Expanding Your Heart

EXPANDING YOUR HEART

Ps.51: ¹⁷ The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.

Mk.12: ²⁹ And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord:

³⁰ And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.
³¹ And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.

Throughout Scripture the Lord seems to hold a person’s heart as the barometer of his or her spiritual life. All the outward religion is useless if our hearts are not broken and pure before Him. The word "heart" is a noun which means the inner person and the unseen core of a person which only God can fully see and evaluate. It is who we are when we are not performing before men. Our hearts are what we present before God, not any works that have been done before men. So in reality when we use the word heart in a spiritual sense we are using it to mean who we really are inside.

Now the only person that can change a human heart is the Spirit of God. Yes, an unsaved person can make some adjustments and he can alter some things about the way he thinks, but those things still come from a fallen heart that seeks his own happiness even though that person may do works that seem humanitarian. In fact, in a stunning display of clever narcissism, sometimes people do humanitarian works in order for others to applaud them. Yes, it is very subtle and we all must be very vigilant about such things.

In December of 1967 South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard conducted the first heart transplant on 53-year-old Lewis Washkansky. Since then there have been over 80,000 heart transplants with several thousand being done each year. As wonderful as that is, they are just a human transplant of a muscle.

But with all the psychology and psychoanalysis being performed today, no one has been able to change a person’s inward makeup, or in other words, his heart. Regardless how man tries, the attempt to change a human mind and heart is still in the experimental stage. I am not against any counseling help at all, but it is evident man cannot reach inside a person and change the way he thinks and feels. In fact, many psychologists themselves are addicted to drugs and alcohol and are unfaithful in their relationships. You see, they themselves cannot change themselves even while they attempt to change others.

And that is exactly why without a change of heart there can be no authentic Christianity. You may have church membership and baptism and all the religious accoutrements, however if there has been no change of heart all you have is a religious practice. You may even change some things on the outside including giving up some bad habits and going to church and even changing your views on some moral issues, but if your heart has not been changed all you have done is an outward adjustment which is meaningless to the kingdom of God.

And so once a person believes on the Lord Jesus Christ, he just doesn’t start to attempt to live right. He has been made into a new creation with a new heart, and in a great mystery that person now desires to live right and serve Jesus his Redeemer and Lord. All of us who have come through that wonderful experience can rejoice over and over again as we think back on that event even if it was many years ago. I can think back to good times I have had in the past with friends and family, but nothing can compare to the day I met Christ and was changed forever. Only another believer can identify with what I feel when I think about how lost I was and how the light came rushing in. Since that day I have made many mistakes and I have sinned against God, but I have never been the same.

But after we receive a new heart, just like the muscle itself, it needs to be exercised. Our new hearts need instruction and guidance, and they need to be expanded in order to more fully represent the heart of Jesus, the One who created them. This is a labor of love in which every true disciple of Jesus should fully engage, and even through some pain and suffering we should joy in the fact that we bless our Heavenly Father and His Son. And this “expansion”, if you will, can only be achieved by reading and obeying God’s Word through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Our own understandings are not only useless, but they are enemies of the Spirit.

Some misguided believers think that expanding our hearts is dangerous and leads to Biblical compromise. For instance, some believe if you reach out in love to a lost gay person you are condoning sin and compromising God’s truth. They would never be seen in the company of a prostitute or drug addict lest another believe condemn them. It is attitudes like those that keep a person’s heart locked up and sealed with doctrines of stone and not with the immutable truths of God’s Word that live and breathe with the power of His love. You see, it is possible to know all the right doctrines but not understand the length and width and depth and breadth of God’s love, and in so doing you are keeping Jesus on a piece of paper and not allowing His dangerous life to be lived with all its fullness through your heart and life.

When you worry about what men think about you then you walk in fear and even pride. Release the bonds of men’s opinions and be set free to love people in ways that some men condemn. That does not mean we sin against God’s Word, but it does mean that we sacrifice our reputations on the altar of the cross and we expand our hearts to make room for the vilest of all sinners. And if you desire to please and serve Jesus in that way, than you can never get involved with politics or nationalism since they both cause fallen divisions and even hatred. But there is unbelievable freedom in God’s love, and when you are living in the steps of Jesus you do not fear what men will say.

We all have a tendency to withhold our love and only give it to those we deem worthy. However Christ loved us when we were still His enemies. That is our standard; that is our pursuit. For too long we have doled out our love in small doctrinal increments and we have allowed our hearts to constrict. But the Spirit desires to expand our vision, expand our grace, and expand our love as it pertains to a dark and needy world. Do not fear, we must always retain the truth of God’s Word that clearly reveals that no one can be saved except through a personal faith in Jesus Christ. But we are epistles that can be used of the Spirit to lift up Jesus and allow them to be drawn to Him.

And if we desire to be surrendered servants of Jesus and living sacrifices in His name, then our hearts need to be enlarged and expanded in such a dramatic way that our lives are changed in a way that affects and infects the kingdom of darkness.

Do you ever feel your heart hardening sometimes? Do you feel self righteous from time to time? Does your heart grow cold and callous over time? We all know those kinds of feelings. Let us seek the ministry of the Spirit and allow Him to search and expand our hearts so that we can know the mind of Christ and so that our lives are lived as He would desire.