An Open Heart part 2
Keeping--or guarding, or maintaining--your heart is not about closing it down. Its about keeping it open. Open to love. So that the love that IS inside can fill us up to overflowing and come out. Naturally. Look at our key verse again, "Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life" (Proverbs 4:23). And right there we see WHY keeping our heart open to love is so important; the issues of life low out of the heart. And what flows out of the heart? Love! What is the issue of life? Love! We were created to be loved and to love each other with that love. Let God love us and love Him back by loving each other with that love. Whatsoever you do to the least of them you do unto Him, right? How we treat people is how we treat God. Which is why it drives me nuts when people will ignore people in need in order to "serve God." Blowing off someone who needs you because you have church, for example... to me... is about the most unholy thing you can do. The issue of life isn't going to church. I've long said that its more important to understand that you ARE the church. And I'm not saying you SHOULDN'T go to church, I'm simply saying people are more important. I believe there are two important things in this world--God and people. Loving God and loving people. Loving God BY loving people. But you can't do that with a heart that's closed up with bitterness, and anger, and hurt. Hurt people hurt people. I get that. You can't give what you don't have, and you can only give what you do have. I read the other day that everybody is healing from something they don't talk about. And that hit me right in the feels. Because its so true. We all have things we're trying to get over. Things that could easily destroy us, if we let them. But we don't have to let them. We don't have to shut down. Remember when Peter was walking on water and he took his eyes off Jesus and started to drown? Jesus asked him, "What's gotten into you?" Because even though we DO go through stuff-in this world you WILL have tribulation--we don't have to let stuff go through us. When we know that the fire in us is always hotter than the fire we're in... we can let the fire burn away our bonds (like the three Hebrew boys in Nebuchadnezzar's furnace) and we can come out smelling like roses. We can refuse to let our past define our future. We can learn and grow instead. I'm gonna keep saying it: If you never make any mistakes, you can't learn from your mistakes. Maturity is a process. We're all in this together. Learning and growing with each other. FROM each other. But if you isolate youself--even in order to keep yourself from getting hurt--you end up alone. Shutting your heart down only leaves you with a God-shaped, love-shaped hole inside. But if you keep your heart open to love--letting love in AND letting love out... receiving and releasing the love you've been given--that's when you can live out of abundance. That's when you can truly experience the abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life of love that is the gift of God! Experience it... by giving it away. By sharing it. Doing what you do from an open heart full of love!