Don’t Rupture! Get Raptured!
a.k.a. “Look out for Spiritual Aneurysms”
The tricky thing about the unseen and eternal truths is this: You can’t really see them through the lens of the natural mind. Unfortunately, they are spiritually discerned. That is, they are only discernible by use of your instrument of spiritual perception: your spirit, through faith. The rational, natural mind is more or less useless here. That’s difficult for us because that is the mind we are trained to use for getting on in our seen, temporal reality.
Paul expresses the dilemma this way:
In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, for, “Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ. (1Cor 2:11-16).
What’s the difference between your (natural) mind and the mind of Christ? Do you know how to tell the difference?
In short, the mind of Christ is the mind you have when you align your perception with the unseen, eternal truths in God’s word. It is the mind you have when you walk by faith and not by sight. Another word for “sight” is “human understanding.” We grow in our relationship with Christ when we operate by faith—that is from the point of view of His mind—and not from the point of view of the natural, physical senses and sensibilities. We mature in Christ when it becomes first nature to think God’s thoughts and agree with God’s truth.
The mind of Christ is a lot of things. You can tell whether you have it or not when the seen, temporal facts of your life oppose you. For example, when you’re ill, that is a seen, temporal fact. But the Word says, “By His stripes we were healed.” One reality is in the seen, temporal — the other in the unseen, eternal. You start to really operate in the mind of Christ, however, when the unseen, eternal truths are your first choice. When you learn to reflexively agree with what the Word says is true over and against your seen, temporal facts.
The Holy Spirit is always challenging us to go beyond the facts we see to the truths we don’t. “For we walk by faith, not by sight,” Paul reminds us in 2 Corinthians 5:7. God is always trying to get us to do one thing: believe right. That’s it. That’s the ballgame. Christianity is not about doing. It’s about believing right. Christianity is only about doing insofar as it refines the believing, and we must always “get the order of priority right.” Pastor Mike often says, “You can only do what you believe.” And that is true. Jesus said it best: “The work of God is to believe in the One God has sent.” (John 6:29).
