The Battle For Your Mind

Ephesians 6:12 NIV “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

Complacency is like a silent cancer. One of the meanings given for complacency is “a feeling of smug or uncritical satisfaction with oneself or one’s achievements“. I think the key words are “uncritical satisfaction“. We hear and read about the pros and cons of having faith in God, and all of it’s variances, with multitudes attacking the idea that there is more than meets the eye to think of and consider, but you’d be hard put to find anyone that doesn’t admit that there is a lot of evil in the world. It doesn’t matter where you turn, whether you’re looking at the news, or in the work place or in our dealings with fellow human beings. Fortunately it isn’t all evil, we also see acts of kindness, unselfishness and a willingness in others to put someone else’s welfare and well being above their own.

Considering how intelligent we think we are, being aware of what is happening all around us, is not one of our strong suits, at least for the majority. I’ll admit that how I see things now is vastly different from how I observed and acted upon the realities of day to day living, in years gone by. There’s a reason for that and a lot of it has to do with the reality that the “tomorrows” that lay before me are much smaller in number than the “tomorrows” that lay behind me. You don’t really think about that reality when you’re in your twenties, thirties or forties. There’s alway tomorrow and the issues at hand are your priorities. The reality of the shortness of life and the purpose of life is not really grasped.

Take a good hard look at this world that we live on, our immediate environment, that which we interact with on a day to day basis. We see the sky, the landscape around us, the air that we breath and our fellow human beings. Our focus is on us, what we want, what we think we need and how we can move towards achieving our goals. Our immediate environment is taken for granted, it’s just there, to be used to help us accomplish our goals.

Yet reality, or our perception of reality, goes far beyond that. We’re actually living on a planet that is situated in an arm of the milky way galaxy, which is so much bigger than most of us can readily comprehend, in a universe that stretches beyond our ability to even visualize. Science is now telling us that we may be the only “life” in our galaxy and possibly the whole universe. Our planet is exceedingly rare and this life that we enjoy, well if you really take the time to look at what is necessary to have “life” on this planet and in this universe, the odds or probability required to sustain life as we know it, defies common sense and if not for unexplained supernatural fine tuning, we shouldn’t really be here at all. And yet we are.

Why? 

These minds that we’ve been given ponder that question and some of us, throughout all of recorded history, look beyond our immediate environment to find reason and purpose and truth.

Of course there are many that just say it all just happened by chance, for no particular planned reason, without any real purpose and as far as truth goes, well truth is what resides in the mind of the individual beholder, because in reality there is no common truth other than our own perception of truth. What you perceive as truth does not in itself, necessarily agree with what I perceive as truth.

Which brings us back to the evil that we see in this world that we live in. Evil is real, it exists within the hearts and minds of all of us. True, there are some who are more evil than others but this conscience that most of us have, that which defines what is right or wrong, acceptable or not acceptable, that we argue with internally and devise means to justify our own comprehension of what is acceptable for us and acceptable for others, where does that come from?

A little over 2000 years ago, a child was born who grew up to be the person we call Jesus. He said He was God, He’s the only religious leader who ever made that claim. He did things that defied the laws of nature, He said things that looked way beyond our immediate environment, He told us about ourselves, about the conscience that we had been given, about why we had been created and why He had come. And they killed Him, just like the ancient Jewish prophets said they would and just like Jesus said they would. This isn’t fiction, it’s history, virtually all scholars and historians agree. It’s verifiable.

But there’s more.

He also said to prove who He said He was, that after three days of being dead, He would rise again. That’s unique. No other religious leader ever claimed to do that. And He did. That reality literally transformed the Apostles and followers of Jesus from denying that they had known Him, to men and woman who just would not stop proclaiming the “Good News”, even if they threatened to kill them for doing so and they did. But the “Good News” became Christianity and spread all over the world, to this very day. Check it out. Find out what exactly really happened.

There is a reason why you were created and why we are here, there is a purpose behind God’s demonstration of His love towards us in His Son’s death on the cross, and there is truth.

Jesus said in John 14:6 NIV “ Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

That’s a bold statement, that’s a decisive statement and that’s an exclusive statement. Jesus made that statement for a reason. What happens to you for the rest of this life and when you die depends upon your decision on His claim. That’s reality.

If you’ve never stopped to really look at what Jesus said, if you’ve never really looked at what He did, if you’ve never looked beyond your own immediate environment and the evil that is in this world, that is in you and in me, the battle for your mind and your soul has already been decided, by your complacency. There’s no fence sitting when it comes to deciding on Jesus.

Don’t give in to making a superficial decision about Jesus, believing what you’ve heard in passing or never really taking the time to check Him out. Considering the importance of Jesus in our world history, He literally deserves more than that and If Jesus is who He said He was and is, you really do need to make a decision about who He is and what He said.

Unfortunately, if you haven’t, you already have. That’s also reality.

Worthy is the Lamb! Blessings!