More Brain Science

 

Last week, a message was given about a Hebrew word, hesed. It's a word that's found in Micah 6:8 where the Israelites are called to "love mercy." It can also translate to lovingkindness (no, there's not a space in between those words). We briefly touched on a little bit of neuroscience to make an illustration of the effects of hesed.

Sometimes things are worth repeating, but in written form.

Let's start at the beginning. You have portions of your brain that are like apartments within a larger building of other apartments. Each apartment has different kinds of residents living within it. They all have different functions.

One apartment is the home of maturity and character. How can we describe this apartment? It's like the family is constantly updating their place and doing renovations. Think of all the times you've tried, failed, succeeded, failed again, learned something new, tried something new, failed, learned more about all kinds of things--relationally, emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually. That all contributes to your overall maturity and character. 

How you immediately respond to circumstances 

where a quick decision is required from you 

comes from this place.

There's another apartment down the hall. It's where the fear and anxiety family lives. They like to have parties a lot. There's a rumor around the building that the landlord let them have all the bigger rooms in their apartment. They got the extra wide doorways, the walk-in closets, the extra high ceilings and covered walk-out patio. Their parties get out of control and it actually spills out into the hallways and starts destroying the rest of the apartment building, even while the other families are sleeping.

Of course, this is only true neurologically if hesed is not friends with the landlord.

What hesed does, is to work with the landlord to put major restrictions on the fear and anxiety family. The landlord might actually work to give them a broom closet instead of an actual apartment room. Hesed also might have regularly scheduled meetings with the maturity and character family in their apartment. They share meals together, talk about how to update the apartment building, replace the old carpet, and put new lights in the hallways. 

This is how God's hesed works in our brains to develop our maturity and character. However, if one does not submit to God's hesed, the fear and anxiety family and their apartment destroys the building. Then, over time, the maturity and character family may move out of the building altogether. 

Our first impulse reactions to everything 

have to come from somewhere. 

Guess which room they come from? Fear and anxiety. This is not good for the whole apartment building. When this family is in control, not much can stop them from their destructive ways. All of the other rooms start shutting down and moving out. There's really only one force that puts a stop to this destruction. This is how powerful and formative hesed is.

Let God's hesed work into your brain today.

For more reading on this topic, check out The God-Shaped Brain, How God Changes Your Brain, or Renovated.  

This content and other ministry is made possible because of the generosity of donors who give directly to LifeChurch Canton. If you'd like to continue to see more content and make an impact, partner with us through a generous gift or a recurring gift by going to our site. Thank you so much.

Also, make sure to subscribe in order to be notified whenever a new blog post is published. You can do so by clicking "SUBSCRIBE" in the upper right hand corner of this page.