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“Honor God with your Intellect” Part One
By John S. Picarello
It has always been my desire to see a new generation of Christians rediscover the power of biblical thinking. Much of what I do within the faith community is helping a new generation of believers to understand what it means to love God with their whole mind by using their intellect purposefully.
Over the past 10 years or so I have been very much surprised and alarmed at how many Pastors I know never actually teach their people how to think biblically.
So many believers today have never been trained to think thoroughly through what the bible actually teaches. So they never think through what the bible has to say about who Jesus is, what Christianity is, the mission of the Church, why they think and act as they do, and their own personal responsibility to the Church and society at large.
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I am acutely aware that our culture in western society is in deep trouble, and has been for quite sometime. A growing segment of the Church in the west has copied much of society’s cultural values and have integrated them into the lifestyle of the community of faith.
What is even more alarming to me is the shortage of Leaders who can think and discern clearly enough to see how devastating this is to the Church and its ability to effectively execute its mission in a dark and wandering world.
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For years there has been an emerging philosophical approach to Christianity (which I call American Churchianity) that is so emotionally and commercially driven that it no longer resembles biblical Christianity, and actually hinders any genuine spiritual maturity from taking place within their ministries.
In fact, we have far too many people who call themselves Christians, who have never been taught to properly read, interpret or apply the Scriptures correctly.
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There exists among these Churches a leadership that neither sees nor understands the importance of following Christ’s instructions to make disciples.
They have few if any within their ministries who have been trained to think deeply about the immutability of God’s character, and His Word. Far too many see no need for practical holiness in life.
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This has contributed greatly to the loss of the Church’s influence on society. Each generation that follows this mindset will further weaken the Churches ability to be the prophetic voice of reason and to act as salt and light to the surrounding community.
This in turn has created such a need for even more ministries to develop young people who have a thorough enough grasp of the Scriptures to engage society in an intellectual dialog concerning the issues of our day with a noticeable degree of effectiveness.
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The issue at hand an inability to think properly as we were designed to do. How vitally important it is to think deeply, to think through the issues of life, and to think them through biblically. Many believers I speak with today do not even read their bibles regularly.
If they do read through them at all, they have never been taught to discover what the writers intended to communicate to the people they wrote to and why that matters so much today.
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Without doubt I believe our greatest resource in this life is our God given ability to think. I can never overstate the value of good thinking, and the impact our thoughts have on our destiny. How we think has everything to do with the way we relate to God, to society, and how well we live the life God has given us.
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It is so important to regularly examine ourselves to see how consistently our thoughts line up with our actions, and if both are properly aligned with the Scriptures.
It has been often stated that if we change our thinking, we can change our life. That is a true statement in complete agreement with what the Scriptures has to say on the subject of thought and conduct.