A HEALTHY HEART

10% of what we can see is the exterior behavior, and it all looks good.   90% is underneath.   It’s what we can’t see.  The things deep beneath the surface, those things that we can’t see and that come out when we’re under great stress are what God wants to transform most.

Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna… to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD (Deut. 8:2-3).

An awareness of yourself and your relationship with God are very closely related.  If you don’t KNOW yourself, how can you GIVE yourself to God?  A limited awareness of myself limits my relationship with God.

Emotional health and spiritual health have a significant connection.  Spiritual maturity and emotional maturity are always connected.  You cannot be mature spiritually and be immature emotionally.  You can’t be healthy spiritually and unhealthy emotionally at the same time.  Jesus calls us to have a spirituality that is connected not disconnected.

What God wants to have happen in your life and in mine is that we come to realize what’s going on inside of us and acknowledge it.  Come out of illusion.  Accept our brokenness.   Accept our limits.  Acknowledge the wounds yet to be healed.  God will do His work of healing and transforming within us when we confront ourselves and we’re honest with ourselves and look straight into the center of our hearts to reveal what’s there.  Then with these realizations we can say with Paul, “So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me” (2 Cor. 12:9 NLT).

Here are three actions to grow healthier spiritually and emotionally:

1. Ask yourself questions: 

“Why am I doing what I’m doing?  What are the feelings I have about what’s going on?  What are my thoughts on the inside?”  Pray and wrestle with those questions.

2. Slow down, stop, and be with God.

It’s a daily decision we have to make.  You’ve got to develop the interior space of your being.  And let the love of God get beyond your head, into your heart, and into your life.

3. Need God.

Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:3).  You cannot have God without poverty of spirit. You can have yourself, you can have religion, but you cannot have Heaven without “poverty of spirit”.  We must come to depend on God.