II Timothy 1:7: “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”
If I were to take a survey right now, I am pretty sure 9 out of 10 of you would be really confused right now about the connection between II Timothy 1:7 and mindless drones. What about the other person? That person probably cheated and read the rest of the blog before taking the survey.
Anyway, back to the point, God has given us the spirit of power, love, and a sound mind. In this blog, I would like to put an emphasis on God giving us a sound mind. Why? In your walk with God, some people may try to get you to believe that, in order to live for Jesus, you need to be some sort of mindless drone. They want you to think that believing in Jesus will mean you are forfeiting all logic and becoming ignorant to the obvious. However, this is not the case at all. In fact, Paul tells Timothy that we are given a sound mind.
What is a sound mind? The term “a sound mind” is used in law, and means the person is competent enough to know what they are talking about. A sound mind contains memory and understanding. That means a person with a sound mind has the potential to know and comprehend information and logic. God gives us the ability to know and understand what we are talking about and what we believe in.
We do not blindly believe that Jesus can do the impossible and cause a miracle. We have been given a sound mind to search the Word of God and find verses that promote this belief. How do we know the Bible is true? God has given us a sound mind to search and find that His Word is infallible. History and science prove that there is a God Who made all things well and Whose hand has guided the course of history. By this, we know Jesus is Who He says He is and we can believe in what He says.
We are not mindless. We know that what we know is true. We know who we are (children of God), Who His is (God), and what He is capable of doing.
Excellent message! I love your perspective on this. It is rather easy for people to misunderstand us Apostolics, seeing as we are uniformly so different from the world. I’ve heard second-hand of people referring to us as a cult, and as having a herd mentality–that we all move together and no one thinks or moves for themself. But you have clearly shown in Scripture that, while this may be the case for some people, we have been given power through the Holy Ghost to have a mind of our own, and that being a sound mind.