Daddy, Daddy! Guess what?
What’s that Oliver?
I invited Jesus into my heart today!
Did you? That’s awesome! Your mother and I have been praying for that ever since you were born! If only your little brothers would hurry up and get saved now! Tell me how it happened.
Well, teacher was talking about when Jesus died. He died so that I could live, which I didn’t get, so I asked her how I could live because I was already alive. He said that Jesus and I could be friends forever, that He’d take all my sin away. He asked if I wanted to be friends with Jesus and I said yes and then we prayed and asked Him to come live with me forever! Remember the time I thought that my gecko was cold, so I tried to warm him up in the microwave and he made a mess and went away? Jesus made that all better! Eugene will be in heaven with me someday!
Wonderful. Did your teacher tell you to invite Jesus into your brain, too? Because that’s almost as important as asking Him into your heart.
No.
Well, when you become friends with Jesus, He changes your heart and makes you a better person. You won’t be perfect, but that’s okay. When you ask Jesus into your brain, you’re asking Him to help you make right decisions. He helps you see through other peoples’ mistakes and ridiculous beliefs. You’re a follower of Christ now son, which means that you’ll be surrounded by all sorts of other people who follow Him too. Some of them will think you have to look and act just like them to be a good Christian. Others will try to give you rules that they think you should follow and then there are the people who won’t even think you’re a christian simply because of a few differences in how you believe.
Asking Jesus into your brain helps you to get through all that. It should also keep you from becoming a prosperity preacher. Those people aren’t bad, some are confused and others are just dumb. Then there’s the rest of the world to deal with, too. The Lord can guide you and help you to have joy and in some situations, help you have understanding. Got it?
I think so. Do other people ask Jesus into their brains?
They should.
Oh.
Glad we had this talk. Do you want to pray like you did with your teacher today? Only this time, we’ll ask Jesus into your brain, too!
Dang…
Dang. Good stuff, my friend.
Thanks Friend!
“Did your teacher tell you to invite Jesus into your brain, too? Because that’s almost as important as asking Him into your heart.”
Powerful post, Jake. It’s so important for us to ask Jesus into our brains, not only because of what you mentioned about, but also He constantly chose what I call the 3rd way of doing things. He responded in ways that are foreign to our way of thinking, and if we don’t have His mind, we’ll never truly be different in how we act, think and speak.
Good point. Jesus really did do things differently than we do now. It’s always such a challenge to look for that third option, but if my brain is being redeemed, it changes everything 🙂
Hey! What happened to my comment? I’m not saying it was all too clever, but I tried!
Did your comment go away? I think I’m lost… 🙂
Hi Jake,
I stumbled on your blog a couple months ago.
You know, if you keep thinking like you have in your last few posts, pretty soon you’ll start to realize that religion as a whole is not equitable with reason. The church will tell you to forget reason and do what you feel. You’ll be at a crossroads, then one day you’ll either turn off your ability to logically think things through or you’ll leave the faith. Don’t be scared. You can still live a good life without it.
Happy travels through reason.
Alison, I’m glad you commented! I’m also glad that something may have brought you back?
I can appreciate your position, but truthfully, I think that some religion is completely reasonable. My faith in Jesus Christ for example, makes complete sense to me. I think my writing and “philosophies” associated with my faith deal mostly with the junk that we add to it that detracts from the sense it makes. The Gospel is really simple, but humans do so many things to it to make it work for them in a way that it wasn’t intended- it makes me sick. I can tell you though, that if the day ever comes that it stops working with reason, it’ll be a long, hard one- I’ll have to examine everything all over again, but I’m not expecting that. I don’t know how much you’ve studied, but if one reads the Gospels and genuinely takes a look at the most honest Christianity they can find, I believe you’ll discover just how much sense it makes.
I do agree with you that I can live a good life without religion, that doesn’t seem to be the difficult thing in this mix.
Happy trails to you my friend, I’m glad you shared, I’m always glad to hear from different perspectives.
Love this. We need to think more and realize that we have a voice!
Thanks Jeremiah. It’s interesting finding our voices and figuring out what we should be saying, isn’t it?