In a sermon focusing on the Holy Spirit, Greg defined the heart as “the seat of our will, desires, thoughts, beliefs, emotions and connection with God.” He also said the Holy Spirit is working “to transform our heart into the likeness of Jesus.” I wanted to stand up and cheer, because I spend much time talking with people using the language of the heart. I find that sometimes it is a foreign language, because we are not always in touch with what is on our hearts.
Jeremiah spoke to this in Jeremiah 17:9 revealing that our hearts are deceitful and hard to know. And yet, this is the very place that the Holy Spirit targets to make us more like Jesus. If this is the case, then it bids us to pause and consider what it might take to know our hearts. This is a great season to do this as we focus on discipleship. One of the essentials we have identified as key to discipleship, is that it is inherently holistic. When I think on this, the conversation that Jesus had with a group of Pharisees in Matthew 27 comes to mind. At this point in His ministry, the whole religious establishment is plotting to be rid of Him. The Pharisees come to Him with a question about the greatest commandment. He responds,
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
I do not know what the Pharisees were expecting Him to say, but Jesus’ response rendered them speechless. I would like to think this is because they were suddenly aware of their shortcomings. I suspect they thought they were loving the Lord well with their minds because they knew the law and were piously obeying it, but their hearts were far from Him.
In other words, their will, desires, thoughts, beliefs and emotions were not yielded to God and they had no connection with Him. We could debate this assumption, but the real question that I ask myself is, “how well am I doing in loving God with my whole heart, soul and mind; my whole self?” This is a great question to wrestle with as we think about becoming holistic in following Jesus because it calls us to consider what it requires to love God with all of our heart, all of our soul and all of our mind. It is quite notable that Jesus begins with the heart. This challenges me because it calls me to inspect my practices to see if I am holistically seeking God. I confess that I love the Word of God. I love to study and question and dive in to know more. But I have to temper this zeal for knowledge with the reality that we can know the Word of God without knowing the God of the Word. However, we cannot know the God of the Word without knowing the Word of God.
If loving God involves all of us - heart, soul and mind - then simple knowledge of the Bible, of God, will not grow us as disciples of Jesus. We need to engage the heart as we study and read God’s Word by opening our hearts to God and inviting Him in to search them (Psalm 139). This requires an awareness of our desires, thoughts and emotions as we are reading and studying God’s Word. When we do this, we are not just engaging with our minds, but our hearts as well. This engagement often leads to worship and praise as our hearts connect with God and we bask in His love. However, this engagement can also raise awareness of a thought, feeling or desire that is misaligned to God’s Word, the truth. When this occurs, it is time to stop and seek the Lord in prayer to trace the root of this, which is typically a lie we are believing or a hurt we are nursing.
God wants so much more for us than to have us simply know His Word, He wants us to know Him fully, holistically, engaging our whole heart, soul and mind. This is the work of the heart and at times it can be painful and difficult because it requires us to engage our emotions and desires. When we come to a passage, we need to think about what it is saying and handle the word of God rightly, but we also need to stop to assess how we are responding to it at the heart level (emotionally). When we do this our minds are renewed with truth and our hearts are transformed by truth and we grow a little more like Jesus in this pursuit.
In my thinking, it’s not knowledge that keeps us from becoming like Jesus, it is what is on our heart. So if our hearts are wounded and our desires and feelings are informed by these wounds, we can only grow in the likeness of Jesus as we allow Him to enter into our hearts to do a healing work. And because we are human, we all have wounds and hurts that need to be healed. But until we bring them to Jesus and submit them to Him, they remain open and painful. He is able to take what we know in our minds to heal our hearts so we are transformed into His likeness. When we invite Him to do this, we grow as His disciples and become more like Jesus!
In practicing this myself, I am often stunned by the work the Lord wants to do to uncover lies that I have believed that are rooted in hurts of the past that have shaped my identity. When I open my heart and invite God in to search it (Psalm 139), I am often surprised by what He reveals, while at the same time amazed at the depth of love and gratitude that flows out of these transforming experiences. I invite you to do the same. The next time you open your Bible for study or devotions, begin by asking God to search your heart and reveal what is in it. He will answer and show you unsearchable things you do not know.
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
I do not know what the Pharisees were expecting Him to say, but Jesus’ response rendered them speechless. I would like to think this is because they were suddenly aware of their shortcomings. I suspect they thought they were loving the Lord well with their minds because they knew the law and were piously obeying it, but their hearts were far from Him.
In other words, their will, desires, thoughts, beliefs and emotions were not yielded to God and they had no connection with Him. We could debate this assumption, but the real question that I ask myself is, “how well am I doing in loving God with my whole heart, soul and mind; my whole self?” This is a great question to wrestle with as we think about becoming holistic in following Jesus because it calls us to consider what it requires to love God with all of our heart, all of our soul and all of our mind. It is quite notable that Jesus begins with the heart. This challenges me because it calls me to inspect my practices to see if I am holistically seeking God. I confess that I love the Word of God. I love to study and question and dive in to know more. But I have to temper this zeal for knowledge with the reality that we can know the Word of God without knowing the God of the Word. However, we cannot know the God of the Word without knowing the Word of God.
If loving God involves all of us - heart, soul and mind - then simple knowledge of the Bible, of God, will not grow us as disciples of Jesus. We need to engage the heart as we study and read God’s Word by opening our hearts to God and inviting Him in to search them (Psalm 139). This requires an awareness of our desires, thoughts and emotions as we are reading and studying God’s Word. When we do this, we are not just engaging with our minds, but our hearts as well. This engagement often leads to worship and praise as our hearts connect with God and we bask in His love. However, this engagement can also raise awareness of a thought, feeling or desire that is misaligned to God’s Word, the truth. When this occurs, it is time to stop and seek the Lord in prayer to trace the root of this, which is typically a lie we are believing or a hurt we are nursing.
God wants so much more for us than to have us simply know His Word, He wants us to know Him fully, holistically, engaging our whole heart, soul and mind. This is the work of the heart and at times it can be painful and difficult because it requires us to engage our emotions and desires. When we come to a passage, we need to think about what it is saying and handle the word of God rightly, but we also need to stop to assess how we are responding to it at the heart level (emotionally). When we do this our minds are renewed with truth and our hearts are transformed by truth and we grow a little more like Jesus in this pursuit.
In my thinking, it’s not knowledge that keeps us from becoming like Jesus, it is what is on our heart. So if our hearts are wounded and our desires and feelings are informed by these wounds, we can only grow in the likeness of Jesus as we allow Him to enter into our hearts to do a healing work. And because we are human, we all have wounds and hurts that need to be healed. But until we bring them to Jesus and submit them to Him, they remain open and painful. He is able to take what we know in our minds to heal our hearts so we are transformed into His likeness. When we invite Him to do this, we grow as His disciples and become more like Jesus!
In practicing this myself, I am often stunned by the work the Lord wants to do to uncover lies that I have believed that are rooted in hurts of the past that have shaped my identity. When I open my heart and invite God in to search it (Psalm 139), I am often surprised by what He reveals, while at the same time amazed at the depth of love and gratitude that flows out of these transforming experiences. I invite you to do the same. The next time you open your Bible for study or devotions, begin by asking God to search your heart and reveal what is in it. He will answer and show you unsearchable things you do not know.