Deeply

How many days have you gone through being completely surface level with everything? How many times do you receive amazing truth and deep, probing questions about faith and life and God thrown at you... and yet when it comes to the end of the day, you can't recall any of it?

I'm pretty sure most everybody has a lot on their mind, even if they aren't necessarily spiritual matters. Typically we're so overloaded with information, decisions, reactions, ideas, and commitments that only what's absolutely critical gets through to that depth of our thinking.

For me, it seems that the more deep, thoughtful, insightful things I hear, the less they sink down into the deepest level of my mind. What with Bible classes, thoughtful professors, deep chapel messages, interesting discussions, and convicting seminars, there's an overabundance of Spiritual truths and ideas I need to think about and process. It all feels like so much that I just wish I could store it away in my memory bank somewhere where it would be safe and I could pull it out and review it later. But that's not the way it works.

The way I think of it, is that the brain is like a pool. All throughout the day, a multitude of things are dropped into it - some forcefully, and others perhaps more subtly. Once they reach the surface, however, they cannot go any further unless you deem them of utmost importance. Though even then, sometimes they still do not go through because it's so easy to get distracted elsewhere and forget about thinking deeply.

But this is the key: put the effort into thinking deeply. You have to decide to recall to mind these things that pricked your heart. You can't put them off or "tuck them away for later," because when later comes, the multitudes of other ideas that have dropped onto your surface will have already crowded them out.

But don't feel like you have to do this about everything that comes your way and convicts your heart. If you did, you would soon become overloaded. Often, God brings to our awareness one sin at a time, and it is our job to meditate and act on what He would have us do about that sin. But - if we blow everything off and don't think deeply about anything He convicts us of, we will become stagnant, like the pool with no moving water. There will be no growth.

I think of what God says in Proverbs 7:2-3:

Keep my commands and you will live;
guard my teachings as the apple of your eye.
Bind them on your fingers;
write them on the tablet of your heart.

That's what God calls us to do with our lives. His commands and His teachings are precious - something to guard, cherish, and keep with us always. Something to put effort into - and think deeply about.


I challenge you to think deeply this week. What conviction will you meditate on instead of brushing off? What one thing can you let sink past the surface of your brain into the depth of your heart?

Because only then can it begin to change you.