Realizing Our Amazing Gifts

We humans tend to take our God Given Gifts for granted. A friend of mine recently gave me some booklets with excerpts from the writings of Daniel G. Amen, M.D. The quoted book title is CHANGE YOUR BRAIN—Change Your Life. Dr. Amen is a clinical neuroscientist, psychiatrist and brain enhancement expert.  He has authored 22 books and is the medical director of the world renowned Amen Clinics.  

Like much of Science, Dr. Amen’s writings about personal issues of humans and just how complicated our brains are, can be used to better understand our God given gifts. Our lives are not accidents of nature and as our brains are described by Dr. Amen, we are unique in the universe.  While Dr. Amen practices forms of spirituality that are not acceptable to most Christians, his knowledge of the brain can certainly be used by all to better appreciate our great gift from God.

He has stated the following: “The brain is the most complicated organ in the universe. There is nothing as complex as the human brain. Nothing. It is estimated that we have 100 billion neurons or nerve cells and trillions of supportive brain cells called glial cells. Each neuron is connected to other neurons by up to 40,000 connections between cells. You have more connections in your brain than there are stars in the universe. Also, even though your brain is only about two percent of your body’s weight, it uses twenty-five to thirty percent of the calories you consume. Your brain is the major energy consumer in the body. Of the breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks you had today, almost a third went to feed your brain.” Dr. Amen also states that, “Our brain consumes 20% of the oxygen you breathe and 25% of the blood flow in your body.  

In Dr. Amen’s pamphlet BRAIN HEALTH—Master Questionnaire, he lists some fifty things that impact humans mentally. While few if any of us are impacted by all these conditions, we might all have been impacted occasionally or briefly by them. I don’t have room to list all fifty in this column, but here are a few: “lack attention to detail, are easily distracted, are restless, are negative, feel sad, feel bored, have low self esteem, feel socially isolated, feel upset when things do not go your way, worry, hold grudges, have a short fuse and lastly, wait for something bad to happen.”  That’s thirteen of the list of fifty. Dr. Amen’s work is excellent in helping folks with their brain health.

While I see the value of Dr. Amen’s work, reading some of his writings strengthens my faith in God and His ability to create us children with such complicated parts. The abilities of our brains make us different from all creation. We had to be created like this to be able to fulfill His charge for us to manage His created Planet Earth.

Genesis 1: 26-28 explains it this way,  “ Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’  So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’”

We are special in this world; however, we must realize our God given gifts and use them to understand His creative intent in putting us in charge of what He created. We matter to God. We don’t need to let Him or ourselves down.

Our Place in Creation

Once we decide to let go and let God act in our lives, we come to understand life in many different ways. We find God in the smallest pieces of creation that we missed in our past. When we seek to understand God in our lives, we are humbled by how limited we are in all of man’s achievements compared to God’s creative power. That which man has been able to understand about God’s created Universe is as small as a mustard seed compared to His work in creation.

Although the abilities of our minds to understand creation are limited, it is still a great gift we’ve been given by God that puts us above all creatures of the Earth. God has given man the sense to be drawn to those things that are a mystery to us, and the desire to unwind what we can’t understand. The danger in all of this is to become inebriated with what we can achieve and think we are on a level with our creator.

When man gets to the point where he thinks himself an expert on what is true in this world, he sets himself up for a calamity. He is ignoring the fact that it is God who is helping him find solutions. God acts quietly in our lives behind the scenes and has a helpful and generous plan in all things.

As human beings in our small part of God’s creation, we sometimes let our egos take charge and think that we have control over things. This is a trap we set for ourselves, that keeps us from fully enjoying all living humans and the gift of nature that God has given us. Much worse is a person not connected with our Creator God and thus is doomed to a life unfulfilled and meaningless. When it’s all boiled down, we are called to live our lives for others, and make this world a better place.

Our inborn need to be curious and question things of life is another gift from God. When we observe the Cosmos around us and think about life and the possibility of eternal life, our minds race in the processing of these marvelous jewels around us. We are humbled by these things and are drawn closer to God day by day as we attempt to unravel the blessings of life.

The more things we can ponder in this Godly creation, the closer we come to knowing God. Discoveries of science shouldn’t make us feel more in control, but more humble and connected with God’s Eternal Kingdom. Science and religion can go hand in hand when science is used to better understand God’s creative power and love for us little specs on Planet Earth.

The problem with misused science is that it gives man the ability to build weapons of mass destruction to be use to kill each other. So much talent and intellect is used in these efforts that could be used to bring peace to the world in appreciation of the gift all mankind has been given.

As true worshippers of God, we must live out the goodness and righteousness God expects of us. We are called to love one another and when followed by all religions, the world will be an even more beautiful place. Just thinking about these things won’t move us very far in reaching our desired condition for the world.

Of course there is evil in this world as God has given us free will. We can use our religion, our attempt to seek God in all aspects of our lives, to reach out to others and live our lives for them. There is work involved here, but we are not in it alone. When a difficult job seems easy, it’s because God is somewhere nearby.  

God is patient

We should be thankful that God does not operate like the folks in the fairs and carnivals that take your good money to play a game that is almost impossible to win. The phrase they shout at their clientele when ninety-nine percent of them can’t win the game is, “Close, but no cigar!”  This phrase goes back one hundred years when these fair and carnival workers would offer special cigars as prizes to those that could win the game.

God has a different kind of operation with us. He wants one-hundred percent of us to win His prize. That prize is salvation and an eternal relationship with Him as we live this natural life and pass on to a closer presence to Him. In John 5:24 we hear Jesus tell us, “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life. 

When in the Temple, Jesus addressed the Jews that doubted His relationship to God. He told them of the children of God and in John 10:28 He says, ^“And I give them eternal life and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand.” Peter refreshes our spirit in 1 Peter 1:6-9 saying, “ In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials,  that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom having not seen, you love. Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith—the salvation of your souls.”

As a struggling Christian growing up, I had some notion of being with God after death in my natural life. I remember things that my mother and other relatives would say about death when we lost someone. When I was fourteen, I came home from school one day to hear my younger brother tell me, as I got off of the school bus, that our dad had died of a heart attack. He was thirty-nine years of age. With my dad and other family members who have died, I have always had a sense of spiritual connection with them. This was a beginning of knowing that any suffering that I might endure would somehow be eased in a spiritual afterlife.

In my experience of a life threatening brain tumor removal at age forty-nine, God revealed some wonderful things to me. He allowed me to look into eternity with Him from my hospital bed. I then realized that I was already on the fringe of His eternal kingdom. His forgiveness of my sins, which I was already feeling, and my faith in Him had opened His kingdom to me. I had the distinct feeling that no matter what the outcome of my surgery, that I would be blessed. And in seeing this as my gift from God, I could see the same gift for all of those I might leave behind.

I had a vision of Eternal Life as I was experiencing God’s Love & Grace during my surgery. I envisioned Eternal life to be like the ocean. The ocean waves moved toward the shore around the jetties and onto the beach. The shallow water of the beach is where I saw myself in this natural life, however; God’s Eternal Kingdom washed upon me at the beach. It revealed to me that we are already at the edges of Eternal Life and it washes over and around us. If we don’t realize that the surf on the beach is God’s spirit washing over us, we are stuck on the beach and don’t enjoy His Kingdom.

I will never be the same. I am sure of what lies ahead for me, so the troubles of today are easy to bear. I want all of my brothers and sisters in the Lord to be as happy as I am.  In Mark 12:32-34, when Jesus responded to a Scribe’s question as to what is the first commandment of all, the scribe said to Him, “’Well said, Teacher. You have spoken the truth, for there is one God, and there is no other but He. And to love Him with all the heart, with all the understanding, with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is more than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.’  Now when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, He said to him, ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God.’”  Now, that’s not a close, but no cigar statement, but a close and keep on reaching for God statement.