Heart Study

Day 6

MEDITATION 6

A SEEKING AND OBEDIENT HEART

Ezekial 36:26 And I will give them singleness of heart and put a new spirit within them. I will take away their stony, stubborn heart and give them a tender, responsive heart.

If you have chosen to give and seek forgiveness and love, if you have chosen to follow after Jesus, and if you say with your mouth that YOU believe that Jesus is God, then you now have A CHANGED HEART and a new spirit! Jesus would like to continue changing you to bring you closer to Himself. He wants to change you to become as sin-free as possible, like Him, so that you can dwell with Him in this life and in heaven forever.

But finding Jesus means continuing to seek him, God says in Jeremiah in the Old Testament and in John in the New Testament, that we will find Him when we seek Him with all of our hearts. Because He loves you, Jesus wants you to be the you that His light shines through. Now that you have a changed heart towards Him, He wants you to cooperate with Him in renewing your thoughts, your will and your emotions. Jesus said that since leaving earth, He has not left you without help. He has given you the Holy Spirit (Helper) to live inside your heart and to allow you to hear from God Himself.

The Holy Spirit’s job is to “convict you of sin, to comfort you and to counsel you” (John 16:7-9). If you keep turning inward to your heart where He dwells, the Holy Spirit will be your constant friend. Your newly Jesus- filled heart will long to know the truth about life and love. This is perfect, because the Holy Spirit longs to teach you about truth and love as God sees it; He will guide you into all truth. And the more truth about God you obey, the more truth He will show you. (John 8:36) You will no longer be living in the dark about the spiritual world around you. You will learn to hear the Holy Spirit’s guidance inside your heart. And soon you will be walking, with God, in the light.

The more you seek after God in the ways He says to seek Him…through love, forgiveness, prayer, communion, praise, thanksgiving, turning inward to know His presences in your heart, study of His Word (Christian Scriptures, His Church and Him)…and the more you do what He says…the closer you will be to God Himself-Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And the more He will use you to bring love to your little corner of the world.

So it is time to let go of what the word on the street (friends, social media, materialism, philosophy) has told you about important life matters and listen to what THE WORD of God says about the world. Jesus calls Himself “ the Word of God” and will speak to you now in many ways. But this will mean giving up some of your ideas and asking the Holy Spirit to guide you to the true words about Jesus. The Holy Spirit will lead you, should you choose to follow, to live the way that your Creator desires you to live.

Jesus promised that His followers “would know the truth, and the truth would set (us) free” (John 8:32) He also promised that He “ is the way the truth and the life and that no one comes to the Father (God) except through Him. (John 14:6) If we want to know God, who is love, we will need to seek God and hear in our hearts what He says about Himself. Jesus said that He and the Father and Holy Spirit are one; if (we) see Him, (we) see the Father. (John 14:9) Quite simply, rethinking Jesus will mean seeking the truth from Jesus’ words with all of your heart and then obeying what He says.

Seeking after Jesus means pursuing Him as passionately as you would a romantic interest: you will want to be near Him often, you will think about Him all the time, you will hold Him close to your heart, you will want to talk to Him about personal things, You will ask Him questions. You will want to know His view of the world and what you need to do to make Him happy in order to have a good relationship with Him. The best way to do this is to spend time talking to Him (prayer). You will want to find out what Jesus says about Himself in His own words.

Since Jesus is God, along with the Father and the Holy Spirit (the Holy Trinity, three persons in one God, heavy, I know!) He created words, unique to the human species so that God could commune with man. This is the way the Trinity designed creation to be: God and man talking with joyful, loving words to each other and spending time together. Sin entered the world and words became less clear. Now, words can be twisted and misunderstood. Words can cause joy or pain as they reach the heart. But Jesus’ word, spoken from His heart to you can be trusted. His words in Holy Scripture and in His Church always lead to truth and love. It’s not a perfect Church in action, but He said He would preserve the truth in the Church so we could know for certain what He teaches. A good teacher would do nothing less.

The truth is that Jesus desires you to choose love from your heart because He desires and commands love from His followers. You and I are accountable to obey the truth that Jesus reveals to us. Obedience to love means that we must examine what is in our hearts and what comes out of our hearts. We must examine every choice and word that comes from ours that we become holy (set apart) like Him. (Matthew 12:36)

This is why seeking and obeying the truth is so important to Jesus. We cannot follow or obey what we do not know. We can’t hear Jesus speak to our hearts if we don’t know how He thinks. We can’t know how He thinks unless we study His words and listen for His voice. We won’t know His voice unless we seek it in His words. It turns out that rethinking Jesus is a great big circle of love.

Because Jesus is loving, He loves what is true and good. He hates what is not; injustice, cruelty, abuse, lying is not from Him and destroys those He loves. A loving God must hold accountable hard, cold sins because He would not be loving if He ignored these things. As a result, Jesus desires justice in the world, and justice requires Him to hold us accountable for our cold, sinful heart actions too. Everyone you need to forgive will be held accountable for good and bad acts of the heart as well. Hence, the need for obedience.

But obedience is a happy thing…it leads us to more truth and more love from God. When we love another person in a way that pleases them, they reward with love back. Jesus rewards those who love and obey Him. He desires you to choose love from your heart because He desires and commands love from His followers. Jesus made it very clear that everything He did and taught was for love’s sake. As Creator, He holds the right to command His creatures in the ways that lead to love.

God wants your heart. He wants your whole heart, whole-heartedly. Not only does He want it, He commands it. Nothing less will suffice. This is why every heartbeat matters.

GOD’S HEART IN WORDS

Jeremiah 32: 39 And I will give them singleness of heart and put a new spirit within them. I will take away their stony, stubborn heart and give them a tender, responsive heart.

John 14:15“If you love (Him), you will keep (His) commandments.”

Matthew 22: 37-39“You shall love the Lord your God with all your HEART, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

John 15:12 “This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

John 15:15-19 No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide; so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. This I command you, to love one another.

Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, on your own intelligence do not rely.

Jeremiah 24:7 I will give them a heart with which to understand that I am the Lord. They shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart.

Jeremiah 29:13 When you look for me, you will find me. Yes, when you seek me with all of your heart.

Jeremiah 12: 20…O just judge, searcher of the mind and heart…

Ezekiel 3:7-10 …son of man, take into your heart all my words that I speak to you; hear them well.

Psalm 90:12 Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain wisdom of heart.

Jeremiah 16:12 …every one of you, walking in the hardness of his evil heart instead of listening to me.

Psalm 19:9 The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart

Job 23:12 …the words of (God’s) mouth I have treasured in my heart.

Jeremiah 15: 16 When I found your words, I devoured them: they became my joy and the happiness of my heart…

2 Maccabees 2: 4 May he open your heart to his law and commandments and grant you peace.

Job 22:22 Receive instruction from his mouth, and lay up his words in your heart.

Job 23:12 From the commands of his lips I have not departed; the words of his mouth I have treasured in my heart.

Proverbs 23:12 Apply your heart to instruction…

Proverbs 4:21 Do not let them depart from your sight, keep them in the midst of your heart. For they are life to those who find them and health to their body.

Proverbs 4:23 Watch over your heart with all diligence. For from it flows the springs of life.

Proverbs 2:10 For wisdom will enter your heart, knowledge will please your soul.

Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, on your own intelligence do not rely.

Jeremiah 17:10 "I the LORD search the mind and try the heart, to give to every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings."

THINK ABOUT IT:

Reflect on the fact that we were created with words to commune with God and each other. This is a gift and amazing things happen because of words. One of those amazing things is that your Creator choses to reveal Himself through “THE WORD AMONG US”- Jesus and the Word- Christian Scriptures and His Church! There is power in words. With words we love or hurt. God gave us amazing power when He gave us words.
Why does obedience show love? Why does it feel right when someone you lead obeys you? Does it have anything to do with the fact that you are looking out for his/her best interest? Maybe that whether they know it or not, you are doing what is best for them in the long run?
Ask yourself whether you can open your heart to see the Church and Scriptures in a new way. Imagine taking Jesus’ hand and ask Him to show you all truth with an open heart as you “rethink” Him.

DO IT:

Ask the Holy Spirit to lead you as you look up any of the scripture verses on this site and read the paragraph before and after it. Ask Jesus to speak to you and guide you into all that He wants you to know. Ask Him to show you how real He is.
If you have been baptised in any Christian Church, “In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit” then tell all three thank you for never leaving you. If you have not been baptised, then find a Church willing to baptise you and teach you about Jesus.
If there is a Church near you, go sit in a pew. Better yet, find a chapel that has Adoration. Go sit in front of Jesus in the eucharist and ask Him many things. Tell Him many things from your heart. Then, sit and listen. Remember that the Holy Spirit is in your heart so look inward. Even if you do not know how to pray, the Holy Spirit does and will pray with you. If there is no chapel, go outside somewhere quiet and beautiful…this is God’s chapel too.
Seek knowledge of God in Scripture, connect to a Christian community, pray and get baptised if you have not already been!