Happy Monday!
Many years ago, Temitope Ogunfayo (fondly called Pastor Tea) shared a story with me. A pastor had a vision that he was in a market where they were selling brains. And the pastor noticed that there were 2 sets of brains in the market. Some were new and others were old. Quite old. The pastor got to know that the 2 types of brains represented 2 groups of Christians in Nigeria. The new brains belonged to “pentecostal” Christians while the old brains belonged to “orthodox” (e.g Anglican, Methodist, Baptist etc) Christians. The pastor was quite excited. He was a pentecostal pastor. He was already looking at how to include the insight into his next message. After all, everyone loved new things. That is until he knew the reason why the brains were new. The reason why they were new was simply because the so called pentecostal Christians didn’t use them! They always “parked” their brains and expected “The Spirit” to do their thinking for them. While the so called orthodox Christians were always using (in fact overusing) their brains.
I have heard of a brother who interpreted “dreams” he was having to mean that a certain sister he had hitherto never spoken to before was his wife and went ahead to covey his “divine message” with arrogance to the sister only to find out the lady was married and was not just wearing her wedding ring. Without deep thought, many have made assumptions and taken actions that have proven costly not only to them but to others depending on them.
I have since come to see that very many people find it difficult to think. They do everything but think and cerebrate on issues. They can worry. They can talk. They can party. They can even work (and sometimes quite hard). But to take moments to be quiet within and to think through on the “WHYs”, WHENs”, “WHOs”, “WHATs”, and “WHEREs” of the issues and circumstances they are faced with or more importantly they WILL/MAY be faced with is a challenge to many.
Today, I challenge you to dedicate more time to think. To really think. The discipline of critical thinking should not and cannot be the exclusive preserve of philosophers. Flex those mind muscles. Thinking is truly hard work. This is one of the reasons why the CEO earns much much more than the labourer in the factory who may seem to be expending more energy. Develop your capacity to examine problems and challenges and think through them and arrive at solutions that work and endure.
I wish you a prosperous 2015 full of Open Doors and Increase on all sides.
