Exercising Your Brain

The Holy Spirit moves in our spirit, producing in us a spiritual sense; afterwards we exercise our brain to study and to understand the meaning of this sense. It requires the cooperation of both spirit and mind to comprehend fully the will of God. The spirit enables our inner man to know, while the mind causes our outer man to understand.  Watchman Nee

I went to my parent’s house last weekend as we had developed a new cream and we needed to price the product for resale.   This happens each time we design a new one.  We have to figure out how much it costs to make and then price it to sell.  Sometimes this can get complicated.  There are times when we use only drops of oil or a teaspoon of another ingredient and sometimes a milliliter of another.  The complication comes in when you try to convert all of this from ounces, gallons, cups, milliliters, teaspoons and all the other measurements that come in to play. 

So my dad and I are sitting at the kitchen table calculating.  I had my laptop and a notepad and my dad had his sheet with all the measurement conversions.  Mom was in the office looking up pricing on all the oils and ingredients that we use in the cream. I would call out an ingredient and Mom would look it up and then Dad and I would calculate how much it would cost to produce it.  We then would convert each item into 5 gallon quantities. 

We worked on this one product for several hours.  I would give dad a measurement conversion that I needed and he would convert it and then I would write it down and then calculate the cost.  I know, about now you are thinking haven’t these people heard of that “mathematical app” that does all of this for you.  Well to tell you the truth, you already know I am technologically challenged and I really don’t have any apps on my phone so maybe I am just a slow learner.

Anyway, every once in a while Dad and I would try to convert an ingredient that was in milliliters to gallons.  He would ask me “Now what are you trying to convert” and I would tell him and then we would go back and forth about whether our measurement was correct or not.  I would start laughing and then ask my Mom if she wanted to come in and help us and she would just laugh and tell us no.

This started me thinking about how much this exercised our brains.  My Mom and Dad are in their 70’s but they are two of the most active people of their age that I know. They are continuously stretching and exercising their brains to run their business. 

If you look at this from a biblical perspective, we should be doing the same thing with the Bible.  I have started reading a book about the oils that were used in the Bible. God created everything on earth.  He created every plant.  Man decided that he could do better than God so he created chemicals and manmade medications that often cause more harm than good.  The side effects from some of these manmade medications are worse than the issue we started with in the first place.  If they have to tell you the side effects, that should be a red flag that it probably isn’t good for you. Open your Bible and meditate on the words contained in it.  You will be amazed at the workout your brain will get.   

Prayer for the Day: Heavenly Father, thank you for giving me the opportunity to exercise my brain with my Mom and Dad.  They amaze me every day in the knowledge they have and their willingness to share it.  If I read Your Word, I can learn a great deal about how You intend the world to work.  Thank you for giving me the gift of knowledge and the ability to use it for Your purposes.         

Scripture: The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Genesis 2:8-9