I meant to post this more than 6 months ago…
What the heart loves, the will chooses, and the mind justifies.
According to Dr. Ashley Null, this is a key part of the theology of Thomas Cranmer. Dr. Null is an expert on Cranmer who also teaches church history.
If this phrase is true, and it certainly makes sense, then it ought to shape not only the way we relate to God ourselves but the very way we do ministry with students. It would suggest that when we are seeking to change the behavior of teens, we are missing the target. If the heart changes, then the behavior changes.
Sunday morning at re:generate (our high school fall weekend), I spoke about this phrase. The reality is, if we want to change our behavior, we have to change what we love. We make choices based on what we love and our mind justifies or makes sense of our actions. When we love sin, we choose sin, and in our minds justify or decide that it’s okay. But we don’t stop there. We not only want to justify it (make it okay in our minds) we want to normalize it. So, we persuade our friends to do the same things. If they do it as well, we can then rationalize that our behavior is normal. So, the big challenge is to have a heart that loves God so that we make decisions with our bodies that honor God and have minds that are devoted to God. When our heart loves God, we choose to behave in a way that honors God and we are then living out that love for God and our minds are at peace. How do we do this? In the message to the high school students I suggested three things. First, we need to be Old Testament people. That is to say we need to be people who read the Old Testament and know the good things that God has done. We have to know God’s faithfulness through the generations. Apart from being in the Old Testament, we don’t have this. Second, we need to be Jesus people. We must see that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament. And third, we need to be opportunists with a sense of urgency. We need to make the most of opportunities for the gospel.
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