©2004 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

10/10/04

Connecting Head and Heart

10/10/04 Connecting Head and Heart

Most of what I bring to you each Sunday morning

begins not in my mind

but in my heart.

It begins not so much as something my mind believes

but rather as something my spirit knows to be true.

It begins more as something I sense

than as something I think.

I believe this is a characteristic

of all true learning that we go through as Christians.

I believe that every idea we ever encounter

that truly takes root within us

and grows until if brings forth fruit that nourishes us,

and strengthens us,

and heals us,

and feeds our minds and our spirits,

is the result of a process in which our minds

finally bring into focus

something that our spirits have known

since that instant we entered into the presence of God

and into the discovery of His love through Christ.

It’s a little bit like this overhead projector we use for our singing.

Sometimes, if the projector has been used during the week,

when I first place an overhead on it,

and turn on the light,

the only thing projected up on the screen

is a blurred and fuzzy grey and white unreadable mass.

If I were to pick up the overhead and look at it directly

I would see clear, bold type

that can be easily read and understood.

But what I see projected onto the screen has no meaning at all.

Then, as I turn the focus knob

that mass of nothing

becomes more and more clear

until suddenly it comes into perfect focus.

I think there is a similar process

that the Spirit of God is seeking to accomplish

in the lives of every one of His children.

When we come to Christ,

when we first bow before Him in simple trust in His death

in our place

for our sins,

one of the many things He does in response to our faith

is to create within us a new heart,

a new spirit,

a new core to our being.

It is a new spirit that is born in truth,

created in purity,

filled with the perfect knowledge of our Creator.

Simply put,

that new spirit within us knows God as He really is,

not fully, of course, but accurately.

This recreative work within us

is so important,

so central to all that God seeks to do in our lives

that, long before Christ’s death for our sins made this redemptive work possible,

God lead the prophet Jeremiah to describe for us

what would one day take place.

Through Jeremiah He said,

JER 31:33-34 "But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days," declares the Lord, "I will put My law within them, and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. And they shall not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them," declares the Lord, "for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more."

Do you see what he’s saying to us there?

God will place the knowledge of Himself within us,

and write it upon our hearts,

and every one of us who come to Him,

“... shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them...”.

But that knowledge is not in our conscious reasoning processes,

it’s imbedded in our new spirits.

And from there

God then begins a process within us

in which He seeks to take the truths our spirits already understand

and bring them into our conscious minds

so that we can then make choices on the basis of them,

choices that will bring about greater and greater practical freedom in our lives.

This is that process referred to by Paul in Romans 12:2 where he says,

ROM 12:2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

You know how it is, don’t you?

There are two distinctly different types of learning that take place in our lives.

There is one type of learning

that involves our accumulation of both facts and principles,

things that seem reasonable and logical to our minds.

Much of our Bible learning is at this level.

It is a valuable and necessary part of our overall growth process.

But in itself

this kind of learning

has no power to transform our lives.

I have met more than a few church folks during the past 35 years

whose minds are crammed full of Bible knowledge,

but whose lives don’t seem to have changed significantly for decades.

Facts, and systems. and knowledge alone can’t do it.

But there is a second type of learning accomplished by God’s Spirit within us

that I am convinced begins

not in our minds

but in our spirits.

It begins with some truth about our God,

or about ourselves,

or about the nature of our relationship with Him,

or His relationship with us,

some truth that was imbedded in our reborn spirits by God at the time we came to Him.

It is a truth our spirits know,

but our minds have no understanding of whatsoever.

And then,

through a carefully designed learning process

that involves knowledge,

and life experiences,

and the careful working of the Spirit of God within us,

God will bring what our spirit already knows

into clear focus in our conscious minds.

And we will see it

and understand it

as we have never understood it before.

It doesn’t just become true,

it becomes real to us.

In fact, the New Testament writers

had a special word they used to describe this kind of knowledge.

It wasn’t the common word for knowledge, “gnosis”,

but rather the word “epignosis”.

The best we can do with this word in our translations

is “true knowledge”

or “full” or “complete knowledge”.

It is used to describe a kind of knowing

that only the Christian can possess,

and when it exists

it alters our lives.

Talking of this knowledge,

Peter says that God has (2PE 1:3) ... granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.

Everything we need

for the life He has called us to live

comes to us through this kind of learning process.

And it is those truths,

and that learning process

that has the power transform our lives,

the power to enable us to see our God,

and ourselves,

and our life,

and our world as we’ve never seen it before.

Part of that process does require clear, understandable knowledge from the written Word.

As a Bible teacher

one of the fringe benefits of what I do

is the privilege of sometimes being the means through which

God gives someone the knowledge they need

to bring into focus at the conscious level

some truth their spirit already understands.

And when that happens,

because I just happened to have been the delivery boy,

they will occasionally attribute to me

tremendous wisdom and insight, far beyond anything I really possess.

I rarely try to set these folks straight,

but I do know full well

that anytime that kind of discovery takes place,

anytime our minds consciously discover some truth

that has already been recorded by God within our Spirits,

it is always, only the Spirit of God who can do that.

And I also know that

just as surly as there is one person standing in awe,

wondering where I gained all of this wisdom,

there as another person standing right next to them

who is wondering how anyone so boring

could actually get people to listen to him week after week.

But when it comes to my own approach to teaching,

I have found that it works best for me to begin my preparation

not with my head, but with my heart,

because the more I can recognize and communicate

those things God has imbedded into my spirit,

the better the possibility that I will speak to you

those things that He has imbedded in your spirits as well.

And for the past four or five weeks

we have been talking about one of those truths

that God has etched into the spirits of each of His people.

It is a truth concerning the true nature of His moral commandments.

It is, at it’s core,

quite simply a hunger and a thirst for righteousness.

Not some flesh-based, religion-induced, guilt driven obligation to try to be better,

but a longing deep within our spirits

to live a life that reflects the true moral character of our God

and our love for Him.

That’s how it is recorded within our spirits,

and when that truth finally reaches our minds

it frequently does so in the form of the conscious realization

that all of those commandments we have been resisting

and fighting against prior to our union with our God,

that not only are they not our enemies,

but they are, in fact our doorways into true freedom in life,

and the glorious revelation

of the nature of true love.

They alone reveal to us

how we can go about acting in love toward ourselves,

and acting in love toward all those who matter most to us.

It’s sort of like we have been given

a protective mental filtration system

with which we can accurately measure the truth and error

in everything going on inside us

and everything coming at us from the outside.

Each of us have within ourselves

a muddled mass of impulses,

and desires,

and belief systems,

and perceived needs,

and emotional responses in life.

Some of them are healthy,

some of them are not.

Some of them matter,

and some of them don’t.

Some of them bring with them intense emotional responses,

while others are at a strictly intellectual level.

Many of them conflict with one another.

Some of them seem to be the logical end of careful reasoning,

while others surge into our lives at the feeling level,

claiming no allegiance to logic or reason whatsoever,

simply making their bold claim for our obedience.

I took a 13 year old friend of mine driving on an abandoned road some time ago.

It was a beautiful, sunny fall day,

we hadn’t hit anything large enough to stop us,

no noticeable parts of the truck had fallen off yet,

and we were having a blast.

As we came around a turn in the road

we suddenly saw directly ahead of us

a small tree blocking our way.

I suggested we stop,

my young driver thought we could probably just smash our way through the thing.

In the end he agreed with me,

slammed on the brakes,

and brought us to a stop about two feet from the tree.

I got out and cleared the branches out of the way.

When I got back in and then looked down the road

I saw three huge spruce hens about 15 feet in front of us.

I looked at my young friend,

saw this big grin break out on his face,

and then watched as he floored the truck and popped the clutch

in a frantic attempt to mow down his targets.

It was just an impulse, a burst of 13 year old fun.

Fortunately those pudgy little birds

can move much faster than you might think in life-threatening situations

and they all made it to safety in time.

Everyone of us, no matter what our age,

face a constant stream of unexpected impulses every day.

How can we know which ones matter,

and which ones do not,

which ones are just harmless bird-chasing,

and which ones could have profound negative consequences?

And then there are all those choices

that are not impulse-driven,

choices that flow out of what we believe to be absolutely logical reasoning processes.

Every day each of us are allotted 24 hours to invest anyway we choose to invest them.

How do we make those choices?

How do we decide how much time we should allot to which people and which projects in our lives?

And we are also given stewardship over a certain amount of money each day.

What do we do with it?

If we know that some choice we make will increase our little pile of money,

is that a good choice to make?

If it requires us to be dishonest,

or disobedient,

or unfaithful in some way,

is it still a good choice?

And in a broader sense

how can we know we are making choices

and setting priorities today

that will bring about results tomorrow,

or next week,

or ten years from now,

or twenty years from now

that will truly create for us

the kind of deep, enduring love relationships we long for,

and the most fulfilling life we can have?

When God’s Spirit finally brings our conscious minds

in line with what our spirits already know in this whole area of the commandments,

when that overhead projector

finally clicks into perfect focus at the conscious level,

we will discover that the moral laws given to us by our Creator

are the perfect and infallible filter for everything we face in life,

for every impulse,

and every reasoning process,

and every choice we may consider making,

providing us with a clear understanding of love,

and freeing us from the tragic errors in life.

Many of the impulses and reasoning processes we go through

will pass right through that filter

because they are simply not moral issues.

They’re just chasing spruce hens down a country road for the fun of it.

With others, however,

the Spirit of God will use that moral framework to show us

that what we are thinking,

or what we are feeling will be destructive to us

if we choose to move ahead.

And it is at that point

that our only safe choice

is the choice of faith, trusting what our God has said to us.

Now, I certainly don’t want to give the impression

that those choices are always easy.

The truth is,

some of them will be the hardest choices we’ll ever make.

Some of them will, for a time,

increase our pain,

or intensify our loneliness,

or make our lives more complicated,

or make us look like utter fools to those around us.

But if you are a child of God,

with your spirit immersed in His grace,

I will tell you something now about yourself

that your spirit already knows, but your mind may not.

The life your spirit truly hungers for

is not the easy life,

the painless life,

it is the life lived in righteous integrity in the presence of your God.

What your spirit really longs for when you look back on your life at any given point

is not that you are the one with the best stories,

or the biggest trophies,

or the financial portfolio that will guarantee your future financial security.

Do you know what your spirit really longs for?

Do you know what has the power to fill you

with a sense of deep fulfillment?

Two things -

the voice of your God saying to you, “Well done, My good and faithful servant.”,

and the voices of those people who were entrusted into your care saying,

“Thank you for loving me.

Thank you for being there when I needed you,

for being faithful when it would have been so easy not to be.

Thank you for protecting me where I was weak,

and affirming me where I was strong.

Thank you for treating me with respect,

with dignity,

for telling me with your actions and with your words

that you see in me a value I couldn’t see in myself.

Thank you for relating to me

the same way my God relates to me,

and in so doing

making it so much easier for me to trust Him.”

Of course they probably won’t say it with their words,

but they’ll say it with their eyes sometimes,

and with that expression that crosses their face

when they see you walk into the room.

You think I’m idealistic?

You think those type of relationships

simply don’t happen in the real world?

It is exactly for this purpose,

in order to teach us how to build such relationships,

that God has revealed to us His moral commandments.

They are the definition of love,

and as such

they reveal to us how to build with one another

the kind of relationships that truly feed our spirits.

That’s exactly what Paul was trying to tell us when he wrote,

ROM 13:9 For this, "You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet," and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

I haven’t gotten as far this morning as I’d planned,

and as I was writing up my notes this week

I saw something truly remarkable about the commandments,

something I’d never seen in quite this way before.

But I don’t want to rush through it,

so I believe I’ll save it for next week

and we’ll take one more day with this commandment section of our study

before we move away from it.