For the eyes of God roam (Hebrew – “run to and fro”)
throughout the earth to show Himself strong
for one whose heart is completely His
2 Chronicles 16:9.
THIS BLOG MESSAGE IS IN CONSTRUCTION AS WE ARE ON THE ROAD AND IT WILL TAKE TIME TO FINISH. THANK YOU.
God’s revelation of the heart is phenomenal! It is a ‘shortcut’ to bypass all the religiosity man put on men. It makes everything about knowing God so simple.
No “sinner’s prayer” here. No “right” doctrinal knowledge or formula required. No legal demands for “righteous” standards of living. Individual heart is the means Jesus uses to save an individual; His Heart to our heart. It takes heart to find heart. It takes heart to know heart. No one can come to Jesus unless the Father draws him in heart (Jn.6:45).
There is a tragic ill-conceived presumption common today; that ‘the heart’ is an easy-whim claim; “Oh I have a heart for God. I love God in my own way”. The Scriptures warn there is a deeper explanation. Everything about God is all about HEART. But how does your heart react right now? Do you show your heart? How big, wide, deep and humble is your heart? Do you know what heart means? Do you think “I already know all this?”. Consider:
“The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; Who can understand it? …
He who trusts in his own heart is a fool…
the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil and insanity is in their hearts throughout their lives…
in whatever our heart condemns us;
for God is greater than our heart…” (Jer. 17:9/Ecc.9:3/Prov.28:17/1 Jn.3:20).
I’ve been caught in the battle of trying to figure it out for over fifty years. Back and forth, up and down, inside and outside. I guess you could say I’m a bit slow. But better late than never. Praise be to God. In my lowest, and highest point, I have come to see my heart. I don’t know how much I got it right. But what I have, I offer you. Accurate understanding works. I have sadly realized most people don’t get it because they don’t want “it”; heart. In general, men want to strive to prove they are right and this very fact exposes lack of heart. Striving results in anxiety and ends in turmoil and darkness. Few people realize salvation is not knowing about the things of God. It is knowing God’s heart.
BARE WITH ME FOR THESE FEW BOLDED PARAGRAPHS; So this may all sound a bit lofty or irrelevant, depending on your own desire for honesty with yourself, and also your exposure to the realities of the mass population. Your manner of response will show you your heart. I write this to offer someone ‘out there’ a helpful context to find a mental clarity and crystallize the heart, amidst the sometimes immense daily struggles and existence.
Every other day there is a news report about a killing or bizarre event involving people with mental health issues. How many times do you encounter someone whom you think “Wow. He’s got issues”? Walk around where you live and you will find everyone is suffering from mental oppression, full of sadness and grief. The very air of these times is filled with demonic oppression like never before. Demons run rampant on the earth.
We think we are distant from the mental darkness others must be facing. This is both true and false. Surely the darkness of sin has varying levels severity. But the source of sin is the same in us all. The evil potential that lies within sin is incomprehensible and operates within each of us. We all carry the dark potential of ‘going over the edge’ as declared in the above Scriptural revelation. But Jesus offers a REAL resolution by offering us His resurrection heart for us to access.
What we deal with at one time in our life may, in another time, due to a number of things, explode, both inward and outward, into a complex massive struggle later in life. So the sooner we unpack God’s truth and understand how our human being functions the sooner we can identify and subject our humanity as a true disciple of Jesus.
Jesus uses one word to describe sin; “darkness” (John 8:12,12:35-36). Society has no remedy to darkness except psychiatric drugs. Christianity offers hyperbole and doctrinal theory. There is no definition or even informed recognition of darkness by “professionals” or “preachers”. Yet TV is full of drug adds that use social-psychological terms to identify specific mental breakdown, all have countless side effects. Suicide is not only a fear in prisons, or amongst Veterans and the homeless. It is everywhere people suffer depression and despair. Mental decline increases with age and wherever drugs, alcohol and sexual perversion are prevalent. Christian delusion floods this country and takes the place of the living Jesus using empty Bible jargon and a false image of what it means to make your mind right-eous.
Let’s be honest. We have each had times when we recognize within ourselves the darkness that threatens our mental equilibrium. This is THE HEART “desperately sick”. The concept of a sinful heart sin is so vague it carries no relevance. This ignorance has debilitating impact in our lives. We must come to understand how our own human makeup is “programmed” to works against us. Sin is not neutral or passive. We are by nature negative creatures driven into laziness and self-deception. Mental health is established by actively subjecting ourselves to God’s remedy over all our composition.
Our heart is transformed by obedience to the truth of God’s Word. It is through faith that we can access and utilize THE heart, as an objective mechanism, for our personal direction and expression. Faith brings us into God’s heart of peace and happiness. The blessing of God’s promise to Abraham was fulfilled in him by his heart of faith. Despite the fact that he was still a sinner (uncircumcised) it was his heart to believe God that made him see God. Instead of the curse and vexation of sin wrought in birth Abraham found God and God found Abraham.
“…for with the heart a person believes,
resulting in what is right before God” (Rm.10:10).
The most familiar passage about heart is when God chose a young kid named David, who was taking care of sheep, on a hillside. His appointed him king over Israel. God wanted someone to rule His people like His own Son would do. The one and only qualification to rule over a million people was something David couldn’t purchase or fake. But he sure did learn; HEART.
Over ten thousand years ago God wanted to show His the one and only means by which He sought amongst men. God wanted to show His own heart to the world so He chose David. Then David showed his heart was after God’s heart. David understood the sin into which he was born and he shut his mouth to open his heart. (“I was born in sin and in sin did my mother conceive me”). He knew God did not want a sacrifice of “right behavior appearances” to atone for his sin but rather a “see-through” heart.
David committed adultery and the murder of his greatest general. Yet what God saw was HEART. God saw reflections of His Son in such a “broken and contrite” like no other man (Ps.51). And this was something David chose out of his own will. Transparency is no little thing. Sincerity is no little thing. They are powers to get beyond a heart “desperately sick” to a heart that pants after the living God.
David was so transparent before God he could sense the Spirit of Christ, though not born again, he wrote over a hundred prophetic declarations. Consider Psalm 22.David was like Christ and Christ was like David. The depth of anointing; the awareness of Christ, upon David was so great he manifested the Spirit of the Messiah. When men were around Jesus they recognized Him and said “this is the Son of David”. Jesus took honor in being like David.
The number one characteristic to avoid confusion and delusion and focus in on heart shown by David to be broken transparency with God. No word games. No presumption. Laid bare. If you want to escape mental anguish it starts with a blatant palpable honesty. When others talked to David they felt like they were drinking fresh water amongst all the polluted hypocrisy. He was someone who would bear enormous suffering from rejection and thousands of enemies because reflected a heart response of constant praise for God. How could He do this? What was going on in this dude? He did not defend, pity or build himself. David had NO CONCERN for how he appeared on the outside. David was enthralled with the Person of God.
“For the Lord sees not as man sees;
for man looks on the outward appearance,
but the Lord looks on the heart”
1 Samuel 16:7.
The origin of the American culture is not Christian. Our culture is rooted in the lies of Christian delusion. It is neither republican, democrat or sane. The “founding fathers” like Thomas Jefferson were rooted in pagan Greek philosophy; the self-betterment of man. Thus todays “Christians” are rooted in self-righteousness. Transparency and heart are as foreign as Chinese currency. Christianity is a religion of a self-betterment image.
So what I’m saying, my friend, is that for David, things concerning his heart for God were not complex and compartmentalized into a Greek philosophical thinking of “Well, I want to do that, but in my heart I thought this, and I didn’t feel that but I didn’t know this so I figured God didn’t want me to do that because I must do this”. God is not a God of confusion. This is not heart. It is the mind full of Christian knowledge and rationalizations.
Jesus said if He had not come and made everything very clear we might have an excuse for our excuses but now we have no excuse for excuses, hypothetical situational reasonings ( John 15:22-26). Excuses are born out of the wicked heart and lead down the path of endless darkness. The heart of Jesus made things childlike in order for any man to serve His Father.
What do you want to do? Who do you want to be? Are your actions a calculation of your appearance as righteous or simply a release of love to the Father? A heart is not occupied by the obstacles or opposition. It may have the initial impulse of sin but always follows the secondary impulse of love. It is not by calculation but by gut reaction. What drives me is not trying to be right but my transparent love for Jesus. Ultimately, I make nothing of everything tin order o give Him the “something” His eyes search for; heart.
When I was in college I majored in Sociology and Psychology. I always thought it was quite funny how “professionals” invented a psycho-babel jargon as though they were inventing some mystical knowledge about things long ago described as basic common sense issues in the Bible. Below is my second oldest son Joshua posing as a “gangsta” to get to the gangsters in a prison just like Paul said to do (1 Cor.9).
The French psychologist Pierre Janet and German psychoanalyst Zigmund Freud argued that underneath the layers of critical-thought functions of the conscious mind lay a powerful awareness they labeled as “the subconscious”. Scientists argue that the “subconscious” is not something immediately accessible but rather requires therapy and both past-personal experience and dream analysis.
They say it is where people hide their real self. What they call the subconscious God’s calls HEART. It is not only constantly accessible but essential to understand so as to function in Christ. Of course, their speculations and conclusions have no reference to sin and darkness that occupy our old “subconscious”.
They used a bunch of psycho-babel to try to dissect the inner workings of human existence. Although their conclusions are all nonsense it all served me to glorify God for my phenomenal human constitution as explained in the Scriptures. It also helped as I read Romans 6-8 and discerned what they discuss is the difference between the Presence of the Spirit and self-consciousness soul rooted in sin. Also they make no place for the operation of the conscience.
The conscience is the seat of God’s inner law. It is implanted within our heart. It is not the heart but rather utilized by the heart, as is the mind, the memory, instincts, feelings, moods, etc. The essential mechanism of our identity, which they define as the subconscious (sub-“below”- like in submarine) conscious (like in awareness) is THE heart, prior to salvation.
Our heart awareness (consciousness) “is desperately sick” and extremely negative. We must be regenerated by the Presence of the Spirit to transform our self-consciousness into God-consciousness. The only reason I mention the pyscho-babel is because their exhaustive efforts, although wrongly defined, emphasize and highlight for us the multi-function of our various God-created mechanisms. Paul says we must “discern” between the natural and spiritual existence or we remain “carnal” (1 Cor.2,3).
Today the “New Age” culture exploits this ideology as if offers some novel aspect of humanity. It is all about the exploitation of SELF. Thus men become involved in endless cycle of mental trauma with something that can only be resolved by the cross of Jesus. We must die to self. Sadly, today’s Christianity offers religious mumbo-jumbo and has no understanding of how our mind, heart, will and memory are to be sanctified by the truth (John 17:17). . That is to say that our entire human being and brain paths must repent, be reborn, retrained and renewed into the Spirit.
Right now, your daily awareness is focused on your internal state (SELF: moods, feelings, events, frailty, memories, etc.) by way of mental cognition and 5 senses. You are aware of some thing by your mental cognition and are aware of other things by physical senses, while other things. You may be aware of a story in a book in your mind (or Bible verses) but your senses make you aware of the taste of an apple or hot sandwich. So awareness is multifaceted.
Most Christians think that by ascertainment of Bible knowledge they receive an awareness of God. This is not true. It is merely an awareness of the THINGS of God. It is what the Pharisees possessed. It is knowing the letter of the law (2 Cor.3:6).
David says his awareness was of the very Presence of God’s Person. It was like dwelling under the shadow of His wings (Ps.91). The conscience and all creation bears witness to His existence. But this is not God-consciousness. Rather conscience is a mechanism that beckons us beyond itself.
Most Christians wrongly, and tragically, equate the conscience, the things learned of God, and awareness of God in creation, as salvation. Thus they live under the laws and dictates of conscience rather than being personally saved and led by the Presence and freedom of His Spirit.
All creation bears witness to us of a God-awareness (Rm.1:20/Ps.19). However our conscience burdens us with our sinful state until the blood of Jesus frees us to submit to the heart of the living Jesus. We begin to “see” Him (Heb.12:1). We begin to trust Him, not as a distant entity, or doctrinal package, but in the life of the Son. “He who has the Son as the life” (1 Jn.5:12). His life within us is the only power to motive us to die to ourselves.
The cross of Jesus is “where” this old self-awareness must “die” for God-consciousness to be “born again”. When the Spirit of the Son comes into our hearts crying “Abba Father! our heart awareness becomes God-consciousness. We become “spirit”, not just a soulish creature (1 Cor.15:45). It is the only way to become a person after the heart of God, like David. We BECOME Christ-like.
The apostle Paul says this awareness of His Spirit empowers us to transform our mind as our conscious soul is regenerated into spirit-life (Rm.12:2/1 Cor.15:45). Our conscience becomes “washed clean” from “dead works” (thinking righteousness is based on our behavior) and also serves as a daily “witness” to us of truth and when we die to our entire life to God on the day of judgment (Rm.2:14-15). But this is not heart.
God-consciousness, is eternal life and continuously sustains and regenerates our spirit into changing levels to become like Christ.
Our choice to believe God transforms, not only our mind, but our heart from “stone” into love (Ez.36:26). The apostle Paul explains that his flesh had to die for him to enter the life of Christ. In other words we can’t be self-centered in a God-centered awareness. It just can’t happen. It’s one or the other. Sin is the constant pulse of our flesh but it is “covered” by the forgiveness and blood of Jesus. Self-life is not our conscious pursuit of life when we are born again. Rather, our heart pants after God like a panting doe after a stream.
The Old Testament teaches the wholeness of man, in that, although our mind, heart and soul function as separate faculties they are woven to work together by our submission to redemption and participation of our will (Heb.4:12). It is Michael who determines the function of my life out of my regenerated heart for God. My heart is the center of my being. It is the flight control tower where I “control” and send off the decisions and patterns of my intentions, reasoning, motives. I have now brought into subjection all the mechanisms of my human being. Jesus says the first commandment is to love God with all our body, heart, soul and strength.
The manner in which I love and treat others, the choices of how I spend my mind-thoughts, time and finances; the feelings and things that depress me and grieve me, the level of my maturing process and the course of my years on earth all show my heart. The driving force of the heart is not knowledge or good behavior. Those things fluctuate and fail. The driving force of the heart is your love. What is the nature of your love? Do you love? Why do you love? How do you love? For what reason do you sacrifice your own feelings, time and ways in order to help someone else? How authentic is your care for others? The inner workings of your mind; the deepest desires within you manifest your heart. God sees it and deals with you accordingly.
Jesus says “For out of whatever fills the heart of a man flows into a man’s life;
his words, actions, time, finances, ….
(Matt.12:335-37/Lk.6:45-49).
Imagine running “to and fro” desperately looking for someone you love. This is what God is doing. He seeks for simply a true, real person with no games or arrogance.It’s all about one thing a heart, or love, for God. It is what you must do, be and live for. Everyone has gone their own way. Everyone yields to the complex mind games and struggles of self-pity. “It’s all too hard” is the cry of the multitudes. The natural ways of human striving end in failure. The ways of love always end in blessing; i.e. newness of life. This was the promise of God to Abraham. The wind of the Spirit is the most beautiful means to creat a heart of love (John3:8)
His Spirit is “running to and fro” and down every beach, neighborhood, block and dwelling. Like a young man with vigor and strength, God yearns to find and to give His Spirit to someone who is giving their heart to Him.
You are what your heart chooses to be. It is not meant to rule you until you are able to rule it. Want to be confused and vexed, then make things complicated with thoughts, words, excuses and rationalizations and justifications.
“WHAT DID YOU DO?” is what Jesus is going to ask us when we stand before Him. In other words your life is not what you say butis what you do, who you are, and how you respond. This is your heart.
My dear friend rivet your heart on the living Jesus (Hebrews 12). Be honest. Be real. Trust Him. Believe Him. Hope in Him. As all the people recorded in God’s Word responded out of heart in faith “seeing” the unseen (Heb.11:6ff). Put your foot down and believe. Watch and wait. You will rise up like an eagle with wings on the wind (Is.40:31). He promises wings to make you fly. This is no allegory. You are meant to be a son or a daughter reflecting the love of Jesus to the Father.
Jesus promises to give you His heart.I love you my friend. Don’t be complex. Let go of all that mental undercurrent that holds you down.
Jesu s promises if we will go into all the world and proclaim His gospel He will show the world His heart. His love is an “ART” of the Spirit. It is like having all the paint and brushes, all the tools and equipment to shape the greatest composition right within you so to give yourself to Him by giving yourself to others. This is the greatest blessing a man can know. The end is near. You can do so much and find such reward within. Change your mind. Create your own HeART Work.
