A Renewable Resource -- Your Heart

I’ve been discovering that hearts age. Not the physical way you would think but they grow (or shrink) as the center of love, trust, and all the rest.

We all agree that we start as trusting children.  Is that the way we stay? You know the answer to that one.

If life has knocked us about at all, trust has long ago flown the coop. What is left is us looking at some people with suspicion, others with scorn, and the lucky ones with flappable tolerance or hidden indifference.

Then there are those select few on trial to see if ‘love will find a way…’

Our hearts become veritable fortresses, thick walls and all.  The wrinkles of damaged hearts find their way to our faces. When love leaks away from those on trial, we are left with yet another doubt that anyone can live up to real trust.

How can we retrieve a heart that is free to trust?

Options:

1. Find a trustworthy person.    We are back to square one with that one, having tried and lost before.

2. Fix something in ourselves.   If you are honest, you know that one is beyond our grasp. Sure, some improvement, a quick fix of patience, a dash of mindfulness, and whatever happens to be the trend at present can help for a while. Things go along pretty well, then one awful rainy Monday, the bitterness wells up, lashes out and escapes from the tether we tied it to.  So, are we doomed to misery?  NO!

Prepare yourself…

3. Then there is the way known by millions of happy believers.   You let God take the mess and let Him rebuild you from the ground up.

Hear me out ...  A new heart is part of the work God does in us. It is only the beginning.

That newness of life we receive is renewable. Better than any recycled heart, we get a brand new one, and it gets renewed as we keep plugged into the life-giving source, which is the God of all life!  That is what the Holy Spirit does in us.

Sure, that means living for Him, not self; pleasing Him, not self, and following Jesus with our whole heart, soul, mind and spirit. Not self.

For some, that price tag is too high.

The strange thing is, once we stop serving self, something wonderful happens. He fills us with Himself! We learn to love this amazing God (and enjoy Him forever, so the creed informs us.)

And, we learn to trust and love Him, and others again. That is the first step. Then come the life challenges…

You ask, "What about those people who have abused our trust?"

Part of trust is learning to forgive. It is a package deal, one that brings healing to your own brokenness and a renewed relationship with the offender, if possible.

That ‘if possible’ is a tough one. Some of those abusers you can never have a trusting relationship with, naturally. However, you can have trust in God’s ability to heal you, let you forgive, and not let that person hurt you ever again. You are His child, He protects His own, something like armor… but that is another story.

Sound strange? It is. He is. That is His name.   I am. Therefore, we can be, in Him, where it counts.

"I will run the course of Your commandments, For You shall enlarge my heart."  Ps. 119:32

Keeping close to God means following His will for us. Truth, honesty, care for others-- all of these are His rules for living in order to find joy in Him.

Seem like a lot to do? It is and, by the way, YOU can’t do it. You need His work in you.  He needs to knock down a few of those stony walls inside our hearts.

Need enlarging? I do! Here is what happens:  There is a cause and effect.

God does His work in us. The heart is renewed. He comes to dwell.  Suddenly, the following characteristics begin to grow within and we begin to see ourselves become:

• kind, caring, generous, noble, charitable, compassionate, gracious, benevolent, considerate, open-hearted, unselfish...

Need I go on?  Who wouldn’t want to be known as these? How wonderful that would feel!

Now our desires lead us to ‘do.’ Enter the commands of the God that gifted us with enlargement. One without the other just doesn’t happen.

Can we be kind and all the rest of the list above on our own?

I don’t know about you, my nature tends to be rather more narrow.  Can we follow and do what is good and right, what God asks of us in His law?

Uhhh. To be honest, I have stumbled more times than I can count…Enter God’s touch on life, including the renewable heart.  We have his forgiveness as we come to confess the mess we have made of it.

Now we have the wherewithal to begin being those big-hearted adjectives.  From the ‘being’ comes the ‘doing!’

We receive first so that we can give. Our giving is back to God and everyone else gets the benefit.

Saints of old asked for that enlarging:

“Narrow is the mansion of my soul. Enlarge thou it that thou may enter in.”     Augustine of Hippo

“Prayer enlarges the heart until it is capable of containing God's gift of Himself. Ask and seek and you heart will grow big enough to receive Him and to keep Him as your own.”    Mother Teresa

The gift is knowing God, and having HIM fill our hearts. It needs HIM.  How to be enlarged?  One last help...

"So train your heart to listen when I speak and open your spirit wide to expand your discernment..."  Proverbs 2:2

Image by an unknown artist, found on Pinterest.