When it comes down to the concept of intellect, what God’s word said about it, and how it challenges the validity of our walk, there are only two scriptures needed to bring clarity
Proverbs 3:5-6 says
6.In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.
Mathew 22:37
On paper that might seem to be a very simple process. But unless you have a clear understanding of the hindering factors that exist between the heart and the mind, you will have no ability to fulfill either of these directives. The foundation of our relationship with God begins when we acknowledge His love with-in the depths of our heart. And once we have accepted him within our heart, that relationship even accesses our eternal soul, if we accept him in our whole heart. Allowing the smallest of anti-Christ authority to remain in hidden areas of the heart can lead to detrimental failure. It’s almost like building a house on a bad foundation, even though the erected product looks good, its destined to develop cracks.
The element that will challenge the validity of your heart is the mind. This is where we perceive and intellectualize according to our own viewpoint. This is where we develop a ability to disregard what we know to be right in our heart. So exactly how does the intellect of the mind supersede what you know to be right in your heart? Looking back at the verse in Mathew, we see that Jesus said to love the lord thy God with ALL your heart, ALL your soul, and ALL your mind. Many fail to truly fulfill the requirement of ALL. A failure of ALL in steps 1 causes inability of the entire process. By the time that we come to the mind, its easily able to manipulate the heart because the heart has not been fully surrendered to God.
Jeremiah 17:9 says: 9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? Throughout the word of God we can find a multitude of circumstances where people who clearly loved God, failed to maintain the desire of His heart in many ways. Abraham trusted the word God had given Him, and he rested on it. But when a period of time had passed, Sarah expressed her own thoughts about God’s plan, and she even gave her take on how to help God. And as for Abraham, rather than bringing his own thoughts into captivity to the directive of God’s intent, he intellectualized his wife’s opinion. His intellectual perception offered a clear excuse as to why it wasn’t necessary to wait on God. So he acted out her directive, and had a baby with her hand maiden Hagar. (Genesis 16) Now when God’s plan was eventually initiated through Sarah, here she comes again with an opinion on how to undo the previous act of intellectual perception. Now an innocent woman and her child (Hagar and Ishmael) to the heart-ship of Abraham, are cast into the wilderness alone. (Genesis 21). Abraham’s decisions were based on the desire of his heart to please his wife. He never even considered that he would not be pleasing God. He wanted her happiness more than God’s.