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Approaching God One Thought At A Time

Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.     
- Plato

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Minds Matter

Psalms of Delight
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Most of the Bible's Psalms give thanks to God on one or more levels. Commanded to do so, Christians aught to make the time to praise God for His glorious nature, creative genius and many gifts to mankind.

Psalms of Delight are written in concert with
Psalms in the Night. Both series contain Modern Psalms meant to comfort and inspire those seeking the Omni-God revealed in Scripture.


Minds Matter Summary

Words fail when trying to telling all that the minds of men and angels are capable of and what thought is responsible for. Quadrillions of glorious or infamous acts have been birthed by holy or depraved minds. Human and otherwise. Every attitude and action of mankind down through the ages has arisen from 2 -3 pounds of brain matter! Our ability to interact with the Creator and creation, as well as the sum of our accumulated knowledge and experience, all stored in a single organ. Truly awesome and awful are the boundaries of the brain.


Call to me, and I will answer you. I will tell you great and mysterious things that you do not know.


- Jeremiah 33:3 GW


Minds Matter

Modern Psalm of Delight 17

Good morning Lord, or at least I trust it will be in an hour or two. Technically today began after midnight but when I think of morning I think of sunrise.

"I think." What a tiny tremendous phrase. By thought we glimpse Your glory, and what incredible goodness, truth and beauty You've created for us to enjoy! Our minds grant entrance to the intricacies of creation and the powers within. Sight and sound, taste and touch collide and coalesce into magnificent vistas of beauty and understanding.

And the thought process is mind-blowing!
Lacking eyes and ears, a sense of smell and tase, as well as touch receptors of it’s own, apparently the brain is a prediction engine. By combining sensory input with past experience, our brains generate a best guess scenario by hallucinating a conscious reality of the world and personal awareness. Through electrochemical impulses alone, the human mind extrapolates what is real, what is true, what is important.

I'm thankful for the help of
Scripture and Your Spirit. Intelligently designed to search out knowledge, step by step You provide a wealth of wisdom:

  • "God gives out Wisdom free, is plainspoken in Knowledge and Understanding. He's a rich mine of Common Sense for those who live well, a personal bodyguard to the candid and sincere. He keeps his eye on all who live honestly, and pays special attention to his loyally committed ones." Proverbs 2:6-8 MSG
Thanks for thinking of such a way to know and interact with You and Your creation. I'm sorry for taking this and so many other wonderful gifts for granted. Thanks for giving my generation the technology for our minds to begin to comprehend the cosmos and all within it. As a brilliant man of faith and science noted in the seventeenth century:

  • "It is not in space that I must seek my human dignity, but in the ordering of my thought. It will do me no good to own land. Through space the universe grasps me, swallowing me up like a speck; through thought I grasp it." Blaise Pascal
Yet with such power comes great responsibility. In creating minds You unleash possibilities as limitless as imagination. By thought we appreciate and aspire to the heights of Heaven or covet and usurp Your authority, finding there's Hell to pay. Emerson recognized thought as the bud from which all words and action grow. Reigning over our faculties, even the heart bows the knee. Googles of feelings and emotions have been interpreted and internalized by the minds of men and angels, instigating our every action and reaction.


Glorious Grievous Gift

Such a glorious gift, yet of all creation's activities is there anything as at once so awesome and awful?
Truly a mind is a terrible thing to waist, yet more terrible still is when thought lays waist to our lives and those of others. Eternity's history's been indelibly marked by angelic rebellion, a single idea from Lucifer's mind infecting a host of Heaven's glorious beings. Faithful for eons without number, one evil thought captivated a third of eternity's peaceful population, enslaving angelic wisdom to the point were billions embraced the deceit of the "father of lies."

In divine restraint You delayed their judgment, allowing
a trial that would affect the course of Heaven and Earth. Myriads of fallen angels appointed Satan as their champion to challenge You in Creations Supreme Court. From before time the Devil's testimony and accusations have echoed through Your sacred halls, spilling into our universe and impacting every aspect of human history. From Eden to Armageddon, humanity's thinking's been plagued by unrelenting temptation from the Evil One and polluted by sin above, about and within.

How unthinkable that such treachery should arise from
a single evil thought born in the mind of eternity's most glorious Archangel. How inconceivable that so many of Heaven's host would chose Satanic madness over You. How tragic that so much of mankind should follow suit. What a trail of destruction and tears misused minds have left in their wake.


Changed Minds

Lord, shouldn't we shudder at the thought that two to three pounds of brain matter's at the helm of humanity!
Such exponential good and evil lies within each of us. Save us from being so easily deceived. Forgive us for being so willing to rationalize harming ourselves and others. Help us study Scripture and be studied by them until our hearts and minds are developed transformed:

  • "If the Good News we preach is hidden behind a veil, it is hidden only from people who are perishing. Satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe. They are unable to see the glorious light of the Good News. They don’t understand this message about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God." 2 Corinthians 3:3-4

  • "And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect." Romans 12:1-2

  • "We use God’s mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments. We destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God. We capture their rebellious thoughts and teach them to obey Christ." 2 Corinthians 10:4-5

  • "Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn't think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn't claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion. Because of that obedience, God lifted him high and honored him far beyond anyone or anything, ever, so that all created beings in heaven and on earth—even those long ago dead and buried—will bow in worship before this Jesus Christ, and call out in praise that he is the Master of all, to the glorious honor of God the Father." Philippians 2:5-11 MSG
Teach us to meditate long and hard on the wonders of Your word. Convince us how lost we are without Your perspective and guidance. Show us the enormous price You paid to be our Creator and Savior. Thank You scripture declares You're unwilling that any should perish but that all should come to the knowledge of truth, repentance and salvation.

But Lord, how many billions have perished? How many more are at risk of doing so even now?
Ancient and advanced enemies have captured the minds of men. Foes to whom in comparison we are as gnats born yesterday and dying tomorrow. Savior, save us! Save us from sin and shedding innocent blood. Save us from error and doubt. Save us from judgment on Earth and eternal regret. Grant us the kind of grace You did Paul, changing him from the chief of sinners to the greatest of apostles. Transfigure our minds that we might be the most glorious answer to his wonderful prayer:

  • "For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen." Ephesians 3:14-21



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