On August 11, 2008 I fell over clinically dead in the airport in Albuquerque. My physical heart was very sick. Since then I have studied the many, many times the word heart is used in the bible......whole heart, wounded heart and on and on. How about our spiritual heart? How about your spiritual heart....my spiritual heart? For the last several weeks I have been using "Experiencing His Presence" by Tommy Tenney. Take a moment and read the following quote.
"Please show us you face. We are passionate for one thing--YOU. Set our hearts on fire with hunger; make us miserably desperate for more of YOU. Set YOUR coal of hunger and holiness on our tongues and in our hearts. We long for YOU.
Let YOUR fire burn in our churches; let the fire blaze in our homes. It's not man that we want; we want YOU, Lord. Show us YOUR face, God.
Good words for the church....an even Greater God!
Isn't if fascinating that Scripture most often uses the word "heart" to refer to the innermost aspect of us, while we Westerners most often use the word to refer to an organ? We do say, "I love you with all my heart" or "this is heart-breaking," but, because the word so often refers to an organ, we often seem to lack a clear concept of what we mean by the other reference. Seems to me that Scripture's concept is one of that aspect of me as an individual that is the seat of my emotions and my relationships. It can be whole, broken, wounded, filled, on fire, and so on. Even God's heart can be wounded or filled. It has little or nothing to do with the organ itself. That confirms for me the obvious difference between Scripture's definitions of life and death and those of the world. Rather than being identified by the presence or absence of a heartbeat or alpha waves from the brain, Scriptural life and death are all about being in or out of a relationship with God; the former is life, the latter is death. So, we can go from death to life without any physical change in the heart organ, at the word of our God whose desire and will it is for us to be alive, not dead, whether we are walking around or not. Thus, we are born again when we come to Christ, not with a new physical body but with a relationship with God, we are newly alive, no longer dead (wo)men walking.
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad, Brother, that your body's heart has been made healthy, A deep sadness came over Ginger and me when we heard the news in August 2008, and "we rejoice over every remembering of you." I'm even more glad that your real heart is so alive!