Today's Devotional
February 16, 2007
Subject: Impulse Or Reason
Matthew 16:16 - 17 "And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven."
Matthew 16:22 - 23 "Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee. But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offense unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men."
My daughters are named Caylah and Caisa (pronounced Kysa), but if names were given based solely on personality, they would've been named respectively, Impulse and Reason. A story they told me this week illustrates this point.
I took my cadets to tour The Battleship Texas at San Jacinto. It's a historic site and while they toured the ship, the cadets and my daughters were playing with the weapons on board. One weapon was a two-man gun with seats for each person manning it. Each seat had a steering wheel. One wheel was to traverse the gun left to right and the other for up and down movement. Seems as though my daughters hopped on board and immediately, Caylah, Ms Impulse started yelling, "turn the wheel, turn the wheel" and so they frantically began to turn the wheel and the gun began moving. Suddenly, Caisa, Ms Reason, said "wait, what are we shooting?"
They've done many things to show that they are two different personalities and it's interesting to see how each is used.
Impulse and Reason are neither bad or good. You could have either personality or like Peter in the passage above, you could be both. Peter had just finished making an awesome statement about who Jesus was and Jesus gave him praise accordingly, but turn around a few minutes later and Jesus was telling him, "get thee behind me Satan." See Peter, when popped the question about who Jesus was, was quick to respond and had the correct answer. However, later as Jesus began to tell what was going to happen, Peter began to use his reason and then to tell Jesus that he was wrong and this thing would never happen.
Of course many times our impulses can mislead us as well. The bottom line is that both, impulse and reason, must be submitted to God's direction, if not, like my daughters on the ship, it won't matter how much you're turning the wheel, you'll never hit your target.
