Heart part 1
We ended the last Rant series with a memory verse about "purpose of heart." So I thought that was a good transition from a series about purpose to a series about the heart. And in order to really do the heart justice, I think we need to start at the beginning. The first time the word "heart" is used in the King James Bible is Genesis 6:5, "And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." Wow. There's a lot there. Let's define heart. It is number 3820 in Strong's Hebrew Concordance and it means, "the heart; also used (figuratively) very widely for the feelings, the will and even the intellect; likewise for the center of anything." So its more than just "that loving feeling," if I can say it that way. Because love is more than just a feeling. Love is a decision. Love is a conscious effort to give everything you have and everything you are. To lay your life down for your friends. Purpose of heart, right? It is the center of everything. Proverbs 4:23 says, "Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life." The issue (singular, in my opinion) of life... is love. And love comes from the heart. Its all about love. I believe this everlasting, eternal, abundant, Resurrection Life is a never-ending journey into the heart of the matter. And the heart of the matter is the heart. God's heart beating with love in our chests. The still, small voice of truth telling us the ultimate truth of the universe with every beat of God's heart in our chests. Every beat saying, "I love you. I love you. I love you." It doesn't come from without. It comes from within. It comes from the heart. That's why its so important that we keep our heart will all diligence. Keep it OPEN. Don't shut it down because we've been burned. Don't close it off so we'll never be hurt again. Trust in God. Trust in love. Now before I run out of room today, I really want to hit this idea that every imagination of the thought of man's heart was only evil continually. Like I said, to truly understand where we are now its important to understand where we've come from. And I believe that before the cross--before we were gifted the Holy Spirit, our love receptor--the problem that mankind has was that we wanted to be loved, but we couldn't believe that God loved us. We were reaching for the carrot but we felt like all we ever got was the stick. We were trapped in "religion" where we had swallowed the lie that says you have to do in order to be. The lie that says you have to earn your bread by the sweat of your brow. And no matter how hard we tried, we always fell a little bit short. There was always (at least) one thing we lacked. That's frustrating. That will lead someone to try to get what they think they don't have by any means necessary. Take it. Steal it. Swindle people out of it. Whatever it takes. Isn't that what we see so often in the Old Testament? But that's not what God wanted for us. He wanted us to be able to love. And in order to be able to love we needed to know we were loved. And in order to know that we always have been and always will be loved... we needed a new heart. I guess that's where I'll pick up on this tomorrow.