Hi all,
I recently sat down with a young lady and heard how she came to know Jesus, which was quite remarkable. Just a few years ago she had been an atheist – and not your average quiet atheist – but one who actively, on the street, demonstrated against religions, thought Christians were stupid and uneducated, and looked down on all those non-thinking stupid religious people. She was an activist, angry, yelling, demonstrating, flaming liberal atheist – to paraphrase her own words.
BUT…She considered herself a good person because she didn’t lie, steal, or murder. But she hated religious people; even turning to TV stations with Christians on them just for the purpose of making fun of them to confirm to herself how stupid and uneducated they were.
And then her life took an unexpected turn in a tragic event. And after several surgeries she was told at just age 20, that she would forever be on crutches or a walker, and probably later in life a wheelchair as there was nothing else medical science could do for her. She contemplated suicide, unable to imagine herself going through the rest of her life as a cripple. She thought it out; how could she do it the easiest, the least pain…she was developing a plan to end her life.
Then she saw a banner advertisement for a Christian meeting that proclaimed ‘Miracles’. She thought that was really what she needed, a miracle. “Maybe” she thought, “Maybe I can sneak in and and get my miracle and leave before any of those crazy stupid people have time to tell me about their Jesus.”
On her crutches she slowly made her way to the meeting and saw people raising their hands and singing, and she wondered what that was about – just more craziness by these stupid people. But immediately 3 women asked if they could pray for her, which she allowed.
She suddenly found herself on the ground looking up, unable to move, what you and I might call ‘in the Spirit’ or as what happened to Peter in Acts 9, in a trance – a state in which the natural senses are suspended and one is in the Spirit.
Suddenly the Lord started talking to her, showing her light and darkness. In light was love, joy, peace…and He showed her the thoughts she had towards others. She saw the arrogance and hate, and for the first time in her life she saw those thoughts were darkness. She tried to argue before Him that they were just thoughts, because she was a good person. She was moral, honest, and hard working.
But He was saying those thoughts of hatred towards others were darkness, even if she didn’t act out the hatred, the thoughts were the same as the actions. He said those thoughts are actually material. They are solid. They are the same as the action. She felt that dark material of her thoughts, she knew it was true.
Suddenly she saw that her hatred of certain people was equal to murder, that in her thoughts she wanted them dead, which appalled her for she considered herself a good person, she wasn’t a murderer. Or was she? In her thoughts she could see that she was. She saw the darkness was a spiral down to destruction. She saw if she stayed with those thoughts in her they would cause her whole life to spiral downward into darkness.
After showing her these things He asked: “So what would you choose; light or darkness?” She responded, “Light of course!” When she did that, she said all that darkness, all that hate, all that arrogant exaltation of self, lifted away and off her. She was suddenly in the light and something had changed on the inside that was good and light.
She told me she was glad He did not heal her right then, for if that had happened she said she probably would have just left her crutches and run away before she could hear more about Jesus. As it was, over the course of a year as she got to know Him, He did heal her, and she is now back to her active lifestyle – and walking with the Lord.
The thoughts are equal to the action – quantum physics
Jesus said the same thing in Matthew 5 that He said to her just about 3 years ago, that thoughts are equal to actions: “I say to you whoever looks on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart. if your eye offends you pluck it out (the lust leads the eye to look at her) for it is better that it should perish than for you to end up in hell. And if your hand offends you cut it off (the thought of acting on the lust leads to the action)…”
In the culture of the day, given that Jesus mentioned 1 eye and 1 hand and not 2 eyes and 2 hands, He is clearly stating for us to cut off the process by which the lust in the heart becomes an action. Jesus is linking the thought with the action. The evil thought and the action are one. Is the reverse true? The good thought and action are one.
But not every thought equals action nor has it yet become material
When the Father said in Genesis 1:26: “Let us (Elohim, the plural of El, or God) make man in our image, after our likeness…” that was an internal thought, it was directed to no one, it was purely internal. It did not yet rise to the level of being equal with action until the next verse: “So God made man…”
In Genesis 18: 17-19 Christ had temporarily materialized into human form, along with 2 angels, and had dinner with Abraham. As the angels headed off to Sodom to rescue Lot, the Lord paused and “Said to Himself: Shall I hide that which I am about to do, seeing that Abraham will surely become a great and mighty nation…and train up his household and his children in the ways of the Lord…”
That again was an internal thought not directed to anyone. So when Jesus equated the thought of lust being equal to the action He put it in the context of thoughts directed outwards towards others which were based in sin – sin being selfish actions which often involve using others for our own purposes. The Lord showed the young lady above that her hatred was equal to the actions, they were material in the realm of darkness, and could one day manifest by taking her whole physical life down into darkness.
Where is the link between the spirit and the natural, between the thought and the action?
What does science say? Do thoughts have mass? And I’m out of room, we’ll pick it up there next week…until then, blessings!
John Fenn
