As an American born and raised, I have always valued freedom, justice, sovereign rights, and all the constructs that come with those…free enterprise, personal privacy, and independence from tyranny. In the past year of spiritual growth, I have come to understand that under God there are limits to “freedom” and personal sovereignty. There is to be only one sovereign…and He is God Almighty.
The greatest gift God gave man was the power of the mind that was intended to hold dominion over all other animals and life on the planet.
Scientifically, the mind is at the center of controlling all physical functions of our bodies and also is connected to our spirits so that we make the right decisions and reach our potentials intellectually. As the old saying goes, “the mind is a terrible thing to waste”.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9)
Scripture is full of instruction on how to think and how to guard our minds and hearts against WRONG thinking. Our thinking needs to line up with God’s thinking. After all, He SPOKE all this world into being and order…yes, in 6 days. That is the ultimate of sovereign intelligence and power of God’s mind.
While God wants us to be free to think and do His will, the Humanist man who thinks he is greater than he is has given himself over to a reprobate mind. Clouded by the carnality of human sin nature, most people’s minds have been overcome by their fleshly desires or self reasoning. Thoughts lead to actions. Wrong actions lead to sin that separates us from our relationship with God.
“Choose ye this day whom you will serve”. At the core of God’s gift to man is “free will”. Man can choose to obey or disobey. Each option carries consequences. That’s just the way God set things up. It is a “cause and effect” world in which the power of right or wrong thinking causes eternal reactions and consequences that only God can intervene in.
We are to be “free thinkers”, but only under the freedom that faith in Christ provides in overcoming the flesh to sanctification which can control our minds and bodies. Worship starts in the mind where we allow God’s Word and spirit to control our thoughts. This is the ultimate freedom, to allow God to permeate our minds with His truth.
Thus you begin to realize that “free thinking” has its limits. Sure, you can decide to free yourself from the constraints of God’s commands and ways…but you will pay the price of separation from God and you will fall into slavery to the ways of this world and the evil one. You may sense freedom and pleasure for a season when you do this, but it will be fleeting…and we know what the wages of sin are very clearly. Eternal death and suffering apart from the Creator. That is a heavy price to pay for “personal freedom”. I pray that you choose eternal LIFE and submit your minds to the meditation of God’s Word and the kind of enlightenment that is pure and Godly.
2 Corinthians 10:5 tells us that we are to “demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
Be free in Christ…and live to the maximum potential of your thinking time every day. This is your reasonable worship after all Christ did for us on the cross.