Heart and Soul

HEART AND SOUL 
I am following on from the previous talk called ‘Saviour of all mankind’ regarding the spiritual exercise of the soul in moving from its expression of our natural spirit to our ‘God with us’ Spirit. I want to discuss a further aspect of the salvation of our soul today by considering the place where this soul and spirit activity takes place. That place is the heart. Guard your heart with all diligence; for It is the outflowing of your life. (Proverbs 4:23)

Let us do a brief recap of the function of the soul;

Our soul – our mind and our emotions and our will, process the inner senses of the spirit as well as the five outer senses of the body. The soul is the loudspeaker of what both our inner spiritual reality and our outer world reality is going through. It does all the oohs and ahs and groans and moans and hurrahs and hallelujahs. It laughs and cries and sulks and sighs. It is the public broadcast of our being – the person we think we are, (that could become much better as far as God’s idea of us is concerned). These expressions of our souls that contend with the expression of the souls of other people, can be quite intense but they are often more surface than real. Our soul is looking for something deeper in a safe place, a home where it can be rested and healed and made to settle. Where is that place where God invites us in to be where he is, where is that place where he knocks on the door to be where we are?

Again; That place is our heart. The heart is where our spirit is nested, and it is where God has always met with mankind (He has put eternity in their hearts - Ecclesiastes 3:11). This is where he reserved a space in the hearts of men and women to speak into from all tribes and Nations since the beginning of time. The Scriptures record his conversations with Adam and Abraham and Sarah and Rahab and Deborah and David and many others, including all the prophets up until John The Baptist. And then God came to us as Jesus, to live as one with him in the fullness of his heart. This was more than humanity just having a ‘God space’ in the heart for God to communicate into. This was the fulness of God’s own heart dwelling within the heart of humanity within the heart of his Son Jesus.  
Colossians 2:9 For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily;
And the Bible tells us that from that time on that He dwells in our hearts by faith so that we may know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge so that we may be filled with all the fullness of God ( Ephesians 3:20) 

Our hearts were created to live in that relational atmosphere of closeness and belonging to God and we are invited in there by God himself. God, whose own heart expresses the fulness of this environment and invites us into it. What a miracle - That God can live in loving fullness in a human heart that has become a new heart, by faith.!

This new heart was what the prophet Ezekiel spoke about that God would give us at the appointed time (Ezekiel 36… a new heart I will give you, and a new spirit will I put within you). It is fashioned after God’s own heart and it can begin to emerge through us into a world that needs the love and compassionate action that comes from the heart of ‘God with us’ though Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

How does this new heart take shape in us and live and become the announcement of our being, instead of the surface reactions and self-focussed demands of a restless soul?
We start by giving attention to the nature of God’s heart of closeness and belonging that draws us into itself. This is where we were appointed to live. 
So why do we tend to resist and separate off? 
Unfortunately, other things get our attention. But if we start to appreciate and choose the highest spiritual goal of our life, to know and love God, and to be with Him forever, we will choose to not be distracted from that goal. 
There is a story in Greek mythology of a footrace where one of the runners (Hippomenes) sets his heart fully on winning the race against a swift and well-trained female athlete (Atalanta). His trick to win the race was to throw a golden apple upon the ground from time to time, which distracted Atalanta who would stop running to pick up the golden apples and so lost the race. Hippomenes won the race, won Atalanta as a bride, plus a huge bunch of golden apples!
Paul tells us that God has set the race of faith and endurance before and for us not to get hindered or distracted (Hebrews 12:2)
We are not competing against anyone else except ourselves, and we can choose to run the race set before us and so win the eternal prize of ‘God with us’ life.

Running this race of faith properly comes through surrender and release. This is the real effort. We learn to ‘let go’ of the many unproductive distractions to the inner life of our soul, where the racing mind and its imaginations and our emotional unrest do not hijack our soul from achieving its goal of faith, which is the soul finding its place in the heart where we find that place of closeness and belonging with God. (1Peter 1:9). 
 

The mind

We cannot turn off our minds and go blank but we can redirect our minds to contemplating God’s idea of what he thinks is important about us and our situations, instead of debating with ourselves about our idea of what is important about life. We let go of following one train of thought and embrace another train of thought.

When we do this, we are bringing our mind into the heart. We align our minds with the mind of Jesus who emptied himself from ‘me-self’. This is a renewing of the mind, the saving of the soul-mind from its anxious and uptight fixation on the problems that invade our outer world of conflict and disorder. We can practice this exercise of shifting the focus from the outer world to the inner world of God’s heart, for short periods of time as we find opportunity. I call this the Pathway of Presence Prayer. 

The pathways of the soul into the heart are being formed each time we let go of one direction of the mind and move into the other. 
We keep returning to ‘God with us”.
We can then start solving our problems in our ‘God with us’ minds.
This starts to become not so much about what we think but more about how we think.
The attitude of surrender has brought the soul home to the heart where it finds God’s wisdom (James 1:5)

The emotions/feelings

The heart is also where we can choose to set our feelings and affections upon God and his love for us.
Colossians 3:3 Set your affections (phroneo – sentiment or fervent opinion) on things above, not on things on the earth.

Just as our mind can be distracted by all those outer problems so our feelings and emotions can be side-tracked by focussing more upon the negative feelings we have of ourselves rather than the loving feelings that God has about us.
We can get weighed down by guilt and shame or feeling too unworthy to be receiving God’s love.
Once we have come to this point we need to know we can enjoy having a clear conscience, not being weighed down by guilt and shame or feeling too unworthy to be engaging with God in this way. This is where The Holy Spirit shows us the bigness of God’s loving heart towards us and he shows us how precious are his thoughts towards us we are in his sight (Psalm 139). He loves us just as much as he loves Jesus (John 17:23) sees us as the finished product of our new heart self in Jesus, and his reality of who we are is greater than our own heart’s reality of who we are. 

John 3:19-20. For if our heart accuses us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things. 21Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence toward God. 22
And whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight.

We can confess our own sinful nature and its weakness and fallibility and receive the love and mercy and greatness and goodness that is God’s great heart. As we appreciate more of the loving nature of God we begin to set our affections upon God and grow to love and trust him more and more. This is when he so often makes his presence known to us and we become aware of being ‘found in him’. 
When we realise that our hearts are so small and judgmental even upon ourselves and that his heart is so big and accepting of us in his mercy and forgiveness, this is where we learn to ‘give thanks in all things because this is the will of God’ (1thessalonians 5:18).

It is difficult for our emotions to say ‘thank you God’ when we are going through an unpleasant circumstance because our emotions get stuck and we tend to resist what is happening. 
What is really happening at that moment is not just the unpleasant circumstance – it is our unpleasant emotional reaction to it, like anxiety or impatience or frustration or even annoyance. This inner conflict is what is hard to live with more than the circumstance itself in the present moment, and this is where the bigness of God’s heart comes into the picture once more. So we confess honestly to a merciful and forgiving God the fact that we are stuck in those negative and hurtful emotional feelings. 

God is greater than our heart and lovingly accepts us in that human weakness and he then releases a healing grace of peace that lifts us out of our painful ‘me with me self’ of our reactions into our ‘God with me self’ freedom to be able to accept that circumstance. We begin to experience the closeness and belonging environment of the heart of God and we regain confidence that he is still supernaturally working all things together for good for us and we set our affection upon God and give him thanks. This is another opportunity of surrender of letting go.

The will
Once we have begun to set our affections upon God, with the awareness of ‘being found in him’ we find that he begins to change the desires of our heart. Our will has become nestled in the embrace of God and we begin to live in the ‘not my will but your will be done’. We begin to ‘do those things that are pleasing in His sight’.

This is the letting go of one desire and taking hold of a new desire of the heart – a gift of God’s transforming grace – another act of surrender.

When God puts this new desire into our hearts we get a new perspective of who we really are in Christ because we are becoming a person after his own heart and that is where we know we belong.

There is a story about a cluster of acorns laying underneath a huge oak tree on a grassy slope in the shady sunshine. They were boasting to one another how fulfilled and satisfied they felt about themselves as a group, and how splendid and shiny they looked. Then a smaller drab looking acorn fell from a great height though the branches of the oak tree and landed in their midst. They scoffed at the sight of this newcomer and continued to discuss how splendid they thought themselves to be and then one of them asked the little acorn; ‘where did you come from?’ and ‘who on earth do you think you are? They didn’t think he really belonged.

The little acorn said humbly that he dropped from way up in the top of the tree and that as he was falling past the huge branches he heard a whisper from the great oak tree saying about him ‘he’s one of us’. The little acorn knew that would one day come to pass. He knew where he really belonged deep down, with other oak trees, not other pretentious acorns.
Just as an acorn contains an oak tree so our new heart can contain God. The acorn lets go of remaining an acorn and sheds its outer shell and germinates as a seed to become an oak tree. We are found by God within and God is found by us within. God with us.
 ‘Us in him and him in us’ (John 14:20). Our new heart functions authentically in the infinite greatness of God’s love.

I encourage you to stay with the thoughts that I have shared with you today to allow the inner shift of faith to occur, that the Scriptures hold out to us, and let the soul find its home in your heart. As the Apostle Peter said;
1Peter 1:8 You love him even though you have never seen him; and though not seeing him, you trust him; and even now you rejoice with the joy that comes from heaven itself, receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

So let us to do an exercise of Presence Prayer again in a moment for three minutes or so, and to meditate again upon some spiritual realities of God’s words to us from Scripture.
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, (PSALM 19:14)

I am going to read some of the Scriptures I read the last time we sat in the presence of The Lord and add a few others that speak particularly of the heart. You may find that one of the following Scriptures speaks to you in a special way, and if so hold on to that one thought throughout the week and let that Word become flesh in you.
So let us come into his presence now and be still and know that he is God.

Blessed are the pure in heart, For they shall see God. (Matthew 5:8)

I am receiving from you Lord the salvation of my soul (1Peter 1:9). 

I am seeking first your Kingdom O Lord and knowing that you add all the other things that I need according to your will (Luke 12:31). 

You give me the spirit of power and of love and of an ordered mind (2Timothy 1:7)

I know that it is you that is working within me to will and to do that which pleases you (Philippians 2:13)

I am coming to you just as you asked me, to find rest for my soul (Matthew 11:28). 

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matthew 6:21)

I will be still and know that you are God. 
I will be still and know that you are the Lord that heals me. (Psalm 46:10)

How precious are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them (Psalm 139:17)

I know that your presence will go with me and you will give me rest for I have found grace in your sight and you know me by name. (Exodus 33:14)

I trust in you O Lord
I say you are my God
My times are in Your hands 
My times are in Your hands (Psalm 31:14)

I Know that you doing exceedingly abundantly above all that I ask or think according to your power that is working within me. (Ephesians 3:20)

I know the thoughts that you have towards me, of good and not of evil, to give me a future and a hope (Jeremiah 29:11)

I am confident that you Lord who has begun a good work in me will complete it until that day (Philippians 1:6)

Guard your heart with all diligence; for It is the outflowing of your life. (Proverbs 4:23)

He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. (John 7:38)