EIGHT
The power of the mind
Now we, being small and immature, may look at someone in an advanced state and say, ‘Wow! Signs and wonders!’, but, those signs and wonders come from the mind of God - the same mind He has placed in all of us. When we mature to that higher level, it is certain that there will be greater familiarity, but, I think there will be just as many ‘wows’. It will always be ‘signs and wonders’: it will always be the ‘power of the mind of God’.
See Romans 15:19, “Through mighty signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God.”
Let us remember, here, that most of our reality is cyclic: that (perhaps) the mind of God is cyclic communication imparting the cyclic nature of the communicator.
For this, see Psalms 104:29-30, “Thou hidest Thy face, they are troubled: Thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust. Thou sendest forth Thy spirit, they are created: and Thou renewest (restart) the face of the earth.”
That being said . . .
There is more strength in spirituality than there is in corporeality. Many an individual has had an inclination to do thus and thus, but as Acts 16:7 says, “The Spirit suffered them not.”
The spirit is mightier than the flesh. I’ve no doubt that such strength is the true root of our expression ‘mind over matter.’
See how the spiritual can affect the corporeal in Ezekiel 3:14, “So the spirit lifted me up, and took me away.”
It was a matter of resignation in early man. He knew that the spirit, or mind, of God, was like the wind, changing direction without notice. Early man placed God at a distance.
See early man’s trouble with the mind of God in 1 Kings 18:12, “The Spirit of the Lord shall carry thee whither I know not . . . but I thy servant fear the Lord from my youth.”
Men not only believed that the mind of God had power over the flesh, but actual records of the occurrence of such events made their way into scripture via eyewitness accounts.
See Acts 8:39, “And when they were come up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip, that the eunuch saw him no more: and he went on his way rejoicing.”
Men placed God at great distances from themselves. The sons of men began to see that the works of God could issue out from their own communicated minds. The power within was there because the mind of God had been imparted through communication.
See 1 Corinthians 2:4, “My speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and of power.”
The sons of men began to understand.
See communication imparting the nature of the communicator in 1 Corinthians 2:10, “God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.”
Read that again, but now replace the word ‘spirit’ with the word ‘mind’. What does that do? It brings forth that God placed His mind in man so that with the mind we might search out the deep things of God. The culmination of the shared mind of God came by way of a very long process from the rare individual to the general population.
See the rare individual in Micah 3:8, “Truly I am full of power by the spirit of the Lord, and of judgment, and of might.”
We see a process akin to that of a scientist laboriously bringing about the seed of the ‘super-grape’; a process that is meant to guarantee a predictable result.
See the culmination of such labors in Luke 1:17, “He (John) shall go before Him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts (minds) of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
We speak of a new breed; we speak of the sons of mankind. We assert that to these sons of mankind is communicated the mind of God. What a power within! It is a matter of the mind, seen clearly in the attributes of mentality - such as wisdom.
See Luke 2:40, “And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him.”
Also, we speak of something quite noticeable: the power of the mind – the very imprint of God. People will run to see such a thing and will remember it when other things have been forgotten.
See the imprint of the powerful mind of God in Luke 4:14, “Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee: and there went out a fame of Him through all the region round about.”
A new and powerful mind cannot be found by looking in the same old places. One must necessarily turn his eyes in a new direction. You cannot fill a cup that is upside-down. Turn it up. At that point an action is possible.
See such a point of ‘activation’ in Numbers 24:2, “Balaam lifted up his eyes . . . and the spirit of God came upon him.”
See another point of ‘activation’ in Judges 6:34, “The Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon.”
See yet another point of ‘activation’ in Judges 11:29, “Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah.”
Most of us have occasions where something just comes ‘all over us’. A chill runs up the spine, for instance, we laugh or cry without reason, or a sense of foreboding overcharges us with adrenaline. If you are such a person, then you can easily understand the word “upon” in these verses. The use of the word points to that moment of ‘activation’; the moment when something is evidenced as having come upon or changed the individual. It is the spirit; the mind that we receive of God.
See it again in 2 Kings 2:9, “Elisha said, I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me.”
‘Upon’ may also be viewed as a ‘one-up’, a term borrowed from the video game industry.
See the son of Kish one-up in 1 Samuel 10:6 & 10-11, “The Spirit of the Lord will come upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy with them, and shalt be turned into another man. And when they came thither to the hill, behold, a company of prophets met him; and the Spirit of God came upon him, and he prophesied among them. And it came to pass, when all that knew him beforetime saw that, behold, he prophesied among the prophets, then the people said one to another, What is this that is come unto the son of Kish? Is Saul also among the prophets?”
One-ups, in the sense that I here put them forth, are temporary. Moreover, they are general and may speak of the elemental nature that lies dormant in man. It may have been a quick fix that a hero flew into a rage and slew thousands single-handedly, or it may be a matter of interpretation on man’s part or the fact that history seems to romanticize certain individuals.
Othniel seemed a young man of great determination; hailed as a deliverer, he was obviously the right man for that time. But Judges 3:10 may only be speaking of the ferocity of a warrior when it states, “The Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he judged Israel, and went out to war: and the Lord delivered Chushanrishathaim king of Mesopotamia into his hand; and his hand prevailed against Chushanrishathaim.”
On the other hand, God may have elevated Othniel to that level to address that single issue. On the third hand, however, if it was the ‘mind’ of God that came upon Othniel - well, God is also considered a man of war. We consider also the ‘might’ of a person that is not always evident, the skill and prowess that are evidenced in times of dire need, even the boldness to act as being of the communicated nature of God.
Sometimes it is there for the present need, as in Judges 14:5-6, “Behold, a young lion roared against him. And the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and he rent him as he would have rent a kid.”
See also Judges 14:19, “The Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he went down to Ashkelon, and slew thirty men.”
At other times, what we see is a more permanent change in the individual’s nature or character, as in 1 Samuel 16:13, “Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the midst of his brethren: and the Spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward.”
When men became greater than their everyday self, or when they seemed bigger than life, the ‘spirit of the Lord’ may have been used generically to reference traits such as bold action, focus, or zeal.
See Judges 13:25, “The Spirit of the Lord began to move him at times in the camp of Dan between Zorah and Eshtaol.”
And then - there is the romance of the berserker. Flying into a rage has often been romanticized. It is romanticized even in our present day by those who follow such sports as wrestling and boxing. In the old day, though, rage was a part of the ‘warrior persona’.
Why people think that flying into a rage has something to do with God I have yet to piece together, but see rage romanticized in 1 Samuel 11:6, “And the Spirit of God came upon Saul when he heard those tidings, and his anger was kindled greatly.”
It may be that people respect a decisive solution; as when God deals with man in no uncertain terms.
See romanticized rage multiplied in Judges 15:14-15, “When he came unto Lehi, the Philistines shouted against him: and the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and the cords that were upon his arms became as flax that was burnt with fire, and his bands loosed from off his hands. And he found a new jawbone of an ass, and put forth his hand, and took it, and slew a thousand men therewith.”
What if - the mind of God, at least in Moses, was a quality that grew? Do we see the ‘harvesting’ and replanting of God’s mind in our next reference?
Glean Numbers 11:25 & 29, “The Lord came down in a cloud, and spake unto him, and took of the spirit that was upon him, and gave it unto the seventy elders: and it came to pass, that, when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied, and did not cease. Would God that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit upon them!”
Those seventy elders were not always prophets. They were ordinary elders right up until the action was taken. When I say action, I mean a charge to commence; a beginning of some kind. I speak of a thing often called an ‘anointing’, as when Samuel anointed David: it was only afterward that the spirit was upon him.
It is interesting to view this next verse in that light. Luke 4:18-19, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He hath sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.”
It is a thing of the mind of God that we may see what is said. Christ did not say that He was sent to deliver, but that He was sent to ‘preach’ deliverance'. That, of course, is the communication that imparts the nature of the communicator - and Christ, after all, is deliverance.
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