Someone asked me how I seek to nourish the mind in my professional life and in my life of faith.

I believe that people, both believers and non-believers, need to be able to think for themselves, and I lament the drum beating that mesmerizes Christian people with the latest fad. I also don't think much of the formula approach to Christianity that suggests if one just prays this particular prayer, reads this particular book, practices certain principles, attends such and such particular church, manifests various signs of the Spirit, agrees with another about anything desired, gives money as a seeding for a future harvest of wealth, or any other particular method to force God's hand into giving us what we want, then everything is going to be just fine. Sometimes it isn't.

God told us not to make an image of Him because we cannot reduce God to our categories of thought. He is enigmatic, inscrutable, and impossible to fathom. His ways are not our ways. Sometimes He disciplines us for our own good, and when that happens it does not feel like everything is "just fine".

I'm a writer. I'm a psychologist. I'm a trainer and a teacher. I'm a coach. I'm an organisational consultant. I'm an ordained clergyman who never gave up on his call to the ministry.

I live a missional life, and I completely integrate my faith with everything I do. I have an active mind and a creative spirit; so, I cannot keep from nourishing myself with new projects, and the projects God leads me into keep my mind vigorous.

For example, I am working on the final proofs of one book, have signed a contract on a second, and I'm waiting for the responses to two proposals for still a third and a fourth. Meanwhile, I'm series editor developing a line of books on my professional field of study, which means that I am recruiting editors for these books and working to develop those people in those roles. When I work on a writing project, I gather research on the subject and digest it.

There is a learning curve that comes from pulling together information and organising it into the various parts of a book. A book is different from an article, and an article is different from a review; a review is different still from a column.

My field is gestalt therapy, which is based on continental philosophy and German science, with a bit of American pragmatism thrown in for spice. I read the phenomenologists and existentialists who have come before me as well as the thinkers who currently hold sway, and I actively discuss these things with colleagues from around the world in a listserv discussion group that I have facilitated since 1996.

I am presenting a workshop on "Intentional Spirituality" at an international conference of gestalt therapists in June of 2010 describing recent continental philosophy (specifically, the "turn" towards theology in contemporary phenomenology) and how that work impacts contemporary gestalt therapy.

Simultaneously, I am leading the way with regards to stimulating research and generating a research evidence base for gestalt therapy. I edited a book on research for the international gestalt community (it is being translated for publication in Spanish, French, Czech, Korean, and Chinese), and I am co-chair of the Research Task Force for the Association for the Advancement of Gestalt Therapy, an international community (www.aagt.org).

In June 2010 I will present a full day pre-conference workshop to help equip gestalt therapists for conducting practice-based research. For all these things, I have studied, and must keep on studying.

God gets to me through my mind, and when He enlightens me, I feel drawn toward and into Him.

It makes me want to contemplate his Word and the writings of other people who have also known Him. When I was preaching, I studied in the Greek and Hebrew, and I read commentaries and background pieces. Yet, what most impacts me is the way God's presence draws me.

When Jesus talked about leaving, He said that He would not leave people alone; he promised to come to us, and He does that through the Holy Spirit. I try to remain sensitive to the Spirit. I know what the disciples meant when they said, "Where shall we go; you have words of eternal life". (John 6:68) Yes. And that is what nourishes me-to think God's thoughts, words of eternal life, after Him.

I need to be alone with God, but I also need to be with others who know God.

When I meet with people who know God and who are familiar with his Words of eternal life, and when we talk with one another, then also I am nourished.

I must also be with others who do not know God, because I am an ambassador for Christ with a ministry of reconciliation and I cannot carry that out if I do not have real relationships with people who don't know God.

Further, here is an observation: people who do not know God keep me fresh in my relationship with God and in my understanding of the world in which I live.

There have been moments in which I knew that God appointed a meeting, a conversation, or a discussion with someone, and the experience of that nourished my whole being-body, mind, and spirit.

How do you nourish the life of the mind and your life of faith? Are these two categories separated by some kind of gulf attributed to science or reason? Have you ever really thought about how your mind and your faith are connected?

We are not just brains that think, after all. For many, one's heart longs for a deeper significance to life, one that makes sense, one that satisfies. Can you think for yourself about these kinds of things?