Our Heart

Photo credit: achesonian

The Bible speaks a lot about our heart. The New Testament alone mentions it 149 times, the four gospels 49 times.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30)

 I expect you’re familiar with the above verse. Besides the fact the heart is mentioned first, I like the repetition of “all”:

“all your heart

all your soul

all your mind

all your strength”

Why all?

Over the weekend, the John Eldredge “Ransomed Heart” devotional I subscribe to perhaps provided the best answer I’ve read.

“The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases.” (Prov 21:1)

BAM!

Isn’t it funny how you can read a verse many times and nothing hits you. On Saturday, the Spirit whacked me right between the eyes.

Eldredge explains it best:

“What God is after is a man so yielded to him, so completely surrendered, that his heart is easily moved by the Spirit of God to the purposes of God.”

He went on to validate this by mentioning Moses, David and Jesus. Three men who chose to surrender their “all” to God and, in so doing, He spoke very specifically to them. And most of the time (well, in Jesus case 100%) they obeyed what they were told.

So okay, I understand that, but how do I do it? How do I get to that, where my “all” is surrendered to God?

I’ve recently finished reading “Everything” by Mary DeMuth. I’ve been part of the launch team, which has been a lot of fun. Whilst reading the pre-launch copy of the book, 100 of us have shared, prayed and encouraged not only Mary, but the rest of us, via a closed Facebook group. I expect some new lifelong friendships have been formed as a result.

Mary shares very openly her walk with the Lord through all the mountains and valleys of her life. In so doing she shares her thoughts on how to give our “all” to God. The book is very good providing lots of keen insights and reflections supported by scripture. It also contains lots of great sound bites or one-liners. I love these as I can jot them down in my journal, reflect on them, and then bring them out in a relevant situation in my life.

However, I finished the book feeling a little frustrated, as I didn’t feel I got any greater insights into how to give my “all” to Him. I wanted to see more into Mary’s life and how she’s given her “all”. I wanted to be “involved” in her story to see how she’s managed it. So, in effect, I could learn from someone else’s personal journey.

You can read my review of the book here. I’ll also be blogging specifically on some insights I gained from the book as part of Mary’s launch team Blog Tour later in the month.

Don’t get me wrong, I realise that this “all” state is not a destination. We’re on a journey of discovering God and ourselves through Him. I don’t think we get to a point where we say, “Okay, I’ve made it, I’ve giving all of my heart and so on, to God” and then we’ve made it.

But I want to get to the point where He is my first waking thought, and when I get anxious, I press into Him first, rather than trying to deal with it myself first. That make sense?

But perhaps the best way is to learn from the Master Himself. Jesus.

Let me share some more on that in my next post.

I’d love to hear some of your thoughts on what you’ve done in yielding your “all” to God.

Till next time, be blessed.

2 replies

Trackbacks & Pingbacks

  1. […] we are regarding where we are. A few weeks ago I raised the notion of loving and trusting God with our “all” as the Bible repeatedly […]

  2. […] by Ian on Oct 20, 2012 in Bible Reading, Heart, Jesus | 0 comments In my last post I reflected on the significance of loving God with “all of our everything”. My post ended with […]

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