I don’t know when I first saw this–several years ago.  But it turned up again recently in Brother Billy Moore’s paper from Butler Missouri (For A Better Understanding). It made me aware of just how wonderful it is to have a mind--the ability to reason and think.  Let me share it with you:

 

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The human mind is a wonderful, and in many ways, an inexplicable thing. It’s not easy to even define properly what it is. The mind is all about consciousness. Consciousness, is in fact, the mind in the act of knowing itself.  The functional mind is conscious, aware of its surroundings, cognizant of where it is and who it is.  You plan, devise, you decide–to love, like, disdain, even hate with it.  Perception, emotions, will, memory, the ability to meditate, examine information–all are elements of the mind.  So is imagination, the ability to see things that have not yet happened; so is reasoning, the ability to apply knowledge or experience to a given problem so as to render it soluble.

 

You are in charge of your mind.  It’s totally yours. You let in what you want, reject what you don’t want it to have.  You decide how to use it, give it directions on which way to go and when to stop going that way.  It is a  moral apparatus which can be influenced, but only as you desire it to be.  You speak or remain silent depending on what you think you should do. Nothing that requires intelligence can be done without the mind. We speak of one who can no longer act responsibly as having “lost his mind.”

 

The Bible speaks of a mind ready to receive the word.  In Acts 17:11, we are told that the Bereans “received the word with all readiness of mind,” indicating that they were impressed with what was said–they were ready to receive it; they let the information in.  In Mark 4, when Jesus preaches The Parable of the Sower, He speaks of those who had receptive hearts, those who “hear the word and receive it,” indicating that the mind was impressed by what was said and so allowed it residency to function.  Such mental actions as these are necessary to the bringing forth of fruit.

 

The Bible speaks of a humble mind.  “Let this mind be in you,” says Paul, who then describes what is “the mind of Christ” (Philippians 2:3, 5) to prove what is a humble heart.  In Colossians 3:12, Paul instructs that those “risen with Christ” (vs. 1) should “put on...bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind.”  The mind of the believer must purposely subordinate to the will of God in all humility.

 

The Bible speaks of the steady mind.  Paul, in II Thessalonians 2:2, exhorts some that they “...be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled.”  The mind must constantly be controlled, steadily focused upon the higher, substantive things of life–not dis-settled by the mundane or distracted by the fleshly things of life.

 

The Bible speaks of a sound mind.  “God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (II Timothy 1:7).  A sound mind is a dedicated mind.  A sound mind is one free from deflections, one pressing toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God. A sound mind is a spiritually healthy mind, one which functions efficiently in spiritual matters.

 

Now, if you could decipher the meaning of the little puzzle we used at the beginning of this piece, surely you can understand the Bible when it says, “he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned” (Mark 16:16).