Worshipping God with your mind.

I came across a picture of a monkey once, with the caption “ sometimes I justs sits and thinks” and sometimes I just sits.
The anti-intellectualism of our day is something like that, it believes without grasping the facts for itself.
Test yourself, when last have you sat and read Shakespeare, from start to finish, or anyone heard of John Bunyan,writer of Pilgrims progress, second most influential book in the english language? …? cite one of the major works of John Mitlon. Or what work was John Foxe famous for? Next to the Bible one of the works banned in 1611! When last did you give yourself to indulging in the Prose of the Psalms or the Apocalyptic literature of Daniel?
The point of literature is to enjoy it just for sheer delight of enjoying the prose and the wit in the literature.

What is scary is that this trend of anti-intellectualism is in every sphere of our society, we will go the hall of fame as readers of Cosmo and filling our minds with the latest Stephen King or even worse with the mindless prattling of Joel Osteen and other self help guru’s
So would you not be suspicious of your preacher if has not a basic grasp of the Hebrew and Greek? Or it the very least a very good grasp of English and how to differentiate between a pronoun, a verb and an adjective!
If you are not concerned you should be. How can you be sure they know what they are talking about when they are so anti the intellect? Did God call us to be mindless in our Belief, blind in our faith?

Indeed no, the first commandment plainly states “You shall love the Lord your God with All your heart ,and all your mind…..have you loved God with your mind? Or have you given your mind to lesser indulgences like psychology or philosophy? Not bad in themselves, but you break the first commandment if you do not engage God with your mind. To be sure we are called to be in relationship with God and a heart relationship, but how do you hope to engage the divine mind if yours is in neutral?
I do not mean esoteric knowledge either, I mean the plain truth of Scriptures, do you just use them to see what God can do for you or do you love them because of what they tell you about God whom you call to love both with your heart and mind.
We are simply satisfied with too little, we take joy in simple things when the most glorious calling we miss. To Love the Lord your God with your Mind…..Some of the major church denominations have built their theology on the mystical, experiential when that is in fact no anchor for the soul The Charismatic Movement is guilty of this, as are many others, promoting “the Spirit” above the Bible, the written Word.

Here is the maxim. If you overemphasize the Word over Spirit you get very often legalism. When you overemphasize the Spirit over the Word, you get error, for the Spirit does not add to God’s revealed Word. So where are today? Are you blindly believing everything that comes your way, or do you compare it with what is written in the Bible. Which after all is the standard of Absolute truth.