Truth Seekers Newsletter
September 23, 2007: I Love You With All My Heart!
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When you think of the heart, what comes to mind? Valentines Day, Love, Life and Death, Persistence, Faithfulness, One of a Kind?
What Is The Mission of the Heart?
In the physical body, the heart is located in the chest. It pumps blood through the body. The blood delivers oxygen to all parts of the body, but it goes nowhere without the force of the heart to send it.
The Mission of the Heart in the Body of Christ
We can think of the heart as God Himself. The physical heart pumps the blood, which is carrying life giving oxygen, to all parts of the body. God is the Force that sends Life to the Body of Christ through His Word, as carried by us. As much as we dream up to do on our own, we will not go very far without the Force of God sending us out.
Even a Pharisee recognized that! When the disciples were in trouble for speaking the Word of God, a trusted Pharisee gave his peers advice. (Acts 5:38-39) He recognized that if God were sending the disciples, then no one could stop them. If God were not sending them, their efforts would come to nothing.
Transferred!
When does life leave a physical body? When the heart stops pumping. When God declares your mission on earth to be complete, He will stop sending you out in this earthly body. Does this mean your mission is over for good? No! It just means you've been transferred! You will likely get a new set of orders, as soon as you arrive at your next destination (heaven!).
Timing is Everything!
The heart is a masterful example of timing. It has four chambers or rooms that work together in an amazing dance of leading and following. The two top chambers pump blood to the two lower chambers. The lower chambers pump blood out to either the lungs or other parts of the body.
Two chambers pump while the other two chambers rest. What do you think would happen if all the parts of the heart tried to pump at once? The heart would lock up and everything would shut down within seconds. The Bible wisely tells us that there is a time for everything. That time is set by God. When we demand our own timing and try to work against God's Timing, things don't go well.
You Cannot Give That Which You Do Not Have!
As eager as the bottom chambers of the heart are to pass blood on to its next stop, if the bottom chambers have not received blood from the top, they have nothing to pass on. Many good Christians get a little bit of God's Word and they want to sprint off to far off countries and spread it. However, if they have not been willing to receive their full load, they are going to find they don't have a lot to deliver when they go out. Be willing to wait for God's timing. Be willing to receive all He has for you. Know that it is God, Who will direct how fast you go and where you go in Life.
Doors that No One Can Open and Doors that No One Can Shut!
I love Revelations 3:7! That one verse explains many situations in our life. The heart has doors (called valves) between its rooms. Those doors will not open until it is time for the blood to go into the next room. When the right amount of blood is in the next room, the door will slam shut. (Interesting aside, when someone listens to your heart with a stethoscope, they hear what is often called the heart beat. The sound itself is really the closing of the doors between the rooms in the heart!)
Closed Doors Ahead of Us That Seem Not Be Opening
What can we learn from those doors in the heart? Very often we chomp at the bit for a door to open. We pray and spiritually beat on that door to open. Sometimes we become discouraged, because we believe God is simply not coming to the door. We may think if God cared about us at all, surely He would open the door. However, there are some doors God mercifully allows to stay closed to protect us. They are doors no one can open. Have you ever prayed for something you did not get and later you learned more facts that made you grateful God said no?
The story of waiting for the door to open is told by Corrie Ten Boom. She said that as a child, she became very frustrated because God was not seeming to answer her prayers. Her mother wisely asked her, "Corrie, when you take a trip on the train, when does your Father give you the ticket?" Corrie thought for a moment and said, "Just before we get on the train." Her mother said, "God is like that. He knows when you need the ticket and He will give it to you at just the right time. He is never early and He is never late." If God intends that you take that train or for that door to open, you can depend upon Him to open it at just the right time.
Closed Doors Behind Us That Will Not Let Us Go Back
God intended that we live life in the here and now, but headed toward the future. He very sweetly gave us precious memories to enjoy, a souvenir of days gone by. He also gave us not so precious memories to remind us that we don't have to live in those uncomfortable times anymore. Life has moved on.
The doors of the heart slam shut in part to allow just the right amount of blood into the next room. God knows just how much can fit into that room without overcrowding. But God also slams the door to keep the blood from trying to return to where it has already been. This is a one way street and no u-turns are allowed.
How many of us want to cling to the good old days? Sometimes they actually were not too good, but we have applied a little imagination to dress them up and now they seem wonderful in memory. Sometimes we want to just go back out of laziness. We knew what to do then … there was someone to take care of us then … but now, things are harder. Remember things become more difficult, as we grow. We are gaining strength for the next leg of the journey, by tackling more and more difficult tasks. If we just stayed where we were, we would never get the strength to grow.
The Bible gives us examples of people who wanted to go back. God's People, Who were in the desert, had experienced wonderful provision by God. Still at some point, they began to murmur that they would rather go back to Egypt. Are you kidding me? That would be like breaking back into Alcatraz! Lot's wife looked back, perhaps longingly, to what she had in Sodom and Gomorra and she turned into a pillow of salt, forever stuck in time, unable to go back, unable to go forward!
The message of the closed doors behind us is the past is the past. It is over.
Harmony
We have learned that the heart has perfect timing. It has rhythm. And beyond that, it sings in four part harmony! Each one of the four chambers or rooms of the heart has something different going on in it at any given time. You would think this would be a set up for chaos! But because each part sticks to what it was designed to do and does it when it is supposed to do it, the heart is a perfect example of God's Own Symphony.
When we in the Body of Christ do the job for which He has shaped us and we do it at the time He wants us to do it, there is harmony and things move very efficiently and smoothly as God designed them to do.
Persistence
From the moment your heart started pumping, it has kept it up and will do so until your mission on earth is over. The heart is the ultimate example of persistence.
How persistent are we in the Body of Christ? Unfortunately many of us fall prey to moods. We hear a good Word. We get charged up. We run with it. But then we get tired. Or perhaps we get bored. We just don't feel like keeping it up and we decide to coast … and sometimes that coast turns into a stop all together. Have you ever thought you might just skip church or Sunday School just for today … or perhaps just for a couple of Sundays, and before you know it, you have to force yourself to go back?
Think of the heart. It never has to decide whether it will pump or not. It knows that it will pump. Before persistence comes commitment. God wants us to commit all parts of ourselves to Him. This includes our time with Him. Try it! Talk to God about something you will commit to Him, something that you will keep on committing to Him, no matter how you feel from day to day or week to week.
It won't be about your feelings. It will be about keeping your Promise to God. Commit it to Him and watch what He does with it!
Can Our Hearts Talk to Each Other?
Many people don't realize that music is a form of setting our heart beat. When the music is slow, your heart tends to set itself to the slower tempo and often you feel relaxed or even sleepy. When the music is faster, your heart tends to set itself to the faster tempo and you feel pepped up! The physical heart is responsive to the environment outside it. Not only music, but other things cause your heart beat to speed up or slow down as needed.
Have you noticed that a calm person can often calm an agitated person? Have you noticed that sometimes an agitated person can rattle even a calm person? We can respond to each other. With that being the case, you would think that we would all be just bouncing all over the place, responding. So the next question is very important.
Who is Influencing Your Heart?
We cannot influence others for God unless we are in beat with His Heart. Next week we will look more closely at the path of the blood in the body. One thing that will become apparent is that the blood spends a lot of time inside the heart, absorbing everything about it and getting in time to its beat.
The Way It Works
We each spend time in the very Heart of God. When we come out and go into the Body of Christ, we find that we are each carrying just what we are supposed to carry and we are headed just where we are supposed to be headed. We find that we are being pumped at just the right speed and we respond in trust to the stop lights, caution lights and go lights.
When we pull along side others, who do not yet know they can be a part of the Body of Christ, there is something about us that feels warm and familiar to them, sort of like the heartbeat they once felt before the world distracted them. They find themselves riding with us for a ways … as we get closer every moment to going Home to the Heart of God!
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