Inception

   The movie "Inception" is about a world where people figure out how to get into other people's dreams and dive down deep into their sub-conscience and plant an "idea" into them that will propel them to do what they want them to do.

   The concept that an "idea" is very powerful tool is absolutely correct.   Ideas have changed societies, built H-bombs and created things like the Holocaust.  But at the the individual level they also have effects as well.  Our minds are open fields for good and for bad ideas.   Ideas that sometimes seem to come out of nowhere.  

   Let me illustrate.   When I was trying to decide whether to be an engineer or a pastor I consulted lots of different people to help me see which way I should go.  All gave me their opinions but nothing seemed to point the way.   Then I saw the movies "Chariots of Fire" where the main character, Eric Little. is talking to his sister about his conflict between running in the Olympics and being a missionary.   He said, "I know God has made me for a purpose!  But he also made me FAST!  When I run I feel his PLEASURE!".   It was at that moment I decided to be an engineer.  Because I too felt God's pleasure as I studied my math and science.   Those were abilities he gave me to use.  A thought set my course in life.

   Another illustration I like to use is how I met my wife.  I had just moved out to New England area for my first job and I sat in Mt Calvary Lutheran church for the first time (just 2 weeks after moving out to the area) and I saw this beautiful girl with the most gorgeous head of strawberry blonde hair and I heard a voice say (in my brain) , "You are going to marry that girl someday!".  It was such a strong thought I looked around to see if someone was playing a joke on me.  3 years later we were married.  A thought brought me my wife.

   Thoughts can be Powerful!

    But thoughts can also be destructive.   Look in Genesis and see Eve talking with Satan about the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.   He plants thought in her that says "Did God really say that?"  You see Eve was not around when God told Adam to not eat of the tree.  She was not created yet.   She had to trust that Adam was telling the truth.   Satan's question to her, "Did God really say 'You will die'?"  is not a question directed about God, but instead what Adam told Eve that God had told him.  Doubt can be a seed that grows and spreads like a weed in a persons life. 

- Does he/she love me?

- Did they do that on purpose?

- Can I trust him/her?

These doubts about other people in our lives ruin relationships and drive us away from others.  Marriages are destroyed.  Friendships are lost.  Churches are torn apart.   

    Maybe the most destructive thought to a believer is simply, "Am I saved?".   Doubt about ones salvation begins as one doubts their own internal goodness.  We may at some level, even though we know we are sinners, still harbor some idea that we have some internal quality that God likes and wants to preserve, but when that quality is removed (or we don't see it as enough in God's eyes to be worth much) we begin to doubt our value in God's eyes.   Even though we know God's love is for all.... somehow we feel we fall through 'the cracks' of God's love into hell itself.   It's for THEM....but not for ME.   We may feel that God can forgive the sins of our youth...but not our adulthood.  We may feel he can forgive the sins of ignorance....but not the sins of willfulness.  King David says to the prophet Nathan after he is confronted with his adultery and murder, "I AM UNDONE!".   He was basically saying: "I am naked as Adam before God!"   Nathan proclaims to David the good and bad news that he is forgiven but that his sin (that everyone knew about) will have ramifications and will cause a division in his own household.  This will later hold true as his son Absollem will take advice from other people that HE should be the King of Israel since his father has committed 2 horrible sins against God).  

   Satan knows about our doubts of ourselves and our feelings of being unworthy and he plays on them all the time.   

- IF God loved you he would have kept you from doing that!

- IF YOU loved God you would not have done that!

- NOW you have gone TOO FAR!  

- This is who you REALLY are!  Give up!

Satan knows that our limited minds have problems with "infinity".    We are finite and therefore God must be finite as well.   If we have limited love ... God must have limited love as well.   Paul tries to express how wrong this thinking is when he says in Ephesians, 

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. 

    We cannot fathom how infinite God's love is for us.  Our doubts about ourselves are really doubts about what God has told us about himself and his relationship to us. He calls us "His children" yet we doubt our "belonging".   He dies for us and yet we doubt his love for us.   He raises from the dead and declares "Peace to you!" and we feel he is out to get us for our sins.  He forgives the disciples for their abandonment and their disowning him and we doubt his forgiveness for our willful sins of abandonment and disowning. 

   So the real question to each of us know is simply this:   Which thoughts are you going to entertain and listen to?   God's spirit that tells us we are loved and accepted for who are are right now?  Or the satanic thought that you are not "good enough" or that God has forgotten you.