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The heart that has once tasted the love of Christ, cries out continually for a deeper draught, and as you impart, you will receive in richer and more abundant measure. Every revelation of God to the soul increases the capacity to know and to love. (SD 32)
Only the Holy Spirit of God can quicken the perceptive faculties.
Only to those who wait humbly upon God, who watch for His guidance and grace, is the Spirit given. This promised blessing, claimed by faith, brings all other blessings in its train. It is given according to the riches of the grace of Christ, and He is ready to supply every soul according to the capacity to receive. (SD 33)
As I read these statements over the past few days it occurred to me that what is going to happen at the point in time referred to as the “close of probation” is actually a time when people have so hardened their hearts that they have lost all capacity to receive the Holy Spirit. This loss of capacity is what some refer to as the locked heart syndrome. It can be locked by irreparable damage (by refusing repair) or by suffocation from an overbearing left-brain religion. Hearts of stone have no ability to expand in capacity like hearts of flesh.
On the other hand, God's plan for us is to be continually increasing our capacity by the exercise of joy in community and with Him. The latest brain science has discovered that joy (someone delighted and desiring to be with us) dramatically increases the capacity of the most important part of the brain and is what the brain craves the most. The whole plan of salvation is designed to restore our capacity so we can again mirror the face of God in our lives.
I have also been pondering the very act of writing itself, that is, writing about what one believes in particular. Writing locks ideas to a fixed point in perspective and does not allow for growth in understanding or shift in time and circumstances. In contrast, living in God's presence enables one to always live in the present allowing His wisdom to always be up to date.
Writing by its very nature also reduces the content of the thoughts and feelings of the heart in the very process of being condensed and filtered by the left brain to get the feelings and concepts small enough to express in language familiar to others. The left brain does not have near the capacity that the right brain possesses for expression but the left brain is where our means of language is based – another good reason to live from the heart. The heart – that I currently believe is primarily rooted in the right brain – is the only part of us equipped with large enough capacity to live life as we are designed to live it in vital connection with God's heart.
The right brain is the only soil suited to properly grow the seed of God implanted into us. The left brain is more like the hard ground or rocky ground where seeds are analyzed and displayed, stolen or left to flounder with very little emotion and passion available for the roots to grow into or from which to receive nourishment. The weedy ground person may be living more from a heart orientation but allows many other distractions to consume all its resources so very little is left for the image of God embedded in His word within us to flourish. (see Matt. 13:18-23)
Writing is useful to convey expressions of identity from a fixed point in our experience. But it must be remembered that those descriptions are neither complete or reflective of subsequent growth. To the extent that writing reflects the thoughts inspired by the Holy Spirit it can reveal valuable insights that can inspire others. But one must be careful to listen with the heart while reading someone's writings and focus on discerning the heart of God that inspired that person more than focusing on the agent who expressed those insights that are now frozen in words while their heart continued to move on in expansion of capacity through new experience.
This involves the issue of judging as well. When we make a settled opinion about someone's character based on their expressions without allowing for unknown evidence and growth since that expression, we judge their heart and often attempt to force them into a static mold based on our judgment. This creates an atmosphere conducive to hardening of the heart. This is the concept of judgment that we have typically assumed God will do at the close of probation. We sometimes think He will simply harden everyone's heart at an arbitrary point in time and they will be forever stuck with the character that they were caught in at that moment. That point in time, though never spoken about in this manner, is often assumed to be likely at a time when God finally runs out of patience with us and decides to change tactics with this rebellious planet to get on to the next phase of bringing an end to the Great Controversy. But this is another one of those damning lies about God that keeps us away from Him in our hearts.
