Search for God With Your HEART AND MIND

True Christianity encourages the use of both  the heart and the mind in building faith that pleases God.


IN FACT, Christianity's founder, Jesus Christ, taught that we must love God with our "whole mind," or intellect, in addition to our "whole heart" and "whole soul."  (Matthew 22:37)  Yes, out mental faculties must play a key role in our worship.

When inviting his listeners to reflect on his teaching, Jesus often said:  "What do you think?"  (Matthew 17:25; 18:12; 21:28; 22:42)  In like manner, the apostle Peter wrote to fellow believers in order to 'arouse their clear thinking faculties.'  (2 Peter 3:1) The most widely traveled early missionary, the apostle Paul, exhorted Christians to use their "power of reason" and to "prove to [themselves] the good and acceptable and perfect will of God."  (Romans 12:1, 2)  Only by such a thorough, careful approach to their beliefs can Christians build faith that is pleasing to God and is equal to the tests that arise in life. -Hebrews 11:1, 6.

To help others build such faith, early Christian evangelizers "reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving by references"  the things taught.  (Acts 17:1-3) Such a reasonable approach elicited a fine response from honest hearted ones.  For example, a number of people in the Macedonian city of Beroea "received the word [of God] with the greatest eagerness of mind, carefully examining the Scriptures daily as to whether these things [explained by Paul and his companions] were so."  (Acts 17:11) Two things are worth noting here.  First, the Beroeans were eager to listen to God's Word; second, they did not blindly assume that what they heard was correct, but they referred back to the Scriptures.  The Christian missionary Luke humbly commended the Beroeans for this, calling them "noble-minded."  Do you reflect such a noble mind in your approach to spiritual matters?

Next time: Search for God With Your HEART AND MIND - Mind and Heart Cooperate

The Watchtower, 2002