Two Languages

I am in the infant stages of learning about real heart communication and identification. I am beginning to learn some of the most elementary principles that seem so obvious and yet so unknown. After they dawn on me, (which probably means they are linked together between my left and right brain), I realize they were right there in the Bible all along and other people have been trying to convey them to me for a very long time. That makes me feel a little stupid. Maybe that's what the Bible is talking about in 1Cor. 3:18-20 Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you thinks that he is wise in this age, he must become foolish, so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God. For it is written, "He is THE ONE WHO CATCHES THE WISE IN THEIR CRAFTINESS"; and again, "THE LORD KNOWS THE REASONINGS of the wise, THAT THEY ARE USELESS."

2Co 5:16 “From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way.” I think I may be starting to understand a little of what this might mean. It is highlighting the difference between two languages, the language that most humans typically use and the language of heart communication. Actually they are more like filters than separate languages. We always have filters in place when we think and talk. The problem is not just whether we have correct information but even more so how we interpret it and what part of our brain is allowed to interpret it.

Learning to live from my heart, even a renewed heart, is a real struggle for me right now. It is much easier to interpret others through the filters I have used all my life that were both trained into me by my family, church and culture and ones I have cultivated. But most all of these familiar filters, even though they sound very right, are easily defendable and can even be deeply entrenched in proof texts and quotations, these filters are actually based on formulations of the false gods that have deceived me all these years. These filters are based on the Sarc (or Sarx), which is the Greek word translated in the Bible as “flesh”. That is the natural part of us, human nature, what feels normal and sensible, common sense etc. Much of religion is based on Sarc thinking though that statement would be sure to raise intense controversy. Sarc thinking can be based on very true information and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt but still not be heart-oriented or sensitive.

Heart language requires having “the eyes of heaven”, perceiving not only others but also our own hearts with new appreciation and insight. It is a skill that everyone must have if they are to participate in heaven's kingdom but is so rare it is startling when we see it. In fact, we often mistake it for simple-mindedness, immature thinking or even naivety. It is most easily seen in small children but is soon trained out of them by abuse and lies. It is being able to honestly express the truth about our real emotions and motives, either good or bad. It is also the ability to discern the difference between what originates from an innocent heart and what purports to be from our heart but is actually gods masquerading as our identity. This is the part that is very new and very difficult for me to successfully navigate right now.

But as I consider the alternative - that is, to continue to misjudge and wound the hearts of those around me in my attempts to defend myself or maintain being right – I decide that this venture is more than worth the effort and dis-ease of being out of my comfort zone for a season. Viewing the immense damage I have already caused the hearts of my own wife and children over the past 30 years I believe it is time to accept a radical new direction in my thinking, believing and relating.

This is very unsettling and frightening for me and makes me feel very vulnerable, as I have expressed recently in my blogs. I have to accept the very real possibility that someone, or many ones, will choose to exploit my vulnerability and choose to hurt me deeply. That is the price I have to be willing to pay to unlock my real heart and actually begin to live real life again.

I remember when I was a teenager at LBA in Tennessee going out into the circle and lying down in the grass struggling with this very issue. I sensed that my ability to enjoy beauty and have deep relationships was fast eroding and being replaced by a feeling of callousness and walls of self protection. I no longer could genuinely revel in a beautiful sunset or experience many feelings like I used to do. Intrinsically I realized that my capacity for experiencing joy and connecting meaningfully with other people was the exact same capacity that I was willing to allow myself to be hurt and wounded without cutting myself off. At that time I made a conscious decision to be willing to accept that. I believed for many years that that decision still stood in my life. But over the past few years I have begun to realize that somehow that decision has been largely reversed, but so subtly that I didn't realize it was happening. I again became aware that many of my relationships, especially with close family, were feeling more and more at a distance even though externally they look respectable. But this time I am in the quicksand so deep that I could not get out by myself. I heart is struggling and gasping for it's last violent attempts to breath and I need emergency resuscitation.

I have been praying for months for something more than just another seminar or even a week-long counseling session, as good as those have been. I needed someone, preferably a couple, to literally move in with us and show us what it looks like while teaching and coaching us how to live and love and be real in everyday life. God was so wonderful, as He always is though I often don't perceive it, and sent that very thing into our lives. We are right now going through that very process with the most unusual couple I have ever met who have those exact qualifications. In fact, they have made it their life work to do just what I described, to live with people, provide their professional mediation skills and their wide variety of training along with their more important abilities to live from their hearts transparently in any situation. It is literally taking weeks for me to slowly unfreeze the thick walls encasing my own heart. I often feel very much like the frozen waterfalls in the recent movie Narnia, as they begin to crack and soften and leak, threatening to collapse into a torrent of revived life and free flowing emotions again.

I don't yet have an ending for this to write yet. That's because I'm still in the middle of the process and don't know what's next. I am simply trying to express and understand and share it as it happens.