Balancing our Inner Conflict || What is Courage? || Part 3

I’m continuing our focus on courageous character by looking at ourselves, more importantly our body. We’ve often heard Paul’s reference to Christians being the hands and feet of Christ. In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul talks about the body of Christ and how the parts should work together, but there was one verse that struck me. It’s 1 Corinthians 12:25 and it says this: “God did this so that our body would not be divided. God wanted to the different parts to care the same for each other.” That verse made me think about the internal conflicts that we deal with throughout life, and how our own mind can feel this division.

Internal conflict is defined as the experience of having opposite psychological beliefs, desires, impulses, or feelings. There’s a variety of types of internal conflict that we can experience such as moral conflicts, religious conflicts, self-image conflicts, and more. These occur when there’s a disagreement between the brain and the heart. Studies have shown that our heart has a special kind of “intelligence” that is supposed to be subtle and abstract. There really aren’t any set rules the governs our heart’s intelligence, so it’s left to our own discretion which can confuse us very easily. The head is intelligent, logical, and very capable of judging a situation to decide upon the best course of action.

If we don’t listen to our hearts, we can live unfulfilling and inauthentic lives. If we don’t listen to our head, we can live in absolute balance. So, what’s the solution? Balance! When it comes to our bodies, we can be unbalanced. I can’t stand on one foot for too long with feeling unbalanced, and it gets worse when you close your eyes. It’s normal to have these internal conflicts. As Paul mentioned, God wants the different parts to care equally for each other. You can care equally for your brain and heart and it just requires balance. Being intentional about doing this though takes courage because we often don’t want to admit there’s an imbalance, but take the intentional time to let our mind relax, meditate, and pray is one of the more courageous ways to bring balance to the body.