How to love God with your mind

Today we'll discuss how Bible nerds can lean into their natural interests to foster a deeper understanding of and connection with God.

Make sure to pick up Gary Thomas' book "Sacred Pathways" to dig deeper and discover your spiritual love language.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

This is episode number 260 and today we'll discuss how to love God with your mind.

Speaker 2: 0:06

Welcome to the practical Christian podcast. My name is Travis Hall Britain, a former rocket scientist turned bible teacher each week both your mindblowing interviews as well as actionable tips and strategies that you can implement in your daily life to become a more effective Christian. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let's jump into your daily dose of practical Christian training. So today is

Speaker 1: 0:32

the final installment, the final chapter in our journey, the journey to discover your soul's path to God. And we've been going over different strategies connected to different spiritual temperaments from Gary Thomas's book, sacred pathways. And today we're going to wrap it up by discussing how to connect with God through your mind. Somebody that Gary calls the intellectual, but you might think of them as Bible nerds. You know the intellectual, the person who connects to God through their mind. They love digging into apologetics. They love doing intense Bible studies on just a handful of verses to try and go as deep as possible and pouring themselves into books. And commentaries truly Christians after my own heart, and the more that they learn about God, the more connected they feel to God. The intellectual activity is the the launching point for a deeper connection. Now, I remember an instance where I had a significant spiritual breakthrough and this happened over the course of the last year. One of my close friends, Paul introduced me to the Bama discipleship podcast. Something he had stumbled on. It was getting a lot out of. Now, to be honest, it took me a while to jump onto it, which looking back seems foolish because it's been so transformative for me and you know a lot of other people that have a plugged into it. I do spend a lot of time listening to podcasts, but that's neither here nor there. But hearing the Bible taught from an eastern Jewish perspective opens my eyes to an entirely new way of experiencing God. But it started with my mind. It started with a deeper understanding and my own personal study as I continued to dig into what I was learning. But there are definitely some pitfalls that intellectuals need to watch out for the first one being we tend to love controversy. We tend to love getting into these intellectual sparring matches these arguments, especially with other intellectuals. Um, you know, this, this idea that I must battle with your ideas and my ideas and try and convince you that my idea is better than your idea or at least try and get down to a deeper understanding of what we're talking about, right? That's a very easy place to go because you're kind of nerding out on the Bible, but it's easy to, to over-correct where you're pushing it too far. And even just getting into quarrels about things that in the grand scheme of things are really meaningless. At least that's how Paul puts it in his instruction to Timothy, that we should avoid corals and controversies about words. Um, so as an intellectual, you want to make sure that you are using that big Bible brain of yours to actually lift up and encourage and inspire other people. It's totally fine to have spirited discussions. You just want to make sure they stay in the proper place and that it doesn't come to dominate every discussion you have with every Christian about the Bible. The second pitfall, and I think this is a huge one, is knowing rather than doing, having the knowledge, knowing what God wants you to do, but not doing anything with it, you can't just stop it. Knowledge. You have to do what you learn, you have to put it into practice. That's why I finished every single podcast episode the same way. I say take action with what you've learned because I really want you to do that. I don't want you to just listen to my podcast and consume new information. I want it to impact your life in a meaningful way. And the only way that that can happen is if you actually do something with it. So when I say that I actually mean it. I want you to take action. And if you are an intellectual, people are digging into the Bible, learning about the Bible, learning about God. Don't just stop at the knowledge. Make sure you're implementing it into your life. And then the third pitfall that you need to watch out for if you are an intellectual is being proud. Right? There is a saying in First Corinthians Chapter Eight, knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. And I found this to be so true in my life that you can be so smart, have so much knowledge, so much understanding, but unless you are compassionate, unless you are focused on others, then it just feeds your ego, right? And so you never want to to lose your identity in your own self-perception, being proud, being arrogance, being overly confident. You never want to forget where your capacity to think and reason comes from. It's not because you're super awesome. It's not because you came out the womb that way. It is truly a gift from God. And so you want to understand and recognize that as you continue to learn, as you continue to grow and dive deeper, there's going to be a tendency to be proud. There's going be a tendency to be arrogant because of your knowledge. And so you just want to stay away from that as much as possible. Now if you would like to learn more about how to connect to God by exercising your mind, just pick up Gary Thomas's book, sacred pathways, so coming full circle. We've talked about a lot of strategies. I want to know which strategy resonates with you. I know for me personally, I am a nature loving, contemplated intellectual, so I kind of book ended this whole series with the first one and then the last two, but don't just stop with a new understanding of how you are wired to connect with God, make it a part of your normal routine and then let me know what you're going to do moving forward by posting it in the Facebook group. I would love to hear what your plan is and how this particular series has impacted you on a personal level.

Speaker 2: 5:59

That is it for today. If you liked what you heard, make sure to leave a review in apple podcasts and join the podcast Facebook group to connect with me and the rest of the podcast spot special thanks to all of my patrons who have keep this podcast advertisement free. Yeah. In part, this podcast has made an impact in your life. Please pass it along to a friend. Every day is an opportunity to grow closer to God and make a positive impact on the people around you. Take action with what you've learned can help make the world a little more like heaven. Thanks for listening and I'll talk to you soon.

Speaker 3: 6:37

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