Kenobi: [gets up and takes a blast helmet] I suggest you try it again, Luke. Only this time, let go your conscious self and act on instinct. [puts the helmet on Luke, which covers his eyes]
Skywalker: But with the blast shield down, I can't even see! How am I supposed to fight?
Kenobi: Your eyes can deceive you. Don't trust them. [remote shoots Luke] Stretch out with your feelings! [Watches Luke succeed in blocking the lasers] You see? You can do it.
Solo: I call it luck.
Kenobi: In my experience, there is no such thing as luck.
-Scene from Star Wars: A New Hope
In Star Wars: A New Hope, there is a scene that takes place on the Millenium Falcon Luke, Han, Obi-Wan, Chewbacca, C-3P0, and R2-D2 are on their way to Alderaan to help the Rebels. Obi-Wan has begun Luke's Jedi training and has him doing exercises with a target droid and Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber. Luke is pretty good, he may miss a couple of times but for the most part, he blocks the target droid's attacks with confidence. But Obi-Wan wants him to reach out and use the Force, not act merely on what he can see. So he takes a helmet and pulls the blast shield down which blocks Luke's vision. At first, this doesn't make any sense to Luke, he even begins to debate and argue with Obi-Wan giving reasons as to why he can't possibly fight without being able to see. But Obi-Wan is persistent, tells Luke to reach out with the Force, use his instincts to fight the droid. Now, at first, it goes as expected, Luke isn't able to deflect the droid's attacks. However, as he begins to listen to the Force, really listen, he's able to fight off the attacks. And after its all over, the experience meant more to him then when he was fighting what he could see.
For me, there are times when I can see what's on the road ahead of me and I feel like I can handle it, I know what my limitations and capabilities are and I adapt accordingly. But there are those times when God puts down the blast shield when he wants me to look past what I can see and trust Him. He wants me to "Use the Faith". Of course like Luke, when my vision gets blocked I turn to my Master and give him all the reasons as to why I can't fight effectively. I mean come on, you gotta be able to see what you're swinging at, right? Nope...that's kinda the point. Just like Obi-Wan wanted Luke to allow the Force to move through him and around him and guide him where the lightsaber needed to be, God wants us to do the same with His Holy Spirit. Instead of relying on ourselves and what we know how to do and acting within the confines of what we know we can do, God wants us to rely on Him. He will give us His strength when problems arise in our lives. Sometimes things seem insurmountable, we look at the problem with our own strength and we can see ourselves failing instantly or like Luke, we can't see any possible way that we can overcome this obstacle. But God is telling us, "Trust Me! Listen to the Spirit I gave you! Reach out and trust Me! I've got it under control!"
As those of us who are Star Wars nerds know, Luke evolved into a great Jedi Knight. As he continued to reach out in the Force and use it, he became stronger, wiser, and capable of much more than he ever dreamed he could be when he was a kid stuck on a moisture farm on Tatooine. There were lots of times, especially at the beginning, when reaching out to the Force felt weird to him, felt unnatural. Luke's natural response was to do it himself, rely on himself to get the job done. But as he continued to reach out, continued to allow the Force to work through him, it became his natural response.
For me, that is a picture of us as Christians. (hang with me here) , When we first start out, reaching out and relying on the Holy Spirit that God gave to us, feels weird. Our human nature is to do it ourselves, to rely on us. The default response we have from birth is that it's up to us to get it done. The very notion of relying on anything or anyone else is foreign. But the more and more we allow God to work through us to impact the lives of others for His Kingdom, the more we reach out and rely on Him, the more it becomes our default response when things happen in our lives.
See my natural response/tendency to things that arise in my life is to get frustrated, anxious, or discouraged. Sometimes I even get anxious for no reason at all because its conditioned response I've developed over the years, kinda like a go to thing. Recently though I've been working on telling myself that there's nothing to get anxious about, that the anxiety and the fears that I feel are usually just harmless shadows. Kinda like when I was a kid and the moon or street light shining through the branches of a tree outside my window would cast creepy shadows on my wall at night. There was nothing there to harm me it was just a shadow. But in my 6-year-old brain, it was a monster that was going to attack me. No matter how many times my parents would tell me, it was the tree that I had played under just that afternoon, I still would be scared of it. Of course, over the years, I figured it out and saw the shadow for what it was, just a shadow. But that's a lot like us a Christians, we see shadows in our lives, some are big and threatening, and we get scared. And no matter how many times God tells us, "It's just a shadow, nothing to be afraid of, I've got it under My control." we go into our default responses and try and figure it out on our own because that's what we've learned to do. In the words of another wise Jedi Knight, Master Yoda, we need to "Unlearn what you have learned" only when we can unlearn our default responses and make reliance on God and His promises as a new default, will we ever be able to fully embrace and experience the life that God has for us.
Final thoughts: It's not easy going against human nature...trust me I know! But we must be careful that we don't get into a habit of saying "This is the way I am." That is when you set yourself up for failure. Joyce Meyer has a lot to say about the power of thoughts and how they can make or break us. Your thoughts are where everything starts. My Pastor is currently preaching a series about Change. One of his messages was about thoughts and how they start the chain reaction that ultimately leads to behavior and habits. Please hear me, friends! Your thoughts are very VERY important to how you live your life. If you start out the day saying "I'm going to have a bad day...today is going to be hard" then you will go through the day believing it and it will be hard. But if you look for the good in the day and you tell yourself "Today is going to be a MARVELOUS day" then it will be easier to see the good in the day.
Train your mind to think the way God sees you, rather than how you think He sees you. Rather than thinking "I'm an anxious person. That's just the way I respond to stuff." think instead "I am a powerful Warrior Princess (or Prince) of Jesus. I can take charge of how I think. Jesus loves me and sees me as one of His. I am forgiven and loved." Anxiety, rage, fear, discouragement, whatever it is for you, doesn't have to be your default response to hard times. We have been given the power to take every thought captive and make it obedient to God. "Unlearn what you have learned" when you do, God can use you to do great and marvelous things.
As those of us who are Star Wars nerds know, Luke evolved into a great Jedi Knight. As he continued to reach out in the Force and use it, he became stronger, wiser, and capable of much more than he ever dreamed he could be when he was a kid stuck on a moisture farm on Tatooine. There were lots of times, especially at the beginning, when reaching out to the Force felt weird to him, felt unnatural. Luke's natural response was to do it himself, rely on himself to get the job done. But as he continued to reach out, continued to allow the Force to work through him, it became his natural response.
For me, that is a picture of us as Christians. (hang with me here) , When we first start out, reaching out and relying on the Holy Spirit that God gave to us, feels weird. Our human nature is to do it ourselves, to rely on us. The default response we have from birth is that it's up to us to get it done. The very notion of relying on anything or anyone else is foreign. But the more and more we allow God to work through us to impact the lives of others for His Kingdom, the more we reach out and rely on Him, the more it becomes our default response when things happen in our lives.
See my natural response/tendency to things that arise in my life is to get frustrated, anxious, or discouraged. Sometimes I even get anxious for no reason at all because its conditioned response I've developed over the years, kinda like a go to thing. Recently though I've been working on telling myself that there's nothing to get anxious about, that the anxiety and the fears that I feel are usually just harmless shadows. Kinda like when I was a kid and the moon or street light shining through the branches of a tree outside my window would cast creepy shadows on my wall at night. There was nothing there to harm me it was just a shadow. But in my 6-year-old brain, it was a monster that was going to attack me. No matter how many times my parents would tell me, it was the tree that I had played under just that afternoon, I still would be scared of it. Of course, over the years, I figured it out and saw the shadow for what it was, just a shadow. But that's a lot like us a Christians, we see shadows in our lives, some are big and threatening, and we get scared. And no matter how many times God tells us, "It's just a shadow, nothing to be afraid of, I've got it under My control." we go into our default responses and try and figure it out on our own because that's what we've learned to do. In the words of another wise Jedi Knight, Master Yoda, we need to "Unlearn what you have learned" only when we can unlearn our default responses and make reliance on God and His promises as a new default, will we ever be able to fully embrace and experience the life that God has for us.
Final thoughts: It's not easy going against human nature...trust me I know! But we must be careful that we don't get into a habit of saying "This is the way I am." That is when you set yourself up for failure. Joyce Meyer has a lot to say about the power of thoughts and how they can make or break us. Your thoughts are where everything starts. My Pastor is currently preaching a series about Change. One of his messages was about thoughts and how they start the chain reaction that ultimately leads to behavior and habits. Please hear me, friends! Your thoughts are very VERY important to how you live your life. If you start out the day saying "I'm going to have a bad day...today is going to be hard" then you will go through the day believing it and it will be hard. But if you look for the good in the day and you tell yourself "Today is going to be a MARVELOUS day" then it will be easier to see the good in the day.
Train your mind to think the way God sees you, rather than how you think He sees you. Rather than thinking "I'm an anxious person. That's just the way I respond to stuff." think instead "I am a powerful Warrior Princess (or Prince) of Jesus. I can take charge of how I think. Jesus loves me and sees me as one of His. I am forgiven and loved." Anxiety, rage, fear, discouragement, whatever it is for you, doesn't have to be your default response to hard times. We have been given the power to take every thought captive and make it obedient to God. "Unlearn what you have learned" when you do, God can use you to do great and marvelous things.
"Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see."
Hebrews 11:1 NIV
"Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies."
Philippians 4:8-9 MSG
"We are destroying sophisticated arguments and every exalted and proud thing that sets itself up against the [true] knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought and purpose captive to the obedience of Christ,"
2 Corinthians 10:5 AMP
"Little children (believers, dear ones), you are of God and you belong to Him and have [already] overcome them [the agents of the antichrist]; because He who is in you is greater than he (Satan) who is in the world [of sinful mankind]."
1 John 4:4 AMP
"Set your mind and keep focused habitually on the things above [the heavenly things], not on things that are on the earth [which have only temporal value]"
Colossians 3:2 AMP
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