Thoughts and Intents

“...discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” Heb. 4:12

It seems there are many statements with this phrase. Guilt is a dissonance between left and right brain, when beliefs about facts don't agree with experiential belief and feelings. A lie is very close to the same thing. It is not just having wrong facts. We will never have all the correct knowledge this side of the third coming.

Thoughts – feelings – intents of the heart. This is time-based as well as mind-based. Thoughts are rooted in our past and how we have been conditioned to view reality. These perceptions of reality and relationships produce our feelings which have the potential of steering our thoughts. The natural result of feelings is to create the intents of what we will do next.

Thoughts are rooted in the past. Feelings are always in the present. Intents are future oriented.

Thoughts may be left-brain dominant. Feelings are right-brain dominant. Intents are the result of the mixing of the first two.

When we choose to live life based on true facts but with a disconnected heart we are living a lie. When we live “honestly” from the heart but don't yet have all the “truth” we are in the growing process. Conviction occurs when the Holy Spirit aligns something correctly between the right and left brain momentarily to show us the path to greater peace and godliness. How we choose to react sets the direction of our movement either toward more life or more death in our soul.

Since guilt is dissonance between the two sides of the brain, it will occur if either side is out of harmony with the other. If we have authentic truth about something in our left brain that has been confirmed by conviction of the Holy Spirit that it is in agreement with God, but our experience-beliefs do not seem to confirm it as truth, we will experience false guilt. But it feels the same as true guilt and feels true for us.

Guilt creates enormous amounts of resistance and stress. Stress in the physical world is when forces are applied in different directions on the same object causing incentive on the material to distort and tear apart at the molecular level. The same it true of our soul. When the mind and heart are not in agreement the result is stress.

Truth has far more to do with harmonization and synchronization than just knowledge of technically correct facts. A person can think they understand the “truth” about the Sabbath or the state of the dead but be living in great stress because they refuse to allow their heart and experiential memories to be healed. One cannot be in harmony with “Sabbath truth” as it is in Jesus if their emotional beliefs and experiences are not suffused with the peace and motivation of a healed heart. For them, keeping the Sabbath even on the right day is actually a curse in disguise.

On the other hand, a Sunday-keeper who is in tune with his true condition in the heart and is allowing Jesus to heal and repair and restore his heart is on the read to oneness with God. Typically Adventists believe if they can confront that person with the “facts” about the true Sabbath that they can force conviction onto them. Then they stand back and judge them with condemnation if they do not “accept the Sabbath truth” and accuse them of denying God with their hearts when in fact this is not true at all. Further, Adventists often will refuse to spiritually socialize with such “unbelievers” until they conform to “our understanding” of the correct day of “worship”.

There are many errors in this all too typical scenario. We think we are supposed to convict others (with reinforcement from God). We think left-brain factual knowledge is preeminent in the arena of “truth”. We engage in judging and condemning thereby not only incurring enormous guilt onto ourselves (Romans 1-3) but causing true-hearted believers in God to question the credibility of our factual truth because they observe that in our hearts we are actually living a lie before the world. We are spiritual prigs. We are proud of our exclusive access to “truth” and refuse to see that God is far more concerned with aligning our hearts with His heart than in us possessing all factual knowledge. If I have all knowledge but do not have love, I am nothing. 1 Cor. 13:2.

Conviction and guilt are not the same thing. Conviction does not have to produce guilt. Guilt is stress between what is believed by the right not harmonizing with what is believed by the left. True conviction is simply a revelation from God of what changes need to occur to bring peace between our left and right brain and align us with God's left and right “brain”. God actually shields many from being convicted of left-brain Sabbath truth for a time because He knows if they attempt to come into fellowship with Sabbath-keepers in their current condition these new believers will be corrupted by the heart-lies that we refuse to address in ourselves. As these new believers live in our atmosphere of hypocrisy God will lose the work He has already started in their hearts and their latter condition will be far worse that before they joined us.

The “Sabbath truth” for hardline Adventists has become identical to how the Jews felt about the temple in Jesus' day. To say anything that crosses or challenges our smugness of “having the truth” meets with violent reactions of defensiveness and deep suspicion. It stirs up deep feelings of bigotry and animosity while at the same time in full denial that we have any bigotry. Our religious pride is very close to what the Pharisees and priests exhibited against Jesus, but like them we cannot see the true condition of our own hearts in our zealous jealousy to “defend the truth”. (see Hebrews 4)