Finding Your Own Goliath: A Series of Sermons on Psychology in the Bible

By Byron Wardlaw

The Bible mentions giants, most notably the giant Goliath. Giants put fear in the hearts and minds of most of the Hebrew populace. Goliath kept Saul's army frozen in fear; they were unable to fulfill their purpose as soldiers. Goliath never did anything, and yet he was an effective deterrent. The story of David versus Goliath was battle of flesh and blood. There is a deeper meaning to Goliath and the giants in the promised land, and it has to do with fears, insecurities, and anxieties that lie deep within each one of us. In fact, those fears are so deep within us that David describes them as "secret faults" that are in the "hidden part." These fears exist and greatly affect each person, but they are so well guarded that one is not even aware of their existence. These are the giants that keep one from having the faith to go down into the valley and fight the battles of life. Even the apostle Paul acknowledged the profound influence of these giants and could only proclaim, "Oh, wretched man that I am." The truth that will set one free is when one comes to the realization that they need Christ to help foster an awareness of the existence of those inner fears. David noted that God desires that one will find "truth in the inward parts." The battles in life are not carnal, "for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood" but against the giants in the depths of one's own spirit. Human nature urges people to concentrate on external phenomena when the real giants that impede prosperity, potentiality, peace, faith, and love are internal phenomena. Each one only needs to find their own personal Goliaths that lie within.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9781645157977

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Finding Your Own Goliath

A Series of Sermons on Psychology in the Bible

Byron Wardlaw

Copyright © 2019 by Byron Wardlaw

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

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Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 1

Spiritual Slavery and Bondage = Fear

There is an interesting point I want to make because it points directly to the downfall of man: fear! This quote comes from a specific verse that has to do with the cataclysmic downfall of mankind.

And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking toward those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. (Luke 21:25-26, KJV)

Some would argue that fear heightens one’s ability to make critical decisions under stress, but the Bible disagrees. We are in amazing and exciting times that generate much fear, but guess what? Man has not changed at all. Man’s greatest influence tends to be fear.

Men’s Hearts Fail for Fear

Notice that this speaks about the heart. I’m sure that most of you know that when the Bible speaks about the heart, it is not referring to the organ in your chest that is responsible for pumping blood to your body; rather, biblical references to the heart symbolize the spirit of a person. What is interesting about the reference to hearts in Luke 21:26 is actually a double entendre that means that the spirit of many was failing, but also it refers to that physically, spiritual (unconscious) fear and anxiety are stressors that lead to heart attacks; life is in the blood (Leviticus 17:11).

One of the themes that I keep returning to is the fact that the opposite of spiritual fear is faith in God. Spiritual fear has nothing to do with the fear of God that we are to have; it is mentioned over and over again in the Bible. Spiritual fear is not from God at all.

For God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. (2 Timothy 1:7, KJV)

That verse makes it clear that spiritual fear is not from God and it establishes the fact there are opposites of those fears. First, because spiritual fear is the opposite of faith in God, we do not have access to God’s power. Moreover, without faith in God, we are not exhibiting love for our own self, and when we cannot love our own self, we are not able to love anyone or anything else. Finally, man was created to be dependent upon God in the garden of Eden. Somehow, Eve wanted to be as God or like God, which allowed her thought processes to mutate where she could reason that she would somehow justify that she could eat the fruit that she was forbidden to eat. Many of you are probably saying to yourself, What was she thinking? That is the point; one of the evidences that we are allowing the spirit of fear to work in our lives is that we will not be thinking correctly—that is, we will not have a sound mind.

For you have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but you have received the Spirit of adoption, by which we cry, Abba, Father. (Romans 8:15, KJV)

Fear is bondage, and in it is slavery. You have seen those people that are always complaining and afraid; they always seem to be a victim and rarely or never a victor. They have a slave mentality and are not free. It seems as if other phenomena are in control of their lives.

God’s Power

Even atheists and Satanists want power: self-power. The reason for power is leverage control. Of course, as Christians, we understand that the only power that is acceptable is God’s power. I don’t mean the power to cause earthquakes or make people do things the way we want them to. That’s cheap satanic and Harry Potter power: a cheap parlor magic trick. There is a power that we do get when we become Christians.

And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry you in the city of Jerusalem, until you are endued with power from on high. (Luke 24:49, KJV)

Christ gave this power to the new Christians in the book of Acts chapter 2.

God’s power works through us. The only thing that holds God’s power back is our own ego! But the more we rid our own self of self, that leaves more room for Christ to work in and through us. That’s when we can do great things in his name.

I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (Ephesians 3:16–21, NIV)

I rarely hear anyone talk about this Scripture. Most Christians I know walk mostly in their own power, not God’s, and that’s too bad. Of course, on the other hand, some do go overboard and adopt the Harry Potter Christianity by thinking that they are some spiritual gladiator. Most people that think about God’s power think about it manifesting like Harry Potter. Most of the power that Ephesians 3 is talking about is the power to persevere and to get through impossible circumstances. It is the power to finish and the power to love in the midst of chaos, confusion, destruction, and violence. That takes real power. We need to battle, and we need to battle in the spiritual realm, but we need to be rooted in the truth and reality of Scripture. This is where knowledge of Scripture comes in handy. Christ battled Satan by quoting Scripture, but Christ’s greatest weapon was not Scripture but faith! Faith is a result of several phenomena the most important of which is a personal relationship with Christ. Of course, Scripture is spiritual truth, and that’s why it is a valid weapon to use against our two greatest spiritual foes: Satan and self. Satan uses my own selfish desires against me, but I actually do pretty good on my own without Satan. We all do. Nonetheless, we will always have demonic influences nagging at us. Moreover, we saw in the book of Job that Satan can do some pretty bad things in the physical realm to us. Satan got the Sabeans to attack and take away his oxen and his donkeys. They also killed all his servants that were tending the oxen and the donkeys. Next fire from God killed more servants and all his sheep. After that, Satan got the Chaldeans to steal his camels and kill more servants. Then his sons and daughters were killed when a house collapsed on them. As if all that weren’t enough, Satan gave Job boils. My point here is that Satan has the ability to do much harm to us. But remember this: he can only do what God allows him to. If our faith is great and if our love for God (and our own self) is great, then we can weather these trials just like Job did. That’s how he did it. He did it through his great relationship with God. Through all those trials and afflictions, Job knew that God loved him and that God would not do anything to Job that was not beneficial to Job. After all, Job got twice as much back, and it states this in Job 42:12, So the LORD blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning. The point that I want to make is that Job did not look at the physical appearance of the bad things that were happening to him. He did not let Satan defeat him because his attention was not in the physical or even on Satan; he stayed focused on God. Remember the story of when Peter walked on water (Matthew 14:24–33)? When Peter was focused on Christ, he could do the impossible, but when he got distracted in verse 30, read this: He was afraid; and beginning to sink. When we are not focused on Christ, that’s when we get afraid, and that’s when we can give Satan’s influences too much attention. If we stay focused on Christ, then we won’t be afraid, and we will have all of God’s power working for us. How can Satan overcome us at that point? Just like Job, we won’t be misled, and just like Peter, we can walk on water. All this recognition of God’s power is rudimentary to Christianity and is right there in the beginning of our salvation. In the salvation verse, it says this:

That if you shall confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and shall believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you shall be saved. (Romans 10:9, KJV)

One of the things that we must believe is that Christ is Lord (God). Additionally, we must believe that our God has power—that is, the power that raised the Lord Jesus from the dead. If we don’t believe that God has power, then we will end up like Peter did, and Christ will say to us, O you of little faith, why did you doubt? (Matthew 14:31). Much of our concept of faith in God needs to be based upon our ability to know that our God is a powerful God and that his power will work in and through us. This concept of overcoming always comes back to the basic spiritual tenet of faith in God. If we don’t believe (in our heart [spirit/unconscious]) that God has power to control all life, then we will take control and act upon our own petty power; that’s the original sin. When our hearts fail us for fear, we will regress (into self) away from God and rebel against him by being like God (Genesis 3:5) and doing things our own way.

Slavery/Bondage

Each individual is a slave to many things. Man is a slave to pleasure, comfort, and ease. Many more are slaves to money, to jobs, to relationships, to drugs, and to cell phones. All we humans are also imprisoned by the spiritual fears we have either inherited or learned; for instance, we all have those pet peeves that just drive us up the wall and cause us to react with poor behaviors. This is not a psychology class (I recommend you take one), so we will not deeply examine the various phenomenon that cause people to get angry, to kill each other, to feel like we are better than others, or to lie, cheat, or steal. What we do want to examine is the cause of all those dysfunctional human characteristics: fear!

Key verse:

For you have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but you have received the Spirit of adoption, by which we cry, Abba, Father. (Romans 8:15, KJV)

For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, Abba, Father. (Romans 8:15, NIV)

Mankind Tends to be Victimized/Enslaved but God Doesn’t Want That

We are all slaves to many things, and guess what? We actually hate our own self for being a coward in life. The worst part is that these fears are spiritual fears, and that is what psychologists and psychiatrists call unconscious fears, and that means we aren’t even aware that we have those fears. Our minds have convinced us that those fears don’t even exist and so we react to people and to circumstances and blame others and circumstances for all the bad stuff that happens in our lives when most of our problems are caused by our own self. It’s the reality of this insane state of humanity that caused each person to also be afraid of nothing, and that’s what we call anxiety. With all this fear, it’s no wonder that people are, in general, unhappy. And when people are unhappy, they want others to share in their unhappiness. I worked for a couple of people who were quite wealthy, and yes, even with all that money and with a staff to carry out their every whim, they were very unhappy. In fact, they were even more unhappy than the poor people I know. Their lives were frustrating because no matter what they did to try to have fun, those things did not make them happy and they took their unhappiness out on everyone around them. They wanted everyone around them to be as miserable as they were.

The fact is that people who try to orchestrate their own happiness will be frustrated and miserable. As much as a person believes they know what will make them happy, they don’t. Only God can know what will make each and every person happy, and yes, God cares that each and every person would be happy and fulfilled.

Of course, there is a biblical passage that deals with this very circumstance. Most of you know the biblical history when the Jews were conquered by the Babylonians and were taken from the Holy Land for seventy years. After seventy years in exile, the Jews were allowed to go back to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple. Sometime after the temple was rebuilt, the Jews needed to think about protection for the city, and so they knew that the walls had to rebuilt. Nehemiah was a Jew who was still in exile and was a high-ranking, personal servant to King Artaxerxes. Listen to this exchange:

In the month of Nisan in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was brought for him, I took the wine and gave it to the king. I had not been sad in his presence before; so the king asked me, Why does your face look so sad when you are not ill? This can be nothing but sadness of heart. I was very much afraid. (Nehemiah 2:1–2, NIV)

Notice that the king noticed that Nehemiah was sad and was concerned for Nehemiah’s happiness. This story is a historical fact, and so it really happened, but it is also an analogy for how God, our King, cares for us. He knows when we are sad and wants to call to our attention the fact that we need to deal with the cause of our unhappiness. We just discussed the fact that the primary cause of our unhappiness is unconscious fears that we are not aware of. But notice that when King called attention to Nehemiah’s sadness, that’s when Nehemiah became aware of his fear. In fact, Nehemiah said, I was very much afraid.

Our Own Spiritual Fears Enslave and Victimize Us

In these scriptures, Nehemiah was aware of what made him afraid; it was the fact that the walls of Jerusalem were no good. But when we use this as an analogy, we humans don’t really know why we are so unhappy. The truth is that the unconscious/spiritual fear came to conscious awareness after the king called attention to the sadness. Nehemiah knew why, but even though we have problems, we don’t always know why; when God helps us to call attention to the fact that we are unhappy because of our fears, he will also help us to identify those fears, and that is the next step in this biblical passage too.

But I said to the king, May the king live forever! Why should my face not look sad when the city where my fathers are buried lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire? The king said to me, What is it you want? Then I prayed to the God of heaven, and I answered the king, If it pleases the king and if your servant has found favor in his sight, let him send me to the city in Judah where my fathers are buried so that I can rebuild it. (Nehemiah 2:3–5, NIV)

Once our attention is called to the nature of our unhappiness, we will all find that for each of us, it is the fact that the spiritual protective walls around the temple of our own heart (John 14:23; 1 Corinthians 3:9, 16–17, 6:19; Ephesians 2:20–22) are buried, lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire. We need some work done in order to repair our protective walls. The problem is that human nature causes each of us to think that we are able to know what we need to do in order to be repaired. Just like my wealthy friends thought they know what they needed to make them happy, that was, in reality, the greatest cause of their own unhappiness because it called attention to the fact that they are not as smart as they thought they are (Romans 12:3). That was Eve’s problem too as she thought she could know what was good and what was not good for her in the moment (Genesis 3:5).

That original sin of Eve—that is, the attitude that believes that we know what is good and what is not good for us (Genesis 3:5)—is the primary cause of all sin because at that point, we begin to believe in our own instincts rather than to believe that God has a better plan for us. That is the nature of every sin that we do. We choose self over God, and then life becomes a disaster. No wonder Nehemiah was afraid when the king called attention to his sadness; for us, when God helps us to call attention to our sadness, we will be afraid too because we will understand that the cause of our sadness is our own unconscious attitude that believes that we know as much as God.

The Cause of Sadness

The cause of this sadness is fear! Nehemiah was afraid to approach the king just as we are afraid to approach God, our King, with our most basic vulnerabilities. God loves us enough to want to help us to rebuild our own walls of defense. Fear is not part of man’s original creation. Listen to this:

For God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. (2 Timothy 1:7, KJV)

God created man to be free, and that all begins with freedom from fear. Consider the fact that the reason why Eve wanted autonomy from God was the fact that she feared that God would not do things the way she wanted. That is true. God’s way is best, but because His way is unknown to us, we fear it. Man fears the unknown, change, and the new; this particular irrational, spiritual fear is called misoneism.¹ When that fear is stronger than our faith in God, then we will take control from and, like Eve, become like God, knowing good and evil (Genesis 3:5). We will decide what is good in the moment and what is bad. This means every decision in the present moment will be motivated by what we believe is the most comfortable and pleasurable for us. We will come to believe that we know what is good and what is bad (evil) for us, for others, and even for God. We shift our faith from faith in God to faith in self.

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. (Proverbs 3:5, NIV)

We have these fears, and they are spiritual fears because they are part of our unconscious, subconscious (or spiritual) nature. They are conveniently hidden from our conscious nature, so we are not aware of them, but they are there nonetheless. David was well aware of this fact:

Behold, you desire truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part you shall make me to know wisdom. (Psalm 51:6, KJV)

It is those hidden spiritual fears that cause us to do the irrational things that we do, and that is because those fears are, themselves, irrational.

Fear puts us in a fog, taking over our perception, capturing our attention, and focusing our mind on the most endangering aspect of an experience. In short, while fear can save our lives, it can also imprison our perception and make us see what is not there.²

Who here wants to be imprisoned with false perceptions? Another word for imprison is bondage, and that is what our key verse, Romans 8:15, clearly states. We humans are imprisoned or in bondage to our hidden fears, and just as David wanted to be consciously aware of his hidden fears, we should want to know what is in our hidden part too. Remember that Psalm 51 is David’s prayer of repentance and the integral part of repentance is finding out what causes you and I to do the destructive things that we do. This is what psychologists and psychiatrists do too. We can know what is in our unconscious nature, and psychiatrists help us to know that part of our nature. Psalm 51 makes it clear that we can know what is in our hidden part through fearlessly employing biblical principles. By the way, David describes those things in the hidden part as faults that need God to be dealt with.

Who can understand his errors? cleanse me from secret faults. (Psalm 19:12, KJV)

The Cause of Irrational, Spiritual Fear

Part of those fears that drive us away from God and cause us to lean on our own understanding is genetic, and part is learned in our early developmental stages. The fact that some of our spiritual fears are inherited is biblical.

You shall not bow down yourself unto them, nor serve them: for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. (Deuteronomy 5:9, KJV)

The fact that poor personality traits are passed down is commonly known. Children of alcoholics may have the genes that cause them to also be alcoholics. Children of angry parents may inherit angry genes and will be prone to anger. These proclivities are, as the second commandment states, passed down for generations. Today, modern psychology and modern science have confirmed that there are genetic markers associated with violent behavior, ADHD and substance abuse. Scientific researchers have found at least 2 specific genetic contributors: the monoamine oxidase A genotype (MAOA, a.k.a., the warrior gene’’) and a variant of the gene cadherin 13 (CDH 13). l won’t get into the science but just Google genes and criminal behavior or ‘·criminal genetic research and you can confirm this data (and more) for yourself. In Nehemiah 2:5, Nehemiah remarks that he needs to go where my fathers are buried so that I can rebuild it. This is mentioned in Proverbs as well.

The simple inherit folly: but the prudent are crowned with knowledge. (Proverbs 14:18, KJV)

We need to go where our fathers built faulty personality traits that were passed down to us.

Of course, we also know that children who do not have these bad genes can learn poor behavior as they are developing as children; this why good parenting is so important.

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. (Proverbs 22:6, KJV)

The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame. (Proverbs 29:15, KJV)

Modern psychology has begun to define the developmental stages of personality, but they look for inherited traits as well; they label inherited traits versus learned traits as nature versus nurture. These stages, whatever they are, mold our personality, and any irrational fears that we have will cause us to act irrationally, and because those fears are in our hidden part, we react to the world around us without even thinking. Those irrational fears keep us in, as Romans 8:15 states, bondage to those fears. Here is how modern psychology defines that bondage to those hidden and irrational fears.

If we have preconceived ideas, if we are taken over by judgments, our plateaus of probability or our peaks of activation will block us from being truly open, from having open presence.³

Our past experiences, especially of unresolved trauma, restrict our plateaus and create valenced states that bias how we’ll be able to openly assess various situations.⁴

Fight or flight narrows our focus of attention on strategies of attack or routes of escape. This narrowing of attention shuts off the openness of presence as we become filled with biased probabilities or fixed activation...Naturally a feeling of helplessness that can evoke the freeze reaction also pervades our whole system and limits our options for response and thinking.⁵ Instead of being present with mindfulness, we become removed, alone, and paralyzed. This is how we move from being receptive to being reactive.⁶

With unresolved trauma, we can propose, the sensory implications of motor actions are skewed toward vigilance for danger and assault. Our past experiences create patterns of plateaus through which we filter ongoing sensory input to bias our perception.⁷

Mindsight involves not only sensing the present, but deeply knowing the past so that we are not imprisoned by unexamined elements of our experience that restrict us in the future.⁸

And you can also look straight into overwhelming event and pull together the unassembled pieces of implicit memory that may be fragmenting your life and preventing you from living fully-especially under stressful conditions.⁹

... restrictive patterns pull us away from the plane of possibility and keep us imprisoned in repeating thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.¹⁰

There are many references to the present and presence. We were made to live in the moment without being bound by the fears of past experiences and by the fear of the future. The problem is that if we don’t deal with those unresolved issues of the past (that pervert our ability to properly perceive the world around us), then those old issues will continually haunt the way the way we look at and react to life in the present. The fact that this is true is that the very nature of God is revealed in his name: I Am. God’s name is rendered in the present tense, and in reality, all that we have is the present. Life is right now, and we were meant to live in the now. When Christ told us how to live, he told us to take no thought (in other words, do not worry) about our life, our shelter, our clothing, and even our next meal (Matthew 6:25–33). Those are the things that we humans worry about the most as they affect our survival. If we are not to worry about those things, then why should we worry about lesser things like how we are treated by others or what kind of car we think we need?

In our spiritual (hidden or unconscious) part, we are in bondage to so many irrational fears (Romans 8:15), and that’s why we make so many bad decisions. Biblically, we make bad decisions because we unconsciously believe that these irrational fears are valid and that’s insanity; that’s why 2 Timothy 1:7 says that when we embrace these fears, we will not have a sound mind. The way that the psychiatrist Dr. Siegel articulated that absence of sound mind was when he stated that we would be removed, alone, and paralyzed…imprisoned by unexamined elements of our experience that restrict us in the future…imprisoned in repeating thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and that results in fragmenting your life and preventing you from living fully especially under stressful conditions. Those traits are not a part of a sound mind, and so once again, modern psychology agrees with the Bible. Isn’t the Bible great?

The sound mind that is without fear will have faith that God has got our present circumstance in his control, and therefore, we should have no basis to fear anything at all. In actuality, all spiritual fears are irrational because God has everything that really matters in his control.

Caveat: In the last quote from Dr. Siegel, he used the term mindfulness. I want to careful with the term mindfulness. This term is often associated with Buddhism. Beware that mindfulness is often associated with meditation and eastern meditation urges one to empty the mind of all thoughts. On the other hand, Christians are to meditate as well but not by emptying the mind. Rather, the Judeo-Christian method for meditation has a focused purpose, that is, to meditate on the word of God, Christ and godly concepts: Meditate on these things... (Joshua I :8; Psalm 63:6, 77: 12, 119: 15; et al). The difference is profound. Christian mindfulness stays focused on Christ and God’s Word in the present and that means always. I am not trying to merge Buddhism with Christianity. Let’s first look at the definition of mindfulness.

If you spend any time in mindfulness circles, then you’ve frequently heard (and probably recited) that mindfulness means to pay attention of purpose in the present moment and nonjudgmentally.

These insights by Jon Kabat-Zinn and Thich Nhat Hanh respectively are powerful and practical. The emphasis being on being purposeful is crucial as a counterbalance to the automatic pilot default inhabits our mind most of the time. You can purposefully bring your attention to your child’s smile, to the feeling of the steering wheel, or to the exhale of your breathing. This is mindfulness.

The offering of aliveness in the second definition calls us to wake up from the sleepwalking of our life and that we have the opportunity to do so through the entirety of our day. It reminds me of a clever observation by Benjamin Franklin: Some people die at twenty-five and aren’t buried until seventy-five.

Let’s advance these insights by exploring three other definitions, culminating to the official definition of mindfulness used by scientists.

1. Mindfulness is letting go of taking things for granted.

2. Mindfulness means to return to the present moment.

A common misconception about mindfulness is that it means to stay in the present moment. People practice meditation and get quickly frustrated by their mind’s disinterest in staying in the present moment. Many will exclaim, I can’t be mindful. I can’t stay in the moment! But the reality is no one’s mind stays in the present moment. And considering the nature of what our mind needs to process and compute in each moment, we would not be able to control our mind to chronically stay. But we have control over the return. We can always return our mind the present moment—return it to our breath or our senses which can found in the present moment. This definition is simplistic and clear but not specific enough.

3. Mindfulness is the self-regulation of attention with an attitude of curiosity, openness, and acceptance.¹¹

The scientific definition (#3) addresses one’s having an attitude of curiosity, openness, and acceptance. That is a Christian principle and is substantiated in the words of Christ.

And said, Verily I say unto you, Except you be converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:3, KJV)

From a purely denotative context, the word mindfulness is really about one’s ability to focus in the moment. In this case, eat the meat and spit out the bones. This article was written by Ryan M. Niemiec, PsyD, and he makes it clear that the mind of the individual tends to wander. It’s hard to be successful at anything when one’s mind is wandering all over the place. I remember one time when I had my first job my supervisor came up to me, after I had made several mistakes, and said, Where’s your head at? I’m sure most of you have heard that at some point. The point is that we all tend to think of too many things in the moment that have nothing to do with the task of the moment. There are other factors too, like when a person who has just been through a painful, catastrophic breakup in a relationship. This will affect how they approach their next relationship, and that can be detrimental. Someone who was betrayed or abused by an authority figure as a child might distrust all authority figures years later in their present relationships. I hope you get the point. We all carry some baggage that affects how we perceive the present. All kinds of thoughts can flood one’s mind and diminish the focus on whatever has to be done in the present. Listen to what Christ had to say:

Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, How shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knows that you have need of all these things. But seek you first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. (Matthew 6:31–33, KJV)

Christ is telling us that he will control the things you need in the future if you will do what he wants you to in the present; he knows that human nature, and it’s inherent wandering mind will diminish one’s ability to focus and efficiently accomplish the task at hand. We don’t need to be worried about the future.

There are also things that are detrimental to us when we live in the past. When it comes to the trauma of the past, it affects our present. The apostle Paul had some great advice:

Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before. (Philippians 3:13, KJV)

Christ and Paul know that it is imperative that we have a clear mind so that we can properly serve others and serve Christ. We can better do whatever is before us in the moment if our mind is unencumbered, and when we do that, Christ will take care of the rest (Matthew 6:33). Adolescents with ADHD are known for their wandering mind, and although this is an acute opposite of mindfulness, we can all perceive how important awareness, openness, and focus are in order for us to be efficient and prosperous in whatever we are doing. We know we need to stay in relationship with and focused upon Christ (1 Thessalonians 5:17); we are also told how to think:

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. (Philippians 4:8, KJV)

Just because the concept of mindfulness is usually associated with Buddhism doesn’t mean there isn’t a Christian version of mindfulness. There is. Just like there is a Buddhist form of meditation, so there is a Christian form of meditation. The word meditate is mentioned many times in the Bible. The point I want to make is that while I have included a quote that includes the term mindfulness, it does not take on any religious significance. Mindfulness is being used in a more clinical way and has to do with one’s ability to focus. I think that the quotes from Christ and Paul have substantiated the view that the concept and basic premises of mindfulness is an important factor.

The Solution

We just touched upon the solution to our fears, and that is faith in God; but that faith can only be realized when we discover what fears we have that keep us in the bondage that imprisons us to forsake that faith and lean on our own understanding. The battle that we wage is not against the things that we can see like people; rather, our battle is spiritual in nature because that is the primary cause of everything.

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places. (Ephesians 6:12, KJV)

Because we wrestle against spiritual things, our battle must be conducted on the spiritual level, and so we must employ spiritual tools. Even modern psychology agrees that faith and truth, two spiritual tools, are necessary in our battle against our imprisonment that results from the bondage to fear:

Faith

With trust, we move into the plane of possibility and release restrictions to our innate capacity for moving toward integrated states. We can let our defenses down, soften our peaks, broaden our plateaus, and move fluidly between possibility and activation.¹² Our most powerful therapeutic tool is trust.¹³

Truth

Truth, even about our enabling constraints that limit us, sets us free.

Within that freedom, we find healing, hope, and coherence.¹⁴

What the psychiatrist calls trust, we know as faith in God. The truth is that when we embrace fear, we (like Eve) will stop trusting in God and will begin to lean on our own understanding (Proverbs 3:5). That last quote from Dr. Siegel is absolutely true because our most powerful therapeutic tool is trust in a loving, all-knowing, and powerful God. Without faith in God, we will still lean on our own understanding, and that’s why each and every person makes a zillion imperfect decisions each day. In Ephesians 6, we learn that we fight spiritually with spiritual armor like the shield of faith (Ephesians 6:16) as well as the belt of truth (Ephesians 6:14). There are other pieces of armor too, and they are all important, but they are all tools used to battle those spiritual fears within our secret, hidden part that cause us to do counterproductive things.

We talked about the fact that man is unaware of the unconscious fears that lie within. You have probably all heard of the psychological term defense mechanisms. Those are called defense mechanisms because they defend our spiritual temple that we have built in our own heart (John 14:23; 1 Corinthians 6:19; 2 Corinthians 2:16; Ephesians 2:19–22). Unfortunately, the temple that most of us build is a temple that puts me first and God second. Those defense mechanisms form a strong wall that no one, not even our own self, can break through. Moreover, just like in Nehemiah, our walls are in shambles. Do you see why we need God’s help? We need to break down those phony defense mechanisms and rebuild walls that have a God foundation. It is because we cannot see our own unconscious, spiritual fears, and it is because we have defended and hidden those fears so well that we need God and others to help us to break down those old bad walls so that we can rebuild. In fact, that’s the next scripture in Nehemiah.

Then the king, with the queen sitting beside him, asked me, How long will your journey take, and when will you get back? It pleased the king to send me; so I set a time. I also said to him, If it pleases the king, may I have letters to the governors of Trans-Euphrates, so that they will provide me safe-conduct until I arrive in Judah? And may I have a letter to Asaph, keeper of the king’s forest, so he will give me timber to make beams for the gates of the citadel by the temple and for the city wall and for the residence I will occupy? And because the gracious hand of my God was upon me, the king granted my requests. So I went to the governors of Trans-Euphrates and gave them the king’s letters. The king had also sent army officers and cavalry with me. When Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite official heard about this, they were very much disturbed that someone had come to promote the welfare of the Israelites. (Nehemiah 2:6–10, NIV)

God Sends Others to Help Us

We live in an age where people don’t want help from anyone. People want to appear strong, courageous, and intelligent. People certainly don’t want others to know that they are hurting and afraid. In fact, when most people get in trouble, they don’t go to get help from friends, pastors, counselors, psychologists, or other sources; instead, they try to fix their problems by themselves. They go to the self-help section of their closest bookstore. They fear the fact that others might perceive them as weak and unable to overcome. Of course, they are never smart enough to logically deduce that because they are the source of their own problem, they will never be able to correctly see that they are the problem. My wealthy friends wouldn’t listen to anyone else, and they always thought that they knew just what would make them happy and fulfilled; they were the unhappiest people I ever knew. They were surrounded by people who cared about them and offered some great advice, but they only listened to their own flawed inner voice of fear. They only listened to their own egos and look what they got for it. Of course, later on, I found that I did the same thing even though I didn’t have the money to buy just about everything I wanted.

The fact is that we all need others to help us to see in ourselves what we cannot see on our own. Look at all the help Nehemiah got: the governors of Trans-Euphrates; Asaph, keeper of the king’s forest; The king had also sent army officers and cavalry. Nehemiah, even though called by God to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, could not do it alone. And we cannot rebuild the walls in our spirit alone either. But wait, there’s more! The next chapter, Nehemiah 3 lists all the people that helped in rebuilding the wall. What that says to you and me is that God will send many people to help us to repair our spiritual walls. And beware; there will also be those who, like Sanballat, are there to keep us from rebuilding.

When we actually get to rebuilding, there is much to be done. First, we must make an accurate, honest, and thorough assessment of what is wrong with us. That’s what Nehemiah did next, and that is delineated in Nehemiah 2:11–18. The next few scriptures are troubling because it reveals the fact that there will always be people who are opposed to our getting spiritually better. Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite official and Geshem the Arab are always trying to be the fly in the ointment for Nehemiah’s efforts, and in these passages, God is trying to tell you that there will always be people who come in and try to sabotage your efforts, so beware!

The fact that we need others to help us is also mentioned by Christ. Remember that we need to rebuild our own walls because they lie in ruin. Furthermore, just as Nehemiah could not rebuild the walls of Jerusalem alone, so we cannot rebuild our own dilapidated, spiritual walls alone. We humans are really a mess, but of course, we don’t perceive our own selves as so bad because we are the same as everyone else around us. Just watch The Jerry Springer Show, and you will think that you are just fine; that is the dangerous delusion created when people watch that show. The fact that everyone is miserable is not because we are supposed to be miserable. We don’t have to be miserable, and the norm of being miserable is only normal because people allow it to be. The fact is that you don’t have to be miserable and God doesn’t want you miserable. Christ actually raised Lazarus from the physical nature of death, but that historical fact also becomes an analogy for how we can be raised from spiritual death, but Christ asks us to rise (just like God noted our unhappiness in Nehemiah 2:1–2), but then he assigns other people help us remove the layers of spiritual and psychological falsities that keep us from happily living life.

And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with grave clothes: and his face was bound about with a cloth. Jesus said unto them, Loose him, and let him go. (John 11:43–44, KJV)

When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, Lazarus, come out! The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, Take off the grave clothes and let him go. (John 11:43–44, NIV)

Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that you may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. (James 5:16, KJV)

In these scriptures, we can see that Christ called Lazarus to rise! That is akin to Christ knocking at the door of our spirit (Revelation 3:20) and asking us to accept him as our Lord and Savior (Romans 10:9). But this concerns salvation not sanctification or cleansing (Psalm 51:10; 1 John 1:9; et al). Cleansing is a process, and unlike salvation, cleansing is administered with God’s mercy; it is not a matter of God’s grace. We got into our own mess, and we must clean it up, but God is merciful enough to help us in this process. The Bible is so long because it is, in part, the guide to our cleansing process, and that process is impossible without God’s help and guidance. As David made clear, we need God’s help in finding the truth in our own secret faults and hidden part. Christ called upon the people who were witnessing the miracle of the resurrection of Lazarus. He called upon them to help Lazarus to Take off the grave clothes and let him go. We all have layers of grave clothes in our unconscious that are fragmenting your life and preventing you from living fully especially under stressful conditions. We all have spiritual fears that affect our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and we will never get rid of all them while we are in this body. While we are here on earth, we are in physical body, and that physicality affects us as a whole. We have a lot of work to do.

Finite/Physical vs. Spiritual/Eternal

In our assessment, we need to understand a couple of important and relevant facts. First, we humans have a physical part that is falling apart. This part is finite and will not last. This temporal, physical part runs counter to our eternal, spiritual nature (Galatians 5:17). Consider this too: man’s psychological nature is part emotions and part thoughts, and it is also linked to a part that is physical with neural/biochemical releases, synapses, and neural firings. There is much to change as the spirit (eternal) and the physical (temporal/finite) are so opposed in nature, and yet they are linked; they will always be at war (Romans 8:6–7; Galatians 5:17; et al) because the physical is decaying while the spirit is supposed to be strengthening and growing. This sounds difficult and perplexing, but the apostle Paul tries to adequately explain this duality in Romans 7; we too can feel his struggle because of our own struggle. This concept of decay or corruption is biblical and is scientific too; the scientific second law of thermodynamics is articulated in the Bible like this:

For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. (Romans 8:20–21, NIV)

For the creation was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who has subjected the same in hope, Because the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. (Romans 8:20–21, KJV)

For he that sows to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that sows to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. (Galatians 6:8, KJV)

Remember that the flesh = the temporal/dying; and the spirit = the eternal (life everlasting). In fact, there are several references to the fact that we will be free from this natural and corruptible body and get a new spiritual body (1 Corinthians 15:38–51; et al). Our memories and our thought processes are partly psychological and partly physical as there are neural firings, synapses, and neural biochemical processes. Will our new spiritual bodies come equipped with perfect neural functions, or will we even need it? I don’t know. I only know that there will be something new that is incorruptible. It can even be argued that our memories of this life will be erased.

Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. (Isaiah 65:17, NIV)

Will our memory of this earth, because it is so fraught with corruption and misperception, be erased? Another theory is that our memories will be intact, but we won’t want to access those memories in the presence of God because, in his presence, we will be so awed that memory will not matter to us; this is probably the correct explanation because that verse says that former things (memories) will not come to mind.