Part 13

Instincts. We all have them.  Organic instincts you are born with while neurological instincts you have to train.  For instance; putting your hands in front of you when you fall is an organic instinct. From early childhood you had it. As soon as you could walk, and even before, if you fell face first your hands would instinctively go in front of you to prevent busting your nose. If someone throws something at your face you instinctively put your hands up, close your eyes and turn your head. Those are organic instincts. You didn’t do anything to get them; they are just part of who you are.

Neurological instincts are quite different. You were born with a “seed” of them, but it takes practice to train them into effectiveness. For example, throwing a ball. Everyone can throw a ball. You can instinctively pick up a ball and throw it. But I have a friend whose brother plays baseball for the Giants and he can throw a baseball 100 miles an hour. He was not born with that ability. He has spent hours of his life practicing, studying and doing exercises to make him a better pitcher. Or how about hunting? I was born wanting to hunt. Before I was old enough to go I knew I wanted to be a hunter, shoot guns and kill tasty animals. I was born with that. But it took years before I could see a deer before it saw me, or call up a turkey before it could see me. It took practice.

You see there are certain things you are born with, and then there are certain things you have the capability to do, but practice sharpens the instinct.

Solomon wrote in his journal, the book of Ecclesiastes 3:11, “He [God] has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” Here is the thing, God has written eternity in your heart and my heart. Every person alive has, written in their heart, a knowledge that we will live forever. Somewhere. Even the atheist deals with it; they just choose denial as their means of dealing with it. We all have it. Eternity, in our hearts.

But check out the second part of the verse, the part that says, “yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” A little weird. We have eternity in our hearts, but yet we cannot know what God has done? Let’s look at another passage written quite a few years later.

A prophet named Ezekiel wrote this verse. Prophets were men whom God called to speak truths to His people. In this particular passage Ezekiel is writing about a time to come in the future (their future our past) when God will no longer deal with His people externally, but will deal internally. Check it out, “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statues and be careful to obey my rules.” (Ezekiel 36:26-27).

This was a whole new idea. The Spirit of the Living God in us? No longer out of us? No longer do we have to go to him, but he is coming into us? Mind blowing.

But what does this mean to us?  

Before Jesus’ death, burial, resurrection and the giving of the Holy Spirit, all mankind had was the idea of eternity in our hearts. We knew something else had to be. But after the giving of the Holy Spirit we have Eternity in our hearts. Literally. The Jesus who gives us eternal life dwells in our hearts. The Hebrew understanding of the heart was not the organ currently pumping blood through your body, but the place of all origin of who you are. The heart was understood to be the center of all mankind is. So before, we knew about eternity.  Now we have eternity. Simple as that.

But it gets better. Ezekiel says that God will not only give us his Spirit, but he will teach us how to live by his law. Here is where instinct comes in.

So you were born with the organic instinct that there is a God and there is an eternity. However, at salvation, you were given a seed, the Holy Spirit, in which you now are able to bring forth a neurological instinct. A godly instinct. A life lived pleasing to God. Paul says in Romans 12:2, “Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Renewing your mind. Neurological. Paul also says in Philippians 2:12 we are to. . . “work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” Work it out. Exercise it.

That’s a lot to digest. But let me try to summarize. You are born with an organic instinct of eternity. But God is external, he is outside of you. At salvation you are given the Holy Spirit, God with you, and the seed for knowing God and obeying his law. However, it is in your mind, your thought process, your world view, your paradigm, whatever you want to call it, where this new law gets worked out. Starts to change who you are. And that takes practice.

I started taking piano lessons at a young age. Mom and dad just realized I liked it so they put me in lessons. And the first thing my teacher had me to do is learn how to play scales. I played them over and over and over and over. . . I started hating scales. So I quit practicing them. When I would struggle with a fairly difficult piece she would ask me, “Have you been practicing your scales?” Because she knew, I had to practice the elementary things in order to achieve the complex things. But I thought I was far enough along to leave those scales. I was wrong. If I wanted to keep playing the same elementary songs I could stop playing scales, but to progress, I had to keep practicing the basics.

Many Christians do this. We will start to create a godly instinct with prayer, bible study, fasting, giving, seeing God in nature, looking for God in the small things like family and friends. But then somewhere along the line we tend to move away from those things. We may start to think we have moved past them. But the next thing you know we stagnate, stop moving and get discouraged. We must keep doing the basics if we want the more complex maters of God to come clear. We have to nurture that godly instinct he put in us at salvation if we want to be able to be all the God wants us to be.

Press into the God who lives inside of you. I know there are a million things telling you that it’s too hard, it takes too much time, you don’t know the Bible well enough. . . on and on and on they go. But I will make you a promise, if you will discipline yourself to “Feed your godly instinct” you will not regret it. Matter of fact you will find, “The peace that surpasses all understanding and guards your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”