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Being led by living from the heart instead of leading with the head.
Living with synchronized passion fed by the passion of God.
Sequence of train – Spirit of God leading man's spirit by filling it with God's passion. Man's spirit leading the imagination to express its unique creativity and personality using both the natural gifts and abilities and the supernatural gifts received by the baptism (immersion) of the Holy Ghost. Then all of this passion and fire is protected and reinforced (virus checker) by the logic and information filling the left brain from reliable resources like the Bible.
Analogies:
Trying to push a chain instead of pulling it is like living from the head first.
Trying to take an aircraft into outer space by depending only on propellers while suppressing all use of rocket fuel and engines.
The familiar train analogy frequently used on us growing up may be one of our strongholds preventing us from thriving. The engine is our intellect and will based on logic and formulas derived from the Bible and other “chosen” sources. Our emotions were the caboose that had to be put at the end of the train. By
implication (and now even in the real world of trains) the caboose is often apparently missing altogether.
I wonder how much this instruction from our early years has caused us to suppress our heart and even resist the promptings of the Holy Spirit in our lives?
I met someone this weekend that I had known many years ago that, as I listened to their story I realized how persistent their heart is in its desperate struggles to stay alive in spite of unspeakable atrocities committed against them by countless people in their life from the day they were born. The abuse was diabolically designed to destroy their heart and permeate their mind with lies about their loving Creator. Yet in spite of all this damage,
both physically and emotionally, I can still recognize the unique characteristics of the beautiful heart that I had seen many years ago when I knew them somewhere else. At that time I was intrigued by the unique, captivating nature of their smile and the sense of “aliveness” that emanated from them, not knowing then how much damage and violation had already been perpetrated against them at that point. After many more years of damage the results have become much more obvious and debilitating, yet the special heart that Jesus created within this person still struggles to stay alive and grasps for hope. Their spirit is yearning for connection to the Spirit that created it and for which it was designed to connect to so it could thrives and feel satisfied.
My own heart has had stirrings lately that are impossible to formulate into words. At times I have unfamiliar moments of – well, how can words explain them adequately? It takes a lot of words to explain what seems so simple in the arena of the spirit. In those moments I have a combined sense of anticipation, peace, synchronization, assurance, hope, and even potential for living freely in genuine, selfless love while I stay connected to the obvious Source of this peace. These moments feel so refreshing and alive and I want to stay there to grow and thrive. These feeling are new and somewhat unfamiliar but make me feel really alive. I suspect that if I stayed very long in this state of being my face might begin to glow unnaturally (for me anyway) and people would wonder what happened to me. I have a strong sense that this is what life is supposed to be like all the time, but it doesn't fit well with the rigid paradigms and rules of the religion that has been superimposed on me for most of my life.
As I thought about this while waking up this morning I realized that maybe I need to reverse the power arrangement in my life in order to become efficient (or even truly functional) and be in alignment with how I was originally designed to live and thrive. Trying to lead my life with logic-based truth and keep my heart suppressed (as implied by typical religious instruction) has only resulted in great frustration, pain and too much dysfunction. Yes, I can spew out correct answers apparently, but I (the real me – my heart) cannot really thrive and experience the abundant life that Jesus promised I could have. Now I am beginning to sense that it may largely be due to my attempt to operate my “train” backwards according to the misleading instructions ingrained into me since childhood.
As many others might likely remember, I was taught that we must not let our emotions lead us. Emotions are like the caboose of the train that must always be kept behind everything else. In reality, they were often by implication to be disconnected from the train and left somewhere else. 
The engine was to be our intellect firmly rooted in the Word of God and the training of our leaders. We were never to allow our emotions to influence us in any way as far as the movement of the train (our life).
I know I can easily make myself an easy target by talking about such “settled truths” as this, but I am now beginning to seriously question the validity of the assumptions in this analogy. While I will agree that there is a lot of truth in this, I also see a great deal of potential for error and even abuse contained in this analogy. While I am not advocating
we follow every whim of our emotions wherever they may direct us, my growing understanding of the importance of living from the heart conflicts sharply with the way this instruction has been used to suffocate so many hearts over the years.
Our emotions, while not the engine that should drive our train, are symptoms of the condition of our spirit. As I have said before, emotions are like indicators on the dashboard that reveal what is going on inside in the spirit area of our lives. Emotions are not good or bad, they simply are. They can be allowed to incite us to do other things that may be good or bad, but emotions are just emotions and cannot be blamed as the cause for our condition. Choices, either ours or other people's, are the real cause of the condition we find ourselves in, and emotions are the “graphics” that show up on the screen telling us what is going on with our spirit.
What I am starting to realize much more is that our spirit is the part that we have ignored far too long and is the missing element in learning how to really live in right relationship to life and to God. Due to the obsession of “religion” to suppress or ignore emotions, we have at the same time disconnected from awareness of our spirit and thereby cut off from ourselves
the very connector that our train needs to be led by the real power – the Spirit of God.
Because we are so disconnected from our spirit, which is almost the same thing as our heart, we really cannot relate properly to God and experience the real power that He wants us to experience that will be the real engine that can successfully move our life.
The only real power source in the whole universe from which all other power is derived is the passionate love flowing from the heart of the Creator-God of heaven. To be truly alive, all other created beings in the universe need to be properly connected to that unfailing Source of life and love. For us humans that link to the unlimited Source of power is our spirit that is shaped to uniquely connect with the Spirit of God like the couplings that connect the train cars to the engine. If our spirit is so damaged or ignored or distorted by lies that we refuse to be connected to the Spirit of God, we cannot be led by the Spirit of God and experience the power we need to move the train of our life. Salvation is the plan by which God is repairing the damage to our spirit so we can once again become connected to His unlimited power and experience the thrill of passion that flows from His heart to all of His created beings. We are brought into synchronization with the passion of God and come to life as we begin to experience the life-giving flow of love, joy and peace surging through our nervous system and charging our emotions with real satisfaction.
To use another analogy, I usually find myself trying to push a chain and chains simple don't work effectively by pushing them. In fact, by doing so they only end up in a jumbled mess instead of becoming straight and tall and strong. 
That might be an accurate picture of how I feel at times – a jumbled pile of correct ideas, links of truth that are not being activated from the right end. Even though one might carefully lay out the links of the chain in the “right” order and arrange them in such a way as to appear correct, as long as I am trying to push them instead of pulling on them correctly it will not function as it was designed to. What is lacking seems to be the element of synchronization.
As I thought how this might relate to what I am unearthing from my immersion in the book of Romans I realized that this may be just what Paul was contrasting in chapters 7 and 8. Chapter 7 is a description of people who know lots of good information (the Law) and are trying to lead with their knowledge – their left brain logic – to achieve a “righteous” life. What they missed is that real righteousness displayed in a person's life cannot be self-generated but can only happen as a result of a dynamic, vital umbilical-cord type connection with the only Source of real righteousness. They have been trying to “push the chain” of righteousness in their lives while focusing on having all the correct links. But no matter how accurate or truthful their links are, if they are not being pulled by the power of the living Spirit of God connected to their own spirit then all they can achieve is a jumble of confusing truth and a great deal of frustration.
Romans 8 is an exciting description of what it looks like to get the
train in the right order, to allow God to pull our chain (instead of the enemy yanking on the other end of our chain all the time). When I come into right relationship to God, led by His Spirit pulling on my spirit, then my spirit will pull on my life from my heart in harmony with my mind. My life will begin to reveal the results described in this chapter naturally and my heart will come alive and thrive. While chapter 7 describes the results of living from the head while chapter 8 describes the results of living from the heart connected to God's heart.
What does this all mean? Why do I feel compelled to ask that question anyway? It feels like pushing on the chain again so that I can bring this writing to a tidy ending to satisfy the rules of writing and public expression. I enjoy the fact that I can dialog with myself (and even with God) through this means without feeling the pressure to bring every post to a resolved ending like a successful one-hour television show. This is simply a window into the process of growing and exploring and query that is going on inside me that I allow others to peer into once in awhile. So I don't have to be confined to the “rules” of writing because I am not looking for a grade to measure how much or little I am worth. This is simply where I'm at right now.
God, grow my heart more today and teach me – both my heart and my head – how to really experience the abundant life that Jesus talked about and promised me. I also want to intercede for the people I connected with this weekend that You are pulling toward Your heart. I give you permission to do anything You want in their lives to heal and restore and re-create Your likeness in them. I do this based on the assurance of the authority that Jesus invested in all His followers when He left earth 2000 years ago. So in the name and authority of the One who now has taken away all the authority of Satan in this earth, I present before Your throne of grace these loved ones who are so damaged and hurting and grasping for hope and life. They have been terribly abused by the enemy of our souls and You have felt every pain with them. Allow them to see the truth about Your untainted beauty and loveliness and help them believe You never were the cause of the abuse heaped on them even though it was done using Your name. Allow them to taste a little of the intense passion in Your heart to connect with and heal their heart and restore them to better than their original design. Rescue their hearts from the cruel hands of the enemy and amaze the world with the success of Your experiments of grace in their lives.
Father, make me an instrument of Your grace and healing also. Help me to know Your ways, to wait for Your promptings and to respond more readily to Your Spirit. Melt away my fears and resistance to You and replace the many lies still within me with Your love and compassion and truth. This is a whole new way of thinking and living for me that is very unfamiliar. Revive my heart and fire me with Your own passion for Your reputation's sake.
