by Doug Cartwright.

“Anyone who knows the good he ought to do and does not do it, sins.”
James 4:17 (NIV)

As a Christian, do you ever find yourself not doing the good you know you ought to do? Of course you do, you’re human. In fact, if you have been a disciple, a follower of Christ – a Christ-ian – for even a short period of time you will have become aware of several gaps:

• The gap between you and Christ (which God’s grace allows for)
• The gap between what you know you want to do and what you actually do.

Mike Davis has written extensively about getting the scriptures from your ‘mind into your muscles’ elsewhere on this site but I want to consider it somewhat from another angle.

Have you been seduced by the idea that ‘head knowledge is enough?’

In Unleashed Michael Hall talks about “the prison of the intellect”

Some people get locked up in the deep caverns of their mind assuming that if they “know” something, intellectually understand and explain something then they have the competency to achieve their dreams. P13¹

This is not a new problem. Soon after the time of Jesus Paul warned that:

While Jews clamour for miraculous demonstrations and Greeks go in for philosophical wisdom, we go right on proclaiming Christ, the Crucified. Jews treat this like an anti-miracle—and Greeks pass it off as absurd. (1 Cor. 1:22)

The Message

The Greeks wanted the head-knowledge of Christ thinking they could get His wisdom through debates and teaching from the front but Jesus himself had said:

`If you obey my word, you are truly my disciples.  ³²And you will understand the truth and the truth [that you know] will make you free.’ (John 8: 31:32)

Worldwide English New Testament.

Or

Then Jesus turned to the Jews who had claimed to believe in him. “If you stick with this, living out what I tell you, you are my disciples for sure. Then you will experience for yourselves the truth, and the truth will free you.” (John 8:31-32)

The Message

So what we have here is Jesus making it clear that you have to obey and therefore experience his teachings for you to understand them as Truth. The thoughts of the mind need to be translated into muscle-action and behaviours.

If there were any doubt at all:

¹⁶Jesus answered, “My teaching is not my own. It comes from him who sent me. ¹⁷If anyone chooses to do God’s will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own. (John 7:16) NIV

So why am I labouring this point?

Because I believe the idea that knowing is enough is a mental-disorder peculiar to the West and whilst the point is valid in all areas of life, it is particularly important to shake us Christians up about it. Jesus actually says he will one day spit us out of His mouth if we are lukewarm in our commitment to showing Him to the world. (Rev 3:16)

In 2008 I spent six weeks in Guyana, South America and saw first-hand the third-world style poverty there. In Guyana, you worked or you starved. You mastered a trade and you sold your skills or you starved, and your family starved. Most people did not have the basic luxury of being able to sit around ‘knowing’ but not doing.

That is why I say it is a Western delusion because we have the time and the money to know and not do.

As a Christian if you hear something in a sermon that applies to you, what do you do?

Do you make a mental note of it under “that’s interesting” or “applies to someone else”? Do you feel any compunction or compulsion at-all to change your ways?

• If you do not, have you really changed?
• Can anyone see you are different?
• Are you different?
• Is Christ glorified?
• Are you prepared to never purposefully integrate new bible principles into your life?

I suffered under this insanity for a long time thinking that having made the change in my head was enough. I actually believed that integrating the change into my everyday life was not necessary; but once I did the meta-step-back and evaluated these thoughts I realised how utterly ridiculous they were and determined I would find ways to integrate new behaviours into my life, into the contexts where they were needed.

Literally, years of life can go by without realising the effect of these ‘hidden’ frames of mind. But James said that if we merely listen to the Word and do not do what it says we deceive ourselves. Therefore, it is important than we uncover the deception by examining our actual actions compared with what we believe. In the gap sits our convictions (or lack of) and perceived capabilities for putting things into practice.

It is not always a quick or easy process. One of the main reasons is that our minds are designed to reinforce their own perceptions and after a while our beliefs become familiar and ‘just the way it is’. As Michael says the meanings, ‘get into our eyes’, and into our habitual way of thinking, moving and talking so we do not even realise what we believe is just that – a belief, a thought to which we have said a lasting ‘yes’.

This integration of ideas into the matrix of our mind is similar to the ideas expressed in the film The Matrix (1999):

Morpheus : The Matrix is everywhere. It’s all around us, even in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to work, when you pay your taxes. The Matrix is the world that has been pulled over your eyes, to blind you from the truth.

Neo : What truth?

Morpheus : That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison…for your mind.

The good news is that Jesus came to ‘to proclaim freedom for the captives  and release from darkness for the prisoners’; (Isaiah 61:1)NIV

He wants us to “be transformed by the renewing of your mind so [then] you will be able to test [through doing as well as understanding] and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” Romans 12:2 (NIV)

So I challenge you to examine the validity and soundness of your thoughts about turning thinking into action. I am challenged too, every time I think about where my ‘faith expressing itself through works’ stands in real actionable terms.

“How to Bridge the Gap Between ‘Knowing and Doing’: Filling in the Gap with the Lord Jesus”.

Below are a list of questions you can ask yourself to help stimulate this transition process.

• Where are you knowing and not doing?
• Is knowing enough for you? Really?
• Are you actually prepared to go through life without seeing any changes in your behaviour?
• Are you satisfied with inertia in what characterises you?
• Are you happy that others never see you change?
• Are you content in not seeing God glorified?
• Is your Christianity private?
• Are you actually too scared to live your words?
• What are the benefits of not changing?
• Do you want to be the man who looks at his face in the mirror and then goes away forgetting what he looks like?
• Do you want to forget that you are supposed to look like Jesus?
• What will it actually be like for you when you do ‘live your words’ and see them making a difference in the world around you?
• What will it be like when you see hear and feel yourself doing what it takes to outwardly show the inward principles that you value?
• How will you stand? What will your breathing be like?
• Who will you be with? When? Where? In what contexts?
• How important is it for you to do so?
• And what is important about that? And that? And that?
• By what percentage does the importance of taking action to ‘actualise’ your principles need to increase?
• What beliefs do you need to have to support that increase?
• What passages of scripture convict you enough to let your light shine?
• Have you made a decision to change?
• What frame of mind are you using which objects to the change?
• Do you want to look back in five years time and realise nothing has changed?
• Are you sure?
• What don’t you yet understand?
• What powerful and resourceful frames of reference do you need to make actioning your beliefs a reality?
• What needs to be true for you in order for you to start experimenting with new behaviours, even if just in incremental steps?
• What ‘truths’ from the world do you need to get rid of in order to believe Jesus The Truth?
• Who do you need to ignore?
• What emotional resources do you need to do this?
• What is the first thing you will do?
• Who will help you test the water? Who can lovingly and firmly hold you accountable?

If you read around on this site or visit www.neurosemantics.com you will find many articles about the power of beliefs to create mental ‘blinkers’ and create blind spots in your perceiving – AND also what to do about it to create new ‘liberating’ frames of mind that lead to Godly and resourceful action.

I also highly recommend reading Neurosemantics for the Christian Mind: Moving from Knowing to Doing by Mike Davis.

If you are interested in having coaching for the process of Living your Words, please visit www.livingwords.net

Bibliography

Unleashed (A Guide to your Ultimate Self-Actualisation), Hall, Michael (2007), Neuro-Semantic Publications, ISBN-10: 1890001325