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Inception: Guarding Your Heart and your God-Given Identity



I’ve just finished watching the movie Inception … again.  I love it – for all of its complication and intrigue, its difficulties, its agonies, and the way it wrestles with realities too difficult for us to grasp.  As complex as the film is, though, it can be simplified to revolve around a single hypothetical question – what would the world be like if we could consciously share our dreams with others, or, with more sinister intentions, invade the dreams of others to plant ideas or steal them?  It sounds a bit heady, and I won’t lie - it is extremely sobering to watch the life-altering possibilities play out on screen,  to watch life-courses forever changed for the better or for the worse – but it reminded me so much of our walk with God.  

“Inception,” the word itself means, “an act, process, or instance of beginning,” with synonyms like “genesis” and “creation.”  In the film, “inception” is a complicated process of invading another person’s dreams to plant an idea.  For us as believers, true “inception” is really the day of salvation, the day we begin to see ourselves as new creations in Christ, the day we begin to know God personally, the day the Word begins to define us more than our desire to sin.  To put it more in terms of the movie, true “inception” is the day we let God into our dreams, into the secret places and secret hurts we have guarded for so long, allowing Him to rewrite our understanding of the past and plant a larger and brighter idea of who we can be with Him at the center of our lives.  But, on a much smaller scale, inception happens every day of our lives.  It happens anytime we receive an external message about who we are, about who God is, about what is most real.  You see, like the character Cobb says in the movie, “There’s something you should know … about inception.  An idea is like a virus, resilient, highly contagious.  The smallest seed of an idea can grow.  It can grow to define you or destroy you.”  Any thought, experience, or word can plant an idea that will define us or destroy us, can spark a flame that will inspire or consume us, can propel us to great new heights or cause us to backslide via destructive habits. 

I think this resonated so strongly with me tonight because I have been studying and praying a lot about identity lately, noticing that many of those who have walked away from their faith in recent years did so because they believed lies about themselves or about God, about what was really true.  They got confused about which was reality – what they saw in the Word or what they saw in the mirror – and it destroyed their faith, just like in the film, the main character’s wife was destroyed by her confusion about which life was real (the dream state or her daily life).  To be honest, I think it hit a chord because I work with so many teenagers in tough situations, teenagers whose realities have been negatively shaped by ideas about themselves, their abilities, their world and the adults who should be protecting them.  Where have the ideas come from?  Inception.  These ideas have been planted, sometimes subconsciously, through the media, their peers, their schools, and their own insecurities.  The consequences of these ideas can be catastrophic.  It is the same way in our walk with God.  If we aren’t careful, if we aren’t guarding our hearts and our minds, wrong beliefs about God, about ourselves, about our calling can be planted in our minds, can destroy our zeal for the Lord, can mutilate our faith, and hinder our impact for the kingdom.  

This confusion about what is true, what is real about ourselves and God isn’t a new phenomenon, though.  Look at the prayers Paul prays for the New Testament churches.  Ephesians 1:17-19, in the Phillips translation, for example, says, “And this is my prayer.  That God, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ and the all-glorious Father, will give you spiritual wisdom and the insight to know more of him: that you may receive that inner illumination of the spirit which will make you realize how great is the hope to which he is calling you – the magnificence and splendor of the inheritance promised to Christians – and how tremendous is the power available to us who believe in God.”  He was praying that the church would be grounded in who God created them to be, in the future He created them to inhabit, in the power of God’s love for them and in their knowledge of Him – more than anything else.  He didn’t want them to be shaken by any false message they might encounter.  And God’s heart for you and for me is the same today, that we would get grounded in who He is, who we are in Him, and what is real in Heaven – more than what is temporary on this earth. 

With so many messages vying for our attention, trying to root themselves in our hearts and take over our walk with God - what can we do?  It’s simple, really.  We must develop a “totem,” like in the film.  According to one of the characters, a “totem”” is “something you have on you all the time … [unique] … That way when you look at your totem, you know beyond a doubt you’re not in someone else’s dream.”  In Scripture, God often encouraged believers them to refer to a physical object to remind them of what was true – that there was only one True God, one True Deliverer, and that He had always come through for them in the past.  This was accomplished by gathering stones from the bed of the Jordan River, for example, when Joshua and the Israelites passed through it on dry ground.  Each and every time they saw those stones – no matter what lies they had been tempted to believe, no matter what ideas had been planted in their heads by unbelievers and worshippers of other gods – they were reminded of what was true, that it was their God who had brought them safely through, and they were warned not to be sucked into another person’s “dream,” so to speak.  For Abraham, God gave two specific images as a “totem” so to speak, to remind him of the promise that he would be the father of nations – the stars and the sand.  Each and every time Abraham saw the stars or the sand, he was reminded that in God’s eyes, he was the father of many nations.  He was reminded that it was coming to pass, that God’s promise was real.  When other ideas were thrown at him – from jeering neighbors, from his wife who tried to take matters into her own hands, from the servants who wanted to know who was to inherit – all he had to do was look to the sand or the stars to be refreshed, to be strengthened in his resolve and to have the truth clarified for him.  I have known people who survived a tornado, who saw God’s deliverance in a tangible way, who carried around a small piece of debris with them at all times – to remind themselves of God’s protection.  My “totem” or “stone of remembrance” is much more like Abraham’s – it’s an image.  It’s archery.  There is something about archery that draws me, that reminds me of who I am in Christ, that reminds me of the fierceness and the battle I am to play a part of in the spirit (in prayer, for example), and every time I see something about archery then – on a movie, in a Bible verse, at a store – it captures my attention and helps me refocus on what is absolutely true.  It clarifies what lies I have been tempted to believe and helps me avoid destruction and distraction.  

So, dear friends, believers young and old – there is a point to this blog.  I want to encourage you, exhort you, implore you – be careful of the ideas you are allowing to grow in your heart.  Examine where the ideas come from.  Do they line up with Scripture, or are they a lie?  Proverbs 4:23 tells us that we must, “Guard [our] hearts above all else, for it determines the course of [our] lives” (New Living translation).  You cannot afford to believe lies, to cater to confusion, to allow destructive patterns/beliefs to take root in your lives - and neither can the people around you, the hurting, the lost, the people who most need to see God shining and working through you.  Ground yourself in who God is and who He created you to be, so you will not be destroyed by the lies and illusions of the Enemy.  And find yourself a “totem,” something tangible/visible that will help you refocus on God’s truth about Himself, about who He created you to be, and what the future holds for you. 

*Quotes and thematic material are from the 2010 movie, “Inception,” written and directed by Christopher Nolan, and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. 

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