MIND STUFF

Formerly called “The Heart”

This morning we’re going to be talking about “mind stuff” and our thoughts will be directed to the Biblical Heart. You have a handout of NOTES on the talk and there are a few blanks you might want to fill in. (This Study Guide is on this Web Site. Highlighted words and white print on red have to do with the study guide.)

Our text is found in Pro. 4:23. The King James version reads:

Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life (Pro. 4:23).

But, perhaps a better translation of Pro. 4:23 is found in "The Tanakh", a Jewish Bible. Here is what it says:

More than all that you guard, guard your mind, For it is the source of life.

A few years ago on a flight from Memphis to Florida I had the privilege of sitting next to a professor from a medical college in Virginia. He was explaining to me the work they are doing in the field of mental health. And he said they had been very successful in re-programming the subconscious mind.

I asked him, "How do you re-program the sub-conscious?" He said they use stereo headphones and a cassette recorder. He explained that they play music to the left ear phone in order to distract the conscious mind. At the same time the message to be learned is played to the right ear phone because the right ear is closer to the subconscious.

This led me to tell the doctor of my interest in the Biblical "heart." I explained to him that I believe the Heart of the Bible is the same thing as the subconscious mind. And you know what? He agreed with me. And then he recommended a book entitled "What To Say When You Talk To Yourself."

When I got home, my wife had a paperback copy waiting for me. As I read the book I was astonished to learn the power of talking to one's self. And as I thought about this, I realized that I had been talking to myself all my life. I remember my mother saying, "It's OK to talk to yourself, but when you start to answer yourself, that's when you need to worry."

But, what my mother didn't realize is that when one talks to himself, it's quite normal to hear a reply, for there is in fact a two-way conversation going on in one's mind. And there’s nothing wrong with that for this is the way God made us.

As I continued to read the book, it dawned on me for the first time just how much harm we do by saying negative things out loud.

For example, we’ve all heard this on Monday’s. One rather happy person says, "How are you today? And the other person says, "I'm OK for a Monday."

So how can this hurt anyone? Let's examine what's happening. The person saying "I'm OK for a Monday” is being programmed to make sure that all Mondays are days to be dreaded. But why does one say this? Most likely he heard someone else say this and thought it was funny or cute. However, the problem is that if one continues to say this often enough and long enough, it will become a belief of the subconscious mind. And, once his mind believes it, then every Monday will be a bad day because his mind will see to it that he behaves in such a way as to bring upon himself bad Mondays.

The author of the book, Shad Helmstedder, gave some examples of what NOT TO SAY when we talk to ourselves.

"I'm going nowhere at work."

"It's just not my day."

"When I try to talk to him we have an argument."

"I have a problem with my weight."

"Why should I try, it won't work out anyway."

"I have the worst memory."

"Just this once won't hurt."

"I've tried, but I just can't."

Now we’ve all said things like this to ourselves, haven't we? But, as we think on these things, it becomes quite obvious how we can set our own words against us. The author pointed out how much better it would be to turn each phrase around and let our own words work for us instead of against us. Here's how he said to do it!

"I'm making progress at work."

"Today is a great day for me! "

"Every time I talk to him we communicate better." "I'm getting in control of my weight."

"I'm going to try, I'm certain it will work."

"I have an excellent memory."

"Just this once, I won't."

" I'll keep trying and I'll get it yet!"

The author said we should try to learn what our subconscious mind already believes about ourselves. He said, "If you would like to know what kinds of things you are saying to yourself unconsciously you will find the answer in what you say to yourself out loud."

He said, "What you hear yourself say to yourself out loud is only the tip of the iceberg; what goes on underneath is monumental compared with what we see on the surface. He said, “… for every conscious, noticed thought we have, there are many more thoughts that are never noticed at all. Those unseen or unheard thoughts are like a chorus of a thousand voices, all echoing the same kinds of thoughts in the recesses of your subconscious mind." I'd certainly recommend this book to anyone.

We’ve heard it said that we get what we expect and that we will become what we think about. How can this apply in our lives? More often than not, one will begin a diet with absolutely no belief of success. Losing weight is more often limited to "hope" rather than belief. If one believes he will cheat on the diet by eating the wrong foods, then he will. If one expects something to go wrong it will. What about the negative programming of Murphy's law? It’s very negative to say out loud, "If anything can go wrong it will"

I think the best way to express it is to say that we get what we believe we will get. You see, belief is the key. If we believe we will have trouble, we will have trouble. If we believe we will fall flat on our face, we will.

But, on the positive side, if we want to lose weight and believe that we will then we surely will. It seems that we can always accomplish what we believe we can accomplish. Our Lord Jesus said in Mark 11:24:

Listen to me! You can pray for anything, and if you believe, you have it; it's yours! (TLB)

Notice two things: (1) We can pray for anything and (2) We must believe we already have it even as we pray.

Our Lord gave us the three key elements of prayer, (1) we must ask God, and (2) We can ask for whatever we desire and (3) We must have a positive belief that whatever we ask for has already come to pass. Keep in mind that faith and belief have very similar meanings. And don’t lose sight of the fact that prayer is much more than self talk. Prayer is talking to GOD.

I’m not sure of the customs everywhere, but I think it’s universal that children rarely challenge things told them by their parents. Many parents tell children there is a bearded man who comes down the chimney at Christmas time. And the child believes it with all his heart.

Since the child has no previous knowledge to challenge the Santa Claus teaching, then it becomes a belief. You see, this early in life the child has not learned to measure a small fireplace to see if a fat man really can come down the chimney.

Now, as the young child grows, he soaks up knowledge like a sponge. In addition to the teachings of his parents, he learns by talking to himself as well as from others including grandparents, schoolteachers, and especially from TV, radio, movies electronic games and comic books. Even his room, his toys, and his surroundings communicate certain things to his subconscious mind. Psychologists simply lump all this together and say we are products of our "environment."

I became very curious and asked questions like, "What is knowledge? What is wisdom and what is belief?” It occurred to me that if knowledge is NOT challenged by wisdom then knowledge becomes belief. So I coined the phrase "unchallenged knowledge becomes belief."

Now to the computer. You can imagine my excitement as I waited for my computer to print out every Scripture containing the word "heart." I discovered there are 762 "heart scriptures" and it occurred to me that with this overwhelming amount of information I could learn what the Biblical heart really is.

I began my study with the first occurrence of the word "heart" in Genesis 6:5. It says:

And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually (Gen. 6:5 KJV).

This says that our thoughts are in the heart. To say it a different way, the heart is that part of the body where we do our thinking.

My reasoning went like this. If we think in our heart, then obviously our heart has answers to give us to questions we ask. And if the heart has answers, then the heart is a storehouse of knowledge and wisdom.

Then I examined the next Scripture, Genesis 6:6. It says, "The Lord was grieved at His heart." Now this is quite a discovery for this plainly reveals that the Lord has a heart too.

In Gen. 17:17 I noticed that Abraham, "said in his heart." It seemed clear that if Abraham "said in his heart" that he was TALKING in his heart.

In Gen. 20:6 I learned that the heart has integrity:

And God said unto him in a dream, Yea, I know that thou didst this in the integrity of thy heart.

It would seem that the heart or subconscious mind, if you will, has a unique kind of integrity. It will be true to what it believes. If one's heart believes evil things, then it will be faithful to that evil. If, on the other hand, the heart believes good things, then it will be faithful to those good things.

Further study of the word heart revealed that a heart can faint. In Gen. 45:26 we are told that Jacob's heart fainted. Lets pause here and examine a fainting heart.

The man later named Israel, Jacob, had believed in his heart for a long time that his son Joseph was dead. But, one day he was told that Joseph was not only still alive but that he was governor over all the land of Egypt.

Immediately this belief in Jacob's heart was challenged. The scripture says, "Jacob's heart fainted for he believed them not." In reality, this news was too good to be true. Jacob wanted to believe it but was afraid to. Suddenly there was a conflict of beliefs. So his heart not knowing what to do, simply fainted.

To illustrate "beliefs in conflict", let us consider the mind of the child who believes in Santa Claus. As we said, the child doesn't think along the lines of why this isn't possible, because he believes that whatever mom and dad says is true.

And his aunts, uncles, and grandparents help the belief along by asking the child "What is Santa going to bring you?" This continues until the child is in the first or second grade of school. Then one day the belief in Santa Claus is challenged when another child says, "Santa is your mother and father."

Now the child's belief is shattered. To say it like the Bible said of Jacob, "His heart fainted."

What does the child do? How does he reconcile this conflict in his mind? He runs to the source of his belief, his parents and asks his mother or his father, "Are you Santa Claus." Faced with this long dreaded confrontation, the parents are forced to admit the truth.

Some children are hurt more than others by this. Maybe no damage has been done at all, but one thing is for sure, for the rest of his life this child will be careful what he accepts as belief and he will desperately avoid challenges to what he already believes.

Elsewhere we find many Scriptures that indicate a heart can be hardened. In Exo. 7:13 Pharaoh's heart was hardened. Often we read of a stony heart.

Then in Exodus 23:9 we learn a heart can have empathy:

Also thou shalt not oppress a stranger: for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.

This tells us that similar experiences among human beings should invoke empathy for we can relate to similar experiences in our hearts. In our day, someone may say, "I know how you feel?"

Sympathy is a wonderful thing and it comes from the heart. But, is it wise to say "I know how you feel" when one does not really know how the other person feels? Suppose a friend is suddenly depressed when he learns that he has just six months to live. How foolish it would be for a healthy person to say "I know how you feel." This would surely appear to be hypocrisy to the person about to die. It may sound good to say it, but perhaps it would be better to say, "I love you and I'm sorry to learn this."

In Exodus 35:35 we learn that a heart can have wisdom. In Leviticus 19:17 we learn that a heart can have hate. In Deuteronomy 8:5 we are told to "consider" in our hearts. This is just another way of saying to think it through in your heart.

In Pro. 23:7 it says “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.” I’ve heard that one expressed this way: “You are today where your thoughts have brought you and you will be tomorrow where your thoughts will take you.”

And we could go on with this but perhaps the single Scripture that sums them all up is our text Scripture from the pen of the wise King Solomon who said:

"Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life (Pro. 4:23)"

(PAUSE) Let us consider an incident when Jesus had one of His many confrontations with the scribes and Pharisees. This account is found in both Matthew 15 and Mark 7. The exchange began when the scribes and Pharisees asked Jesus why His followers did not ceremonially wash their hands before they ate food. They said it was a tradition.

Jesus replied, telling them in no uncertain terms that they were wrong and that they were transgressing the commandment of God with that tradition. He even went so far as to call them "hypocrites." After this, He called the multitude together and He spoke a parable concerning this.

Well, after He spoke the parable, the disciples wanted to know the lesson of the parable, so Peter asked our Lord what He meant. Jesus explained that what comes out of the mouth comes from the heart. And then he specified a number of things that come from the heart. He said in Matt. 15:19-20:

For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornication's, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man, but to eat with unwashed hands defiles no one.

In this explanation our Lord tells us a great deal about the heart. Clearly the Lord was teaching that it’s the OUTPUT from the heart that does the damage. And the output from the heart can be either in words, actions or deeds.

As I continued my study of the heart, It became even clearer that God isn’t interested in what we wear or what kind of car we drive or how big a home we live in or how much money we have in the bank. These things have nothing to do with the plan of God. Jesus said: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal (Matt. 6:19).

Jesus made it clear that God is not interested in our skills in accumulating wealth or possessions. Rather God is interested in whether or not we sincerely love Him and how we treasure the spiritual things He gives us. Jesus said in verses 20 and 21: "But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." And where is heaven?

Heaven is where God is! And Jesus said, that we should lay up treasure for ourselves where God is. It would seem, that the treasures that we lay up for ourselves where God is, are the things we write in our hearts.

Obviously Jesus is speaking of our marvelous minds and a very deep consciousness that God has given us. . . a deep deep consciousness He calls the heart. Frankly my belief is that the heart (or subconscious mind) is the very way that God has made us in His image. After all, the Scriptures say, He too has a heart. And the key to that deep consciousness is belief. Once I heard a public speaker make the statement, "If you believe you can or if you believe you can’t, you're right."

Whether we realize it or not, we program what we believe. In other words we need to be careful of “stinkin’ thinkin’. Fear can be a belief. Job said: (3:25) "For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me."

How does one acquire beliefs? Fortunately, our heart doesn't learn beliefs from just one single exposure. We learn beliefs by spaced repetition.

For example, we learned the multiplication table by talking to ourselves and saying over and over 2X2=4 and 2X3=6. At first this was only information. Just information! But, as we said this over and over, day after day, finally it became knowledge for it had been learned. But once it was learned and left unchallenged by other conflicting beliefs, then it too became a belief.

Every belief we have is learned through spaced repetition and is written in the heart. When we consider solutions to problems we are thinking in our heart; searching our memory banks for the knowledge and beliefs that will give us answers. And most of our beliefs are learned in early childhood. The wise King Solomon said:

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it (Pro. 22:6).

Parents, have an awesome responsibility. For example if a parent tells a child over and over for year after year that he will never amount to anything, what does the child believe? Obviously he believes, "I can never amount to anything." And in many cases, no matter how hard the child may try, his subconscious mind believes that he cannot amount to anything. And if that is the belief, then that is the result.

The Word of God is truth and the truth of the Bible is that a child will not depart from his early teachings when he is old.

You may be thinking that changing all this is hopeless. But, really an understanding of how our heart works is just the beginning. The next step is to believe that God will help us change. We can pray for help and we can believe God has forgiven. When God forgives, He erases the pain but not the knowledge. And we must accept His forgiveness by forgiving ourselves.

The late best selling author Claud Bristol wrote a book entitled "The Magic of Believing." In this book he referred to what he called "mind stuff." I have learned that the Bible is full of "mind stuff". Everything said in the Bible about teaching and learning is "mind stuff."

Earlier we pointed out that there are 762 "heart" Scriptures. But, in addition there are some 498 "soul" scriptures and 92 "mind" scriptures and 558 "spirit" scriptures. All of this appears to be "mind stuff." And here are some other Biblical words that we haven't even begun to study closely or even try to define as yet:

Knowledge - Wisdom - Understanding - Hope - Faith - Trust

But in addition to these Biblical words, there are many other English words we need to consider in future studies. Words like "emotions" and "moods" and "attitudes." These are "mind stuff" too. And even though the word "brain" is NOT in the Bible, it too is a word to be studied.

Let me tell you why I say that. When I thought of the "brain" I asked myself (notice that I just said I asked myself) "What is the brain?" Here is the reply I received. "It is an interface device between the visible and the invisible."

This reminded me of a room like this one full of music that one cannot hear. I thought of a radio that could pick up the music and then reproduce it so I could hear it. The radio is an interface device. And I began to think of the brain as an interface device which connects the conscious mind with the subconscious. Naturally, I wondered if my reasoning was correct for this kind of thing was far beyond my comprehension.

I continued to ponder the thought until a chance meeting with a young Australian doctor on a flight from Boston to Memphis. He said he was involved with neuro science research. After explaining my thinking about the brain being an interface between the physical and spiritual realm, I asked him if he had ever heard anything like that. He said, "Oh Yes! He said, "An Australian doctor, Sir John Carew Eccles, taught there are two worlds, the spiritual and the physical, with the brain as the connecting link. He said Sir John, now retired, once taught at Canberra University at Sydney and won the Nobel Prize in 1963 for his research on nerve impulses.

Further study revealed that the human brain weighs only about 1 pound at birth but by age 6 it is full size weighing about 3 pounds. But the brain is only part of that marvelous, thrilling, unlimited and vastly complex mind of ours. David said:

"I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: (Psa.139:14)."

The Apostle Paul had a lot to say about "mind Stuff." In fact, one of the most revealing things Paul said was said to Timothy:

"Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth (II Tim. 2:15)."

So what happens when we study the Bible? Since we are children of God, then we will learn from our Father's Word. We will not only learn things that can help us in the present, but we will learn things that have eternal consequences. If we know and believe the word of God then we will have the right answers to every question of good and evil.

If we read and study and ponder and learn His Word we are NOT talking to ourselves. HE is talking to us. If we read out loud "Love ye one another" then the words heard in our heart are God's words. And when His words are recorded in our hearts, then it will be our Father talking to us when we talk to ourselves.

In I Chronicles 28:9 we read: ". . . for the Lord searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts: if thou seek him, he will be found of thee; but if thou forsake him, he will cast thee off for ever."

The Lord searches our heart and He can read every word in it. Nothing is hidden from Him. And if we seek Him we will find Him for there is an awesome power available to man through the heart.

Our Lord, Jesus Christ said: "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God (Matt. 5:8)."

An evil heart will never see God, but a pure heart will see God. In order to purify our hearts we need to say the right things when we talk to ourselves. We need to hear the positive words of the Bible, the Word of God.

Carefully watching what we expose ourselves to will help, for others are always saying things that are heard in our hearts. And others includes TV, radio, newspapers, movies, music and everyone with whom we come in contact. We need to guard that precious heart that God is so very interested in.

The Apostle Peter said in II Pet 3:1, the NIV:

Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. I have written both of them as reminders to stimulate you to wholesome thinking.

Paul referred to a pure conscience in I Tim. 3:9. He said, "Holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience."

The apostle Paul said in Titus 1:15:

Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled.

The modern vernacular is "Clean up your act." Brethren, let each and every one of us work diligently with the programming of our minds so that we can indeed, "clean up our act" and make ourselves a little bit more like the model set before us. That model is our Lord, Jesus Christ. It is He we must follow. And by follow we mean that we must learn to think like He thinks, we must try to do as He does, and we must react to situations like He would. In short, we must put on the mind of Christ just as Paul said in Phil. 2:5:

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:

Brethren, the heart is what it's all about. Pro. 4:23 says:

More than all that you guard, guard your mind, For it is the source of life. Tanakh

May the Lord add His blessing to our study.

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5/30/2001

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