Clouded Minds, Clouded Hearts

When man-made religion is mixed with the Word of God, things really go awry. Pure truth becomes compromised truth, and what seems so clear in the Bible becomes out of focus and very worldly. Proverbs 4:23 says Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life. There is a reason we need to guard our hearts from impure religion that is flawed in every detail. The reason is that when it gets into our heart and is funneled down from our mind, it changes our stance on life itself.

In Matthew 15 Jesus spoke against man-made thinking and man-made traditions and the following are His words. Matthew 15: 1 Some Pharisees and teachers of religious law now arrived from Jerusalem to see Jesus. They asked him, ² “Why do your disciples disobey our age-old tradition? For they ignore our tradition of ceremonial hand washing before they eat.” ³ Jesus replied, “And why do you, by your traditions, violate the direct commandments of God? ⁴ For instance, God says, ‘Honor your father and mother,’ and ‘Anyone who speaks disrespectfully of father or mother must be put to death.’ ⁵ But you say it is all right for people to say to their parents, ‘Sorry, I can’t help you. For I have vowed to give to God what I would have given to you.’ ⁶ In this way, you say they don’t need to honor their parents. And so you cancel the word of God for the sake of your own tradition. ⁷ You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you, for he wrote, ⁸ ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.⁹ Their worship is a farce, for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.

How do we become immersed in untruths that are presented as scriptural? We rely on others' impressions as our religion; that human filter makes us think we know the deep truth, when in reality the "truth" is flawed and compromised by their background. Traditions are dangerous at best, and relying on these unBiblical traditions will take us down a road that not only affects us, but affects all we interact with on a religious level. The traditions of those religious people actually violated the direct commandments of God. Dangerous to believe it and even more dangerous to teach it and make it a life teaching that directs our faith walk. They were actually canceling the Word of God for the sake of their man-made traditions, and passed it down from generation to generation, where it was presented as pure truth from the Word of God. But it wasn't, and Jesus called them and us out on it as He exposed the hypocrisy. Jesus called them blind guides and called their worship a farce as they taught man-made ideas as commands from God. Clouded minds cause clouded hearts. We are supposed to be guarding our hearts, so don't let those man-made thoughts even enter your mind. Only God's Word. Only God's Word!!

When you hear something that is more religious than scriptural, you need to flee and not listen to it anymore. If you are already so steeped in man-made traditions, you need to repent as John the Baptist told the religious leaders of the day to do. Keep a clear mind and study the Word yourself, and it will affirm an unclouded heart as well. How do we keep our minds on the pure truth from God? Paul said it this way to the believers in Corinth.

1 Corinthians 2: ¹⁰ But it was to us that God revealed these things by his Spirit. For his Spirit searches out everything and shows us God’s deep secrets. ¹¹ No one can know a person’s thoughts except that person’s own spirit, and no one can know God’s thoughts except God’s own Spirit. ¹² And we have received God’s Spirit (not the world’s spirit), so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us. ¹³ When we tell you these things, we do not use words that come from human wisdom. Instead, we speak words given to us by the Spirit, using the Spirit’s words to explain spiritual truths. ¹⁴ But people who aren’t spiritual^[g] can’t receive these truths from God’s Spirit. It all sounds foolish to them and they can’t understand it, for only those who are spiritual can understand what the Spirit means. ¹⁵ Those who are spiritual can evaluate all things, but they themselves cannot be evaluated by others. ¹⁶ For, “Who can know the Lord’s thoughts?    Who knows enough to teach him?”

But we understand these things, for we have the mind of Christ.

Paul was faced with these "blind guides" everywhere, and He relied on the Holy Spirit to guide his steps in his faith walk. I believe this is what we must do as well. Guard our minds and guard our hearts, and ask the Holy Spirit to lead us in every step we take in our faith walk. Then we will have the mind of Christ as the Holy Spirit shows us the true way to the abundant life.

The Pilgrimage Continues,

David Warren