How your heart is going...that's a good turn of phrase. How is your heart going? Many times you could probably say right away how it's going, especially if it's not going well. A Broken Heart is probably one of the more common phrases ever coined for the heart, and this I guess because it happens so often. We are pretty much born with broken hearts; that is the legacy of the Fall of Adam & Eve. Thank God the second Adam came to mend that heart.
But even a Believer will deal with heart problems. Jesus came to make our spirits perfect, not our hearts. The trick to living a Godly life is to get the heart in line with the spirit. Obviously this doesn't always happen, and so many times our answer to how our heart is going is a pitiful one. Most of the time, though, we don't really know how our heart is going. David didn't, and that's why he said,
"Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way of everlasting!" (Psalm 139:23-24)David wasn't really sure what was in his heart, but he didn't want anything there that would get between him and God. He wanted God to reveal his heart to him so that he could deal with it and continue "in the way of everlasting".
This is a difficulty of the heart, that it is the source of the direction of our life, but yet many times we're not even sure what's in there. And when you don't know what's in your heart, you're going to understand the circumstances of your life even less. This is a problem, because often we go looking to solve the problems of our lives, and wind up dealing with symptoms (problems in life) rather than dealing with the causes (problems in the heart).
We're not the only ones trying to get something from our own hearts, though. If the heart is where we live life from, then the heart is necessarily important to people in our lives. People are going to be looking for something in our hearts, as surely as we're going to be looking for something in theirs. We're constantly looking for love, encouragement, empathy, joy, peace, answers, or anything we either want or expect to find. And when we go looking in the hearts of others, we're either going to find something good, something bad, or nothing at all. If we find nothing, it will never be because there is nothing there. Rather, we will find nothing in a hard heart, because a hard heart will be unwilling to give us anything.
We need to have healed, whole, and deep hearts as much for ourselves as for others. Call it a mystery of God, but for some reason He finds it fit to use us in the lives of others, and if our hearts aren't deep, we're of little use. If we don't have deep hearts, then people will come to us to drink and walk away thirsty. In fact, if we don't have deep hearts we may very well find that people stop coming to us at all.
But if we do have deep hearts, much will be given and much will be required. We'll have people at our doorstep looking to receive what the Father has put in us. Lives around us will be changed because our life will be going a good way. When we let the Lord in, let him set up a home in our hearts, clean and uncluttered and pure, we become that vessel of love, encouragement, empathy, joy, peace, and answers that people are looking for. We do the Lord's good work when we have a deep heart.
Yes, the perpetual and worthy challenge.
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