Open Up part 1
I think there are two subjects that I want to touch on in this Rant series. And they are really the same thing. The mind of Christ, and the heart of God. And in this Rant series I want to focus on--as the title suggests--opening up. Guarding your heart, by keeping it open, and having an open mind. So to stat I want to quote Ephesians 4:17-18 (NLT), "With the Lord’s authority I say this: Live no longer as the Gentiles do, for they are hopelessly confused. Their minds are full of darkness; they wander far from the life God gives because they have closed their minds and hardened their hearts against him." Now you can see there's kind of a negative connotation against the "Gentiles" which, in the KJV is number 1484 in Strong's Greek Concordance and means, "a race, that is, a tribe: - specifically a foreign (non-Jewish) one (usually by implication pagan)." In other words... nonbeliever. Because in the new covenant its not Jew or Greek. We are all one in Him. But BEING one, and KNOWING you are one are two different things. And its easy to be hopelessly confused. With a closed mind full of darkness and a hard heart. I think this even happens sometimes when we show people who God is by loving them. Remember the parable of the sower? He sowed seed (the Word of God) all over. But it missed more often than it hit. Because God's love really does seem too good to be true. Especially when you start talking about mercy, and grace. Mercy being not getting what you deserve, and grace being getting what you don't deserve. It can blow somebody's mind when you tell them that God loves them no matter what. When you tell them that it doesn't matter what they've done. When you tell them nothing can separate them from the love of Christ. What they do sometimes is they reject the message and wander far from the life of God. Like Adam and Eve way back in Eden's misty garden, they hid from the presence of God. The presence is still there--God promised that He would never leave us nor forsake us--but its almost like we stick our fingers in our ears and make that obnoxious "I can't hear you" noise. The tragedy, of course, is that the thing we're almost kind of willfully ignoring is the thing that we so desperately desire. We give love a chance, and it doesn't work out the way we should, and we think we need to guard our hearts by closing them down in order to protect ourselves from being hurt again. And, listen, I understand the impulse: once you get burned you tend to shy away from the fire. But that's not how the heart works. The heart's sole purpose is to receive and release love. So in order to guard it, to keep it working properly, we need to keep it open. We can't let the mind of Christ (that's already in us) BE in us by being closed minded. We need to be open to what God has for us. What God has already given us. We need to be open to the possiblity of love. The reality of love. The truth that God is love and He loves you. The truth that He gave His life FOR you, and He gave His life TO you. Because He wanted you to have it. So open up and receive it... and release it!