Mind And Heart In Religion

As Christians, we are to love God with all of our being--heart, mind, soul and strength. But many of us tend to overemphasize one aspect or another, and as a result, our faith becomes imbalanced. Some of us have an intellectual faith but lack compassion or spiritual discipline. Others of us have a vibrant, heartfelt relationship with God but lack commitment to truth or doctrine. And many of us overlook translating our faith into service and ministry. In this book ethicist Dennis P. Hollinger presents a holistic, integrative vision for reuniting Christian thought, passion and action. He shows how individuals, churches and movements throughout history have focused on either the head, or the heart or the hands--often to the exclusion of other expressions. But by linking our intellect, emotions and actions, Hollinger points us toward a whole faith for the whole person, where each dimension feeds, nurtures and sustains the others.

“Here is a book to be welcomed enthusiastically, to be read carefully, and to be returned to frequently.” –Sinclair B. Ferguson In our world, we use the word heart to refer to our emotions. But the Bible uses the word heart to refer to the governing center of life. We need to grasp the true meaning of the heart in order to better understand ourselves, our sin, and our need for redemption. As we rediscover the heart as the source of all our thoughts, fears, words, and actions, we will discover principles and practices for orienting our hearts to truly love and obey God with all that we are.

The human mind is deceitful above every other part of the human anatomy! Someone said that it is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it? Most people think that when the Bible speaks of the heart of men: it is speaking of the physical heart organ which pomps blood throughout the human body! This is a misconception of the meaning of the word! However, there is one place within the scriptures where it does refer to the physical heart organ and that is where Jesus was talking with his disciples concerning the signs of the end times: he told them that one of the signs would be that men's hearts (physical organ - muscle) would fail them because of the evils that was coming upon the earth! In this book however, I focus on the mind of humans; which in scripture the heart is symbolic to the mind! This fact need to be understood today as many do not comprehend this fact! Just as Jesus explained to his disciples the fact that what a man eat or take within his body cannot defile him as it do not enter his mind: likewise, what comes out of the man, that is his mind: does not come from within his physical heart muscle but from within his mind, his intellect, his innermost being; thus defiling the man! We have been led to believe, that our thoughts and emotions lie within the physical heart muscle but this simply isn't true! The purpose of the physical heart muscle is only to circulate the lifeblood of humans and animals throughout the body as the life of all flesh is the blood thereof!This is why God forbid the eating of meat with the blood still in it! While the opposite is true of Satanist, who drink the blood humans and animals as they know that therein is the life of all flesh! The human mind is so awesome that even science cannot comprehend it! they have studied, dissected, reasoned together with the so called most brillant minds in the world but yet science cannot understand the human mind! God alone knows the human mind for it is he who designed it! The human mind is at enmity aginst God; it is hostile towards God nor can it know the things of God for they are of a spiritual nature! Jesus told a man once that came to him by night: that the human mind must be converted to know the things of God. Humans must be in essence born-again by the Spirit of God. The human mind must be renewed by the word of God that one might find that good, and perfect will of God! Jesus said that from out of the mind of humans proceed every wicked and evil attitude which defile the human! God destroyed the world by water in Noah's lifetime because of the "Wickedness within The Human Heart!" The earth is defiled by the inhabitants thereof, in other words, because of the wickedness of the hearts of humans, which result to wicked acts, which cause violence within the world! It was the cause in the generations of Noah; and likewise it is the cause in our generation! If you pick up any newspaper in any country in the world today, it will be filled with violence and bloodshed: nation fighting against nation, kingdom against kingdom. Wickedness and evil has once again filled this earth with violence because of the heart (mind) of humans! Jesus said that when he returned to this earth the second time that the world would be in the same identical state it was in the days of Noah, before the flood; then he said that the flood came upon the people of that time, suddenly and unexpectedly and took them all away. Only Noah, and his family and two of every clean and unclean beast of the earth, fowl of the air was saved alive, and that, to preseve seed to repopulate the world that we now dwell in! God destroyed the world that then was by water but this time: this present evil world, will be destroyed by fire! It is all because of the evil and wickedness that is within the human heart! God promises all who come to him by faith in Jesus Christ: a new heart, and a new spirit! The human heart must be converted or one will suffer eternal damnation!

The heart of Jesus is sacred, and the lessons and examples it provides to us are paramount in our daily mission to follow in His footsteps. Max Lucado poses the question "what if, for one day and night, your heart was replaced by the heart of Christ?" That thought-provoking question leads to many personal revelations demonstrating that we can recast our hearts to be more like that of Jesus, and the blessings created by the transformation will unleash ripples to the widest edges of our lives and those around us.

“If there were a Guinness Book of World Records entry for ‘amount of times having prayed the sinner’s prayer,’ I’m pretty sure I’d be a top contender,” says pastor and author J. D. Greear. He struggled for many years to gain an assurance of salvation and eventually learned he was not alone. “Lack of assurance” is epidemic among evangelical Christians. In Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart, J. D. shows that faulty ways of present- ing the gospel are a leading source of the confusion. Our presentations may not be heretical, but they are sometimes misleading. The idea of “asking Jesus into your heart” or “giving your life to Jesus” often gives false assurance to those who are not saved—and keeps those who genuinely are saved from fully embracing that reality. Greear unpacks the doctrine of assurance, showing that salvation is a posture we take to the promise of God in Christ, a posture that begins at a certain point and is maintained for the rest of our lives. He also answers the tough questions about assurance: What exactly is faith? What is repentance? Why are there so many warnings that seem to imply we can lose our salvation? Such issues are handled with respect to the theological rigors they require, but Greear never loses his pastoral sensitivity or a communication technique that makes this message teachable to a wide audience from teens to adults.

The Light of Christ provides an accessible presentation of Catholicism that is grounded in traditional theology, but engaged with a host of contemporary questions or objections. Inspired by the theologies of Iranaeus, Thomas Aquinas and John Henry Newman, and rooted in a post-Vatican II context, Fr. Thomas Joseph White presents major doctrines of the Christian religion in a way that is comprehensible for non-specialists: knowledge of God, the mystery of the Trinity, the Incarnation and the atonement, the sacraments and the moral life, eschatology and prayer. At the same time, The Light of Christ also addresses topics such as evolution, the modern historical study of Jesus and the Bible, and objections to Catholic moral teaching. Touching on the concerns of contemporary readers, Fr. White examines questions such as whether Christianity is compatible with the findings of the modern sciences, do historical Jesus studies disrupt or confirm the teaching of the faith, and does history confirm the antiquity of Catholic claims. This book serves as an excellent introduction for young professionals with no specialized background in theology who are interested in learning more about Catholicism, or as an introduction to Catholic theology. It will also serve as a helpful text for theology courses in a university context. As Fr. White states in the book’s introduction: “This is a book that offers itself as a companion. I do not presume to argue the reader into the truths of the Catholic faith, though I will make arguments. My goal is to make explicit in a few broad strokes the shape of Catholicism. I hope to outline its inherent intelligibility or form as a mystery that is at once visible and invisible, ancient and contemporary, mystical and reasonable.”

In this study, McMahon considers the universal and perpetual teaching of loving God and loving one’s neighbor, as it pertains to the heart, soul and mind of a Christian. His main text is taken from Christ’s words in Matt. 22:37-39, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” The love that Christians ought to have in light of biblical reformation, consist in loving God with all the heart, soul and mind, and loving one’s neighbor. Though this is often thought of as a nice “religious” sentiment, many Christians have no idea how that works out in the life of the Christian. Where did Jesus get such a notion, and what was he teaching? Biblical reformation is set within this “love to God” and that without it, no one can ever be reformed, and no revival will ever take place in the whole world. In this, Jesus’ words are far reaching, and they are a basic fundamental tenant of the Christian religion. Jesus did mean what he in fact said, to love God in heart, soul and mind is loving him in a superlative degree, the highest degree. Does this seem impossible? How does reformation and loving God fit together? And how does reformation of the heart, soul and mind for God’s glory and our good work itself out in light of Scripture? This is the substance of this work.

In all your boyhood dreams of growing up, did you dream of being a "nice guy"? Eldredge believes that every man longs for a battle to fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue. That is how he bears the image of God; that is what God made him to be.

Parenting is about more than molding the behavior of our kids. It's about influencing a child's heart and mind. Hearts and Minds shows parents the most effective way to influence a child's heart. This book applies the principles of Christian worldview in How Now Shall We Live to the process of raising children. It deals with issues like educational choices, how to handle the teaching of non-Christian worldview in secular schools, and how Christian worldview informs parenting choices.