Seriously, God...where is my mind?
Jesus has redeemed me, but where is my mind?
Recently, I faced some conflict in my life.
Now I am stressed.
Not all stress is bad, but when I can feel it in my neck and head, it isn’t going in a good direction. Good stress makes me want to work harder. When it lingers I feel like the stress symptoms won’t end and a hopelessness can set in.
What happened in-between conflict and stress?
This past summer in Los Angeles, when at the California Science Center where a huge space shuttle stands outside, surrounded by construction, my sons and I walked through this black tunnel-like room, where rectangular focused light panels guided us through a series of images and words. The sequence started like this:
We all take in energy.
We all take in supplies and get rid of waste.
We all react to the world around us.
We all defend ourselves.
We all reproduce and pass on genetic information to our offspring.
Inside you, organs work together to keep your body in balance.
Their point was all living things have more in common than we realize. Number three caught my eye. We react to the world instinctively, but also by interpreting it with our minds and hearts.
Having a mind is something we all have in common with each other too. Even the Bible talks about our minds.
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Romans 12:2 ESV
In Romans, Chapter 1-11 cover some important realities about the importance of Jesus to our spiritual salvation, how that goes beyond the original Jewish faith, and what that means for humanity. It lays out a foundation for our spiritual, mental, physical, and social self.
When we get to Romans 12, we have a firm foundation upon which we should be building. We are to continue to offer our lives to Christ as a living sacrifice—our actions, our time, our resources. As we do that our minds have to continue to change, even after setting a firm foundation. We spend so much time working on our behavior, but not our minds. Getting educated (even Biblical studies included) is a key part of working on your mind, but not the whole picture.
Life is often a state of mind. For me, it is the bridge between experiencing conflict and feeling bad stress. In my mind, I tell myself all conflict is bad and tiresome and leads to people leaving each other. For me it is pretty obvious that comes from my time as kid when I mediated all my parents lock down, drag out fights. My mom would often storm out of the house, and say she was going to leave us. Bye.
The equation is clear and I experienced it a lot: Parents fight, I watch or try to mediate to little effect, and my mom says she is leaving. So many years ago, I had forgiven my mom and parents, but I didn’t deal with that equation in my mind and heart. Does God truly need things to be that precise? I’m unsure, but if God solved every problem with a broad sweep I’m sure there would be other consequences we’d question.
A coworker of mine has an acquaintance in Kyiv, Ukraine that was doing user interface design work from their apartment during the early days of the Ukraine-Russia war. I asked him if he knew how that person was doing. Were they hiding in the apartment? Were they scared all the time? He said that person surprisingly was going about their work day prettily normally, but was more annoyed when a window would blow out from time-to-time. I bring this up because even people in a war torn area can normalize their lives, but I internally panic at the first sight of conflict? It’s a weird state of mind.
Many of us may feel we are too busy to think, so my mind isn’t the issue but my environment. I have to fix my environment to be good. The question becomes can you always fix your environment? You can if you remove yourself which sometimes is needed, but not always feasible or the right thing either.
What in your mind needs redeemed? Another way to look at it is what do you believe? In this case, not your faith unless your spiritual foundation is shaky. Always start there. Rather, what do you believe about yourself and the world around you? I don’t go from facing conflict to stress without a step. The pathway of our minds can be a bit overgrown with unwanted weeds and brush, creating secret pathways of destructive/sin-rooted thinking. Let’s ask the Holy Spirit to do some pruning.
Where is your mind? Something triggering you to feel extra anxious, stressed, or angry, but you don’t know why?
Pray to Jesus to reveal to you the deep things in your heart and mind. Sometimes it is obvious and other times it isn’t, but we believe we have a guide in the Holy Spirit.
Talk to someone (friend, pastor, or professional as a start) and begin to hash it out.