8064	Forums / Theology Forum / Opening Up	on: December 24, 2006, 02:45:00 PM
I agree with you jlee. It is very helpful to trust someone to listen to us and uphold us. First we are very complex creatures . We have deep emotions, and we are always thinking of something that will either lead to anxiety or will lead to peace and tranquility. There are a thousand avenues of thought in a persons mind and there are just as many intersections. In our culture we are trained to think small thoughts that are insignificant when it comes to closing down the avenues of thoughts that lead to sin and because our thinking is of little consequence we find that our faculties of mind, will and emotion tumultuously out of sync. In this paradigm we become captives to our imagination. When we imagine ourselves to be at peace having our faculties working in unison but  we are not resting in Christ then we are going to return to our way of shallow thinking. Yet we must become aware of our tendencies to trust in those thoughts that will lead us into our besetting sins. First we have bent toward a certain way of thinking by our being in state of sin. Because of the complexity of the problem of our minds natural waywardness, we  deceive ourselves into thinking that our problem does not have layers of deception but only that we are unhappy on the surfice and we need to seek a remedy that will give a short term relief. We are always bent toward short term solutions because we are also physically burdened with pain and  by our natural sense we want to live rather than to die. Here the mixture of the physical has a direct effect on the way we think and we naturally want to get the short term remedy. Its just like taking medication for our physical pain. We get relief from our pain and in our carnal paradigm we tend to trust in the medication rather than in Him alone. This way of thinking is so ingrained in each one of us that it blinds us to really experiencing freedom in Christ by resting in His work alone. The good meds. lead us into imaginative shallow ways of thinking. Instead of seeing Christ in the serpent pole we worship the serpent on the pole. But the truth is our trust is always mixed with corruption. When we begin to rest in Christ then we even begin to trust that we are resting in Christ by our own trust. So this is were there is more to trusting in Christ than just thinking rite thoughts. There is a sense of Christ that cannot really be explained. There is a spiritual sense in His divine illumination that causes us to not trust in our trusting Him. Because our faith is a gift, then we know that trusting is something that does not come natural to us. The paradigm of trusting then is a supernatural paradigm. So really trusting in Him does not originate from an intellectual paradigm. Even though the mind and the intellectual thoughts are a part of trusting, these do not lead to trusting in Him alone. Intellectually accepting a doctrinal position is just one part of the trusting paradigm. There must be a new will, a new sight , a new hearing, and a new touch. There must be a new man in order for there to be an real spiritual understanding of trusting.