The Mind a Battlefield 515
whether a matter is from God or not will not interefere but will
instead give opportunity to intuition to prove itself. If it is of intuition
what has it to fear from the probing of the mind? On the other hand,
whatever is afraid of being probed is probably out from one’s self.
The head should never guide or lead, but it unquestionably is needed
to probe the authenticity of guidance.
Such teaching is in accordance with the Scriptures: “do not be
foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is” and “try to learn
what is pleasing to the Lord” (Eph. 5.17,10). The functioning of the
mind cannot be set aside unused. God does not wipe out the various
components of man’s soul; He renews them first and then uses them.
God wants His child to know what he is doing when he obeys. He
does not desire a senseless, blind following. It is never His wish that
one should follow whatever he hears or feels with a bewildered
mind, unaware of what he is about; nor is it ever His way to use any
one part of the believer’s body without his understanding and
consent. God’s intention is for the Christian to understand His will
and consciously engage the various parts of his body for obedience to
God. It is the lazy person who refuses to bear responsibility because
he expects to be moved partly or wholly by God only from a passive
state. God, however, wants man to examine actively what His will is
and next to exercise his own will to obey God. God requires the
harmonious working of man’s intuition and consciousness.
Even so, a believer, not recognizing this to be God’s normal way
of guidance, may let himself slide into passivity. He may expect God
to put His will into his thought; he blindly follows all supernatural
leading without employing his intelligence to examine whether it is
from God. He even waits for Him to use the parts of his body beyond
the sphere of his consciousness; that is to say, he does not engage his
mind to understand, or his will to execute in his body, what the will
of God is. The consequence of such ignorance is enemy invasion,
since passivity is a condition for this phenomenon. (This we shall
treat in detail in another place.) If man does not use his intelligence