Mind Transplant

UV3232/10000 Mind Transplant

For who has known the mind and purposes of the Lord, so as to instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ (to be guided by His thoughts and purposes.)

I Corinthians 2 v 16

The human mind consists of intellect, emotions and will. Our will is connected with purpose and objectives. Our intellect thinks things through, the pros and cons before arriving at a decision. The emotions signal which pros and cons we feel strongly about and enable us to shortlist our decision out of various options. The uni-verse asks the rhetorical question, who can instruct the Lord in the decisions He is to take and the things He should do. He is sovereign and above all and no man can ever hope to advice or influence His thoughts, emotions or decisions. His mind holds more treasures of wisdom than all that Solomon or any wise man in history could ever discover or unfold to humanity.

Yet, we who believe in Jesus have His thoughts, passion or energy and wisdom to lead and guide us. John F Kennedy once famously said, “ Today, we have guided missiles but misguided minds.”. Left to ourselves, we will be guided by our own whims and fancies or misled by the enemy of our souls to make the wrong choices. We do not have enough data or knowledge to back our decisions, whether it is good or bad for us in the short or long run. Our feelings and emotions hijack our wills and we make wrong, hasty, emotion coloured or driven decisions that we would regret later. For instance, the instinct to retaliate or to take revenge is a basic drive in human beings but Christ showed us how to forgive. He taught us to also forgive others as He forgives us. We are not naturally patient people but the Lord asks us to rein in our emotions of anger and irritability and be kind and patient with others. He gives us the spirit of self restraint or self control, the mastery over our own appetite, physical desires, emotions. He gives us the skills to ride our tongues as effectively as a horse rider trains it and on command asks it to trot, canter, gallop, stop, jump and so on. He lays bare to us His mind and all the mysteries of life through the Word of God. When we are saved, we have a heart transplant. But we also need a mind transplant- we need the mind of Christ to transplant and replace our own minds.

Christ replaces the complex or our strongholds of our negative emotions behind anger, pride, hatred, sadness, guilt, pessimism, fatalism, fears with the joy of salvation. He instructs and enables us to praise God continually, even and especially in adversities. He gives us the grace or inner strength to endure much hardship in this world. He teaches us to replace worry with worship. He teaches us that we have an eternal purpose of life far beyond the routine and mundane things of this life. He teaches us the impermanence of both success and failure in this lifetime and asks us to focus on the locus- the Lord within, the Alpha to Omega of our existence, being and well being. Apart from spiritual wisdom to deal with eternal matters, He imparts to us on a continual basis through the Holy Spirit the wisdom and grace to take the right decisions in all practical matters affecting our work, our families, our relationships, our health, our future, our contributions to others.