The Chinese concept of feng shui means “wind and water, the secret of happiness and harmony throughout one’s life and surroundings.” That doesn’t sound a whole lot different than the inherent American promise of “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.”

            In all of the conversations about embracing the “new things” of God, the term “de-westernization” keeps cropping up. Automatically, as is our tendency, we swing the pendulum the other way. Should we now become “easternized” instead? Are we to move from the philosophy of “ka-ching” to feng shui? Trade in the dashboard Jesus for a ceramic Buddha? Of course not. It is just easier to deconstruct than rebuild, to diagnose what’s wrong than to implement what seems right.  

            We are becoming de-westernized and de-easternized, which begs the question: What are we “re-coming”? What is this often-nebulous target at which we are shooting? I’ve mulled this over a great deal in the months following my first article on “Becoming De-Westernized” (see the www.thirddaychurches.com website). My conclusion: We need to become “re-minded”--- understanding the mind of Christ in a way that perhaps we’ve never considered and putting this understanding into action.

Free your mind

            Morpheus, the “spiritual guide” in the film The Matrix, introduces a new way of seeing and believing in a new way with three words: “Free your mind.” He then shoots into the air without any wires or jet propulsion to the far rooftop. His student's response: “Whoa.”

            Paul contrasts the natural mind with the mind controlled by the Spirit matrix: “But we know these things because God has revealed them to us by His Spirit, and His Spirit searches out everything and shows us even God’s deep secrets. No one can know what anyone else is really thinking except that person alone, and no one can know God’s thoughts except God’s own Spirit. And God has actually given us His Spirit (not the world’s spirit) so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us. When we tell you this, we do not use words of human wisdom. We speak words given to us by the Spirit, using the Spirit’s words to explain spiritual truths. But people who aren’t Christians can’t understand these truths from God’s Spirit. It all sounds foolish to them because only those who have the Spirit can understand what the Spirit means. We who have the Spirit understand these things, but others can’t understand us at all. How could they? For, “Who can know what the Lord is thinking? Who can give Him counsel?’ But we can understand these things, for we have the mind of Christ.” (vv. 10-16, New Living Translation)

            Was the apostle differentiating between the minds of pre-Christians versus the saved? Yes. However, in this passage’s context, Paul says he uses words of wisdom---a secret wisdom of God---to communicate with the spiritually mature. What is the secret wisdom of God? It’s a secret! All kidding aside, the mind of Christ is the home of life-giving revelatory wisdom of the Spirit’s initiative.

            The mind, or nous, of Christ originally meant an “inner sense directed at an object.” It’s where we get terms such as sensation, power of perception, mode of thought, understanding, and insight. Paul’s usage of the mind of Christ in 1 Cor. 2 was along the lines of a kind of disposition or moral attitude that is constantly being renewed. It is a step beyond mere knowledge or intellectual prowess, or a mind steeled against all worldliness. The mind of Christ in us is naturally supernatural, infused with the power of the Spirit, and becoming an increasingly untainted channel of God’s mind and heart through us.

Two-way highway

    When the law expert asked Jesus about the greatest commandment of God, the God/Man echoed Deut. 6:5: “Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, and with all of your soul and with all of your mind” (Matt. 22:37). In the centuries since, it has made for a nifty three-point sermon if you could figure out what goes with which point. Where does the heart stop and the soul start, and where does the mind end and the heart begin? One of the clever sayings from recent years relates to getting the truth to travel 12 inches from the mind to the heart. But should the truth download or upload on the heart and mind highway? What roles do the soul and spirit have to play in this spiritual game of Operation? When Jesus used dianoia for “mind” in this passage, He was speaking of an inner processing of God-subjected thought into understanding that would rest in the heart and soul. Clearly, Jesus' “all” was all in more ways than one.

            Advances in modern medicine and technology are now able to separate conjoined twins, even ones joined at the head sharing skin, skull, and brain. However, human anatomy is quite different than the nature of our spiritual lives. The Scriptures lead me to believe that the redemptive mind, heart, and soul governed by the Spirit are intricately interconnected and therefore inseparable. We are unable to partition them into neat cubicles. David asked the Lord to know his heart, test his thoughts, and examine his offensive behavior (Psalm 139:23-24). Can one be pure in heart and still have panic attacks? Didn’t Jesus contend that cursing a person was the same as murder in God’s book? (Matt. 5) The psalmist and our Savior urge us to invite God to pull back the curtain in each arena, knowing that one deficiency found would profoundly influence the whole of his or her life. Thank God Christ’s blood covers us from all sin and shame.

Heavenly minded?

            Not only is the mind of Christ holistic, it is heaven-set. “Since you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.” We may know these first two verses of Colossians 3, but it’s another matter to live them out. That is the tension of the heaven-earth dichotomy. We occupy a tangible, natural plane for an average of 75 years. However, in the days, months, and years following our salvation, we discover that we have one foot on concrete and one in the clouds. Invariably some person will come along and insist that “we’re so heavenly minded that we’re no earthly good” and we quickly readjust to live as human beings and friends, instead of aliens and strangers. Before long, we’re so earthly grounded that we’re no heavenly good. Our lives of convenient consumerism have bought into the Western mindset, even related to church “life.” We can end up becoming spiritual Tommys---deaf, dumb and blind kids who sure play a mean pinball.

            I was too young to remember much of the 1960s, but I do vividly recall watching Neil Armstong and Buzz Aldrin take their first steps on the dusty landscape of the moon, and looking up at the full moon that night, fascinated that people like me were up there. The sense of wonder was inescapable. The race to the moon captured the world’s imagination for a decade. Likewise, our journey with Jesus is either an adventure or it’s not much of anything at all.

            How do we set minds and hearts on things above? As usual, we’re still learning. It doesn’t mean leaving the bills unpaid and the cat unfed and assuming the thumb-twiddling position. It doesn’t mean listening to Jason Upton and Matt Redman worship exclusively or having perfect church attendance. Certainly we can take every thought captive (2 Cor. 10:5), acquire wisdom (Prov. 1), and remember our citizenship is not bound to this earth (Phil. 3:20). The mind of Christ is more than fundamentalist behavior modification.

    Attaining a greater measure of the mind of Christ is urgent for this season because all that the Lord is aching to reveal to us anew about Himself, His Word, and His Church.

A mind re-born

            Jesus chides Nicodemus, a national-level “professional” teacher, for being short-sighted in understanding the ways and means of the Spirit (John 3:5-15). Christ compares everyone born of the Spirit with an ever-shifting and changing wind. One can hear the sound, but the wind’s direction is hard to determine. This didn’t fit with the linear, black-and-white teaching of Nic’s grid, no less the pressure from his peers to conform to a legalistic agenda. However, Nicodemus was intrigued enough with the Spirit language used by Jesus that in all likelihood he experienced a spiritual rebirth (John 19:38-42). God thinks that a mind is terrible thing to waste solely on cognitive pursuits. Knowledge acquisition in our world swells heads and egos, but love should inflate and equip us (1 Cor. 8:1). The infiltration of worldly knowledge into the church has contributed to a left-brained, nonexperiential Body of Christ. Gerald May, author of Care of Mind/Care of Spirit, writes: “Intellectualization often takes the form of talking about spirituality as a way of avoiding spiritual experience.” Ironic, isn’t it? Our intellect, trained for 12-20 years in the land of academia, inhibits us from knowing God in an expansive way (Eph. 3:16-21). Having the mind of Christ means more than accumulating a vast, dusty mental library of professed, annotated doctrine. The mind of Christ embraces living truth via mosaic thinking and present-day encounters with God; it is a mind open to the linear and the non-linear, the demonstrative, and not easily quantifiable that is born of the Spirit.

Show and tell

            “Deep calls to deep in the roar of Your waterfalls; all of Your waves and breakers have swept over me” (Psalm 42:7) Oh, to push the envelope of passionately pursuing God. Imagine His delight as He finds us tumbling in the “green room” undertow of His ocean. When Paul talked about God’s deep secrets, I used to think of it as God disclosing some warm-fuzzy insights that no one had ever gotten before. But I soon realized that the deep secrets weren’t about getting glory for myself but God revealing the nature of Who He is to me. Revelation is “reveal-ation” not just “revved-up elation.” We tap into seasons where it all seems to be about faith alone, or trust alone, or worship alone, or His glory alone. The Lord isn’t dismayed by our “lack of balance” because He knows these themes inevitably intersect with other aspects of His nature. He draws back the curtain for us to catch a glimpse of His beauty (Psalm 27:4-6), enough to keep us contrite and thirsty and yet not enough to reduce us to ashes! The mind of Christ ruminates on the greatness of our God. We love His show and tell.

Eating scrolls

            In all of the discussion of new interactive forms of communicating God’s truth, we are addressing only half the problem. Personally, I am discontent with the content of most preaching and teaching from pulpits and in books. We’ve heard it, it’s okay, but it isn’t enough. Where’s the beef? Where’s the snap, crackle, and pop of wet wood burning (1 Kings 18)? Preaching can atrophy into being an illustrative information dump, sprinkled with a few Scriptures for legitimacy, endowed with personality as the substitution for power. I’m longing for the coming day of making more room for incarnational Bible teaching where our ongoing encounters with God drive us into a recaptured love for the Word, the seat of revelation.  

            Don’t be mistaken: This isn’t a call to return to verse-by-verse expository teaching with surgical exegesis (exit-Jesus?). Jesus warned, “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about Me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life” (John 5:39-40). Many of us have had to fast our Pharisaical patterns of Bible addiction in this last season. What will emerge from this fast?

            Picture Ezekiel eating the scroll of God (Ezekiel 3) and being dispatched to explain its contents to both receptive and stiff-necked people. Or John, eating a sweet-and-sour scroll for the purposes of prophesying to many peoples, nations, languages, and kings (Rev. 10:8-11). That’s the idea. We’ll rediscover passages, even entire books of the Bible, that we’ve overlooked or passed by because they didn’t fit our “feel-good” sensibilities or those of our audience, or we simply didn’t grasp the meaning and application at the time. The Lord will illuminate warning Scriptures, and seemingly old-cold verses will breathe fire. Strong words for the purposes of prayer and intercession will come forth.

            This concept could be misunderstood to be another elitist pursuit of higher revelation. Not so. God will give or lead us to the logos and rhema as He deems necessary.  We're not searching for obscure verses to tickle the ears. We'll know revelation has come when the Lord unlocks Scriptures and releases acts and declarations that rend hearts, bend minds, and prompt the awe of God.

            As revelation unfolds, a three-fold challenge will present itself: 1) purifying our minds and hearts to clearly discern and dispense what the Lord is saying in the moment; 2) realizing that revelation that pegs my “wow meter” may register a “duh” for others, and vice versa; and 3) finding appropriate venues for revelatory teaching in the local and regional church. Will teaching be a part of the flow of a worship service, intentionally given its own focused time, dispensed to house churches via its homegrown leadership or a roving apostolic teaching team, or something else? Spiritual hunger is increasing, and our appetites are changing. Who will have the goods...the multiplied loaves and fish?

Moving beyond words

            Anointing and impartation may seem like ethereal mumbo-jumbo to some quarters of the church. “Boy, Jack has such a strong anointing for worship” or “Jill has a powerful impartation for prophetic song.” Anointing and impartation are fairly subjective. If we like someone or their flavor of ministry, they’re anointed, and if we don’t, well, they’re less anointed. A & I have become buzzwords to promote people and product.

            Anointing is far from hype, according to the apostle John. “As for you, the anointing you received from Him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as His anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit---just as it has taught you, remain in Him” (1 John 2:27).

            I equate anointing and impartation with Spirit of God moving in, with, and among a person’s or a people’s godliness and giftedness. We sense the presence of God in the atmosphere of a building, or a worship service, or some aspect of ministry assignment to a degree that the Lord lifts us up to a higher level. I believe anointing and impartation also describe what many in this season are calling “what we carry.” Get in the presence of an older saint (in either actual years or ministry mileage) and drink from a wisdom that comes as much from a handshake, hug, or eye contact as verbal pearls of great price. Get around young on-fire worshippers and their passion is contagious. I’ve had anointed/gifted people lay hands on me to impart a measure of authority or some aspect of ministry (2 Tim. 1:6). A deposit of what they carry is transferred to my “account.” I’ve been encouraged by this kind of ministry, and I have never viewed it as the ultimate charismatic no-cost, quick-fix shortcut to spiritual maturity or ministry acclaim. Receiver beware: There are always associated costs!

            Lately, though, I’ve seen anointing and impartation from a new angle, in that people carry or walk in a kind of apostolic power in which their words are less important as the fact that the Lord is on them and with them. In two recent house church meetings and one larger celebration gathering, as three different apostolic/prophet types ministered to me personally, I got pushed to another zone spiritually. Words of life were spoken to me, but it was beyond what was articulated. My spiritual cobwebs were blown out of my attic replaced by new hope and vision to go further with God. The anointing does break the yoke (Is. 10:27).

Perceived value

    As permission has been given to do church differently, this arduous transition from the wilderness of the second day to the promised land of the third is fraught with the intangible that makes us quite impatient with God, leaders, and our fellow believers. Why aren’t we there yet? It is reminiscent of the people of the prophet Haggai’s day who were building the new temple of Zerubbabel and growing more frustrated. The new model produced few goose bumps; they’d seen the Sistine Chapel of Solomon and this wasn’t it! A month into the construction, Haggai might have stood on a scaffold as he prophesied: “Who of you saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Does it seem to you like nothing?” (Haggai 2:1-3). The prophet goes on to remind the people of God’s covenant, the Spirit’s presence with them, and that the best is yet to come.

            The test of perceived value is on. What we are doing right now may seem like nothing, or at least less significant that it used to be. In the gap between the prophetic word spoken and its realization, we grow tired and begin murmuring. The temptation is to withhold ourselves, our money, our worship, our hearts to serve. Safe, first-day, leeks-and-onions church life may even entice us in weak moments. Will we return to being consumers looking for “value-added” services or go forward to build the new temple of God on a wing and a prayer, a hope and a promise? We are after the greater glory of the latter house. Haggai’s advice then works now: “Be strong and work.”

* * *

            Our minds are swimming in the expectancy of a de-westernized, re-minded church in which “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him.” (1 Cor. 2:9)