Do you operate from your head or your heart? It seems like people are always one or the other. I have always known that I am a person that tends to operate from the thoughts in my head. I learn facts. I operate out of those facts. But…I don’t always feel those emotions related to the facts. Ever since I can remember I’ve struggled with the thought that surely others are experiencing God more if they are having deeper emotions in their faith. When I heard God’s truth I would say, “I know it in my head, but I can’t seem to transfer that feeing to my heart.”
God gave me a revelation about this recently. Even better, two weeks later He backed it up by having someone give a sermon over my exact revelation. In this blog I’ll include some of my own points and some of the brilliantly articulated thoughts from the sermon about “matters of the heart.”
I was doing a devotional called Supernatural Power of a Transformed Mind in Botswana and it constantly talks about how the mind is a gatekeeper to either heaven or hell. One of the questions in the devotional led me to do a word study on the word “heart.” It’s funny because it’s supposed to be a devo about the mind, right? Well I found that the word “heart” in the Bible is not just referring to feelings/emotions.
Heart (lebab)- inner man, mind, will, emotions
It’s referring to “the hidden person” talked about in 1 Peter 3:4 saying that your beauty “should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gently and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.“
Let’s apply it to the classic Proverbs 4:23 verse:
“Watch over your [inner-self, mind, heart, and will] with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life.”
It changes things a bit, doesn’t? Our constant obedience to guard our inner-self by bringing thoughts and emotions captive to Christ is literally choosing life over death daily. It’s literally aligning our will with God’s will to bring heaven on earth. It’s also about daily protecting our mind. The mind is the gatekeeper (place of access, transition, and power) to the kingdom of God.
In the devotional it says, “Jesus said that the revelation of who He is, and your confession of faith in that revelation, would be strong enough to push back those hellish points of access in your mind.” This is so good. I think in the past I tend to learn something but not submit it to God by consistently praying about it. I get frustrated that I don’t immediately feel a difference and will almost forget about what I’ve learned and move on. But it’s not always about the emotion.
So now I’m going to tell you a little about the sermon I heard on this topic:
As humans, we have a soul. It entails our mind (helps us think), will (helps us choose), and emotions (helps us feel). Once we except Christ we gain the Spirit. It entails our conscious (helps with right and wrong), wisdom (helps apply knowledge), and communion (helps build fellowship with God). We have a soul and gained a Spirit, but we live in a worldly body. Our body has blood (gives us life), bones (form us), and flesh (to interact with the world).
Our soul can listen to the Spirit or the body. Listening to the Spirit is what helps us grow closer to God, while listening to the body is what causes us to follow worldly things and sin. Jesus had all 3 of these things, but He was able to always listen to the Spirit. That’s why He never sinned. That’s kinda cool to think about.
Earlier I mentioned that I have a hard time transitioning things from my head to my heart, and this sermon hit on this a little bit. Here’s a good word: “Declaration of truth lays the foundation for our hearts.” So even when I don’t feel something in my heart, declaring it as true will help it eventually transition over. If you think about it it makes sense…of course you are going to continue feeling the same way you always have. Any new feelings will take some time to get used to. That’s why we have to repeat the truths to ourselves everyday until they become a belief.
The last point I want to talk about is where our actions and words come from. I often find myself wanting to make a quick fix to how I’m acting or the things I’m saying, but that’s not how it works. Like it says in Luke 6:45, “…out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” The thoughts that we dwell on will cause our heart to be righteous or crooked. To go even farther, let’s look at Matthew 7:18, “A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.” So…what is all this saying? When we find ourselves constantly making bad decisions or lacking self control with our words we need to look past just the outward “fruit” that is being produced. It’s not just a quick fix. You have to look at the root of the actions…the “tree” that the “fruit” is connected to. Remember, bad fruit can only come from an unhealthy tree. So we have to look in our hearts…What lies are we believing? What truths are we choosing not to believe? That’s where God gives us our declarations, and that’s where we correct the course of our hearts.
So now I know that you can’t just operate from your head or your heart…you operate from your soul. It contains both your head AND your heart. Now it’s time to declare these truths until they become my belief.
FUNDRAISING UPDATE
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