere thought, i.e. one of thousands of thoughts that flit through our minds. Rather it denotes a work-out of the cerebral muscle, in carefully and deliberately considering His Name and all His Name represents. Some translations say meditate on His name or esteem His name or “thought about the honour of His name.”

Too often I read my Bible as a habit or routine and, yes – it is a good habit! But sometimes I read it without thinking or contemplating – without valuing or deeply considering the verses I am reading.

The Lord gave us our minds and He expects us to use them for His glory. He expects us to exert and expend mental energy on spiritual things – things that are of value eternally – rather than on the minutia of the temporal. We rigorously use our minds to achieve academic excellence or to achieve career goals. But how much rigorous mental energy do I put into the consideration of Christ and the things of God?

According to scientific research, there’s no computer on earth that comes even close to the capacity of the human brain. An article in the American Journal of Engineering Research proves the incredible superiority of the human brain over the most complex computer on earth.

“The brain has an infinite amount of storage. It was discovered that if the things the average human learns in one year was broken down into 4-minute songs, that it would take 2 billion years to listen to all of them. Considering the song size in megabytes for 4 minutes is 4-6 mb, approximately 1.5 billion terabytes of memory would be needed to store 1 year’s worth of learned things.”

The cost to develop our brain? Desire, self-discipline, effort and time. How often do we think about the stewardship of our mind and the account we will give Him as to how we took care of it, managed it and used it for His glory?

As a steward looking after such a sophisticated asset for God’s glory, one would be hard-pressed to justify consuming anything that would diminish, to any degree, the mind’s capacity or dull its alertness and efficiency – other than for clinically-prescribed reasons. With the legalization of marijuana in places like Canada, we need to think of a rising generation of young Christians. Those who may lean towards consumption of alcohol for relaxation and evening-chilling-purposes call it liberated, innocent social-drinking. But those who lean towards marijuana for the same ‘feeling’ call it liberated, innocent evening-recreational pot-smoking. If we were engaging in recreational drinking, would we approve of our children doing social pot?

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal [renovating, re-programming] of your mind… Romans 12:2

Wouldn’t we all be very different if we really focused on using our brain-capacity more for spiritual purposes? Can you imagine what would happen if we started replacing bitterness with sweet thoughts of Christ? Deleting files of useless secular facts and using the space to store Bible verses. Filling our minds with facts about the life of Christ, e.g. How many times do we read of Him eating? sleeping? looking? weeping? bending down? touching? praying? asking questions? How many prophecies about Him in the Old Testament were fulfilled during His 33 years on earth? The list could go on.

May the gracious Holy Spirit rekindle the desire within my heart today to study Christ, to fill my mind with thoughts of Himself and to think upon His Name. As we pursue Christ through the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit renews, renovates, reprogrammes our minds for His glory.

Walk carefully and closely with the Lord today.

Warmly in Christ
Peter Ramsay

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