I have been currently reading Mark Buchanan's book, The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath. Buchanan starts off his book by providing an explaination of our misunderstanding of the Sabbath and what "work" actually means to us. He then flows into the significance and meaning of the Sabbath by starting off with that it's the mindset of the Sabbath that affects it. He then continues on throughout the rest of the book how different aspects of the Sabbath is important with our walk with Christ. Buchanan follows up each chapter with a "practical application" challenging his readers to take action on their progressive on the sabbath.
This little part of his chapter, entitled A Beautiful Mind: Stopping to Think Anew, has been constantly running in my head:
"God is more interested in changing your thinking than in changing your circumstances. He wants you to have the same attitude as and the very mind of Jesus Christ (see Phil. 2:5-8). To pull that off is a miracle larger than splitting oceans or tossing mountains into them. It is akin to raising the dead. Yet this is the daily occupation of the Spirit—leading us into all truth, reminding us of the things Christ taught, taking the things of Christ and making them known to us again. And this is the one area above all where we are urged to keep in step with the Spirit—to move in the direction he’s moving so that, seeing differently, we are free to live differently (see Gal. 5:22-25).
All this touches on the art of Sabbath-keeping. What makes Sabbath time—whether a day or a year, an afternoon or a week, a month or a moment—different from all other time? Simple: a shift in our thinking, an altering of our attitudes.
First we change our minds. Before we keep a Sabbath day, we cultivate a Sabbath heart.
A Sabbath heart sanctifies time." (Mark Bucanan, The Rest of God, pg. 33)
From my earlier post about healing and continuing to grow, I have been continuing to seek out in my life what I need to do to continue on this path. I already read this chapter while I was in Ecuador, but something told me that I needed to go back and read it again. When I read it, a couple of days ago, it was like "lightbulb!". I knew it.
It's funny how you learned a lesson years earlier and then years later...you re-learn it. The second time you learn it, or more like "review", it cuts deeper.
Changing our minds. You know when you experience pain or try to lose weight, it's like they say: "it's all in the mind". In Matthew 22:37, Jesus commands us to "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." He did say "with all your acts" or "with all your degrees" or "with all your accomplishments". He stated: heart, soul and mind. The mind is a powerful thing. It can trick us. It can make us believe that we are feeling something that is not there. It can tell us lies about ourselves. We can trick our minds. We can change our minds. We can even get out of our minds. Think (no pun intended), why Jesus instructed our minds as well? He knows how powerful it was. He knows that from there it starts everything.
It wil be hard to start with our minds. It will take a big step to change some habits that affect our minds. We have to start with realizing that our need to change our minds. We have to evaulate what influences our minds and take away what's necessary or not. It will be hard. It take self-discipline. It will take time. It will take accountablity...but it can happen.
Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts ~Psalm 139:23
So let's change our minds.
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