Living From My Heart

Several thoughts stirred around in my mind this morning insisting on being captured on record before they evaporated. The issue has been raised, after one of my recent postings about living from my heart, that living from one's heart is viewed by many as a very dangerous and even heretical concept. This does not surprise me in the least as I fully expected to hear something along these lines sooner or later. Religion as we know it has largely divorced us from all understanding of even the existence of our heart, much less learning how to live from it. We have usually been led to believe that we should never trust our heart because of it's terrible reputation of being “desperately wicked”.

But it is equally true that God has promised to give us a new heart of “flesh”. “Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.” (Ezekiel 36:26-27) Is it logical that God wants to give us a new heart but never intends for us to live from it? Do we have two hearts? I believe some of the answer to these issues we struggle with lies in the false gods that lurk in our souls purporting to be our real self's. I also happen to believe that there is a unique “blueprint” or DNA written into us of what God designed us to be in reflection of His image even before we were born or even “converted” that He wants us to become aware of and fulfill as our destiny. That is what I refer to as the “true heart”.

I am beginning to suspect more strongly that the “wicked heart” in us may actually be a “heart facade” erected there by the false gods we accumulate during our life. It is called a heart of stone and is composed of the walls we build around our hearts from our earliest experiences of discomfort to protect our hearts from pain. Because it is built around our real heart to “protect” it, it's shape looks a lot like our heart and we often mistake these walls for the heart itself. These walls are hardened over the years and reinforced by the lying gods that offer themselves to assist us in protecting our hearts from further pain and trauma. They lead us to believe that we must always avoid pain at all costs, that we must mask our true emotions and present false identities and masks to exert control over what people think about us and thereby how they treat us. We amass a very complex structure or maze of masks and appearances to be prepared for any eventuality, but primarily to keep anyone from knowing who we really are on the inside. In doing so we lose sight of our real identity ourselves and come to believe that the masquerade is the real thing.

For instance, as I was growing up I ran into a serious obstacle to many things I felt I really desired to do in my rebellion and anger. It was the deeply rooted, fundamental idea of being honest. It was drilled into me by parents and teachers, church and culture. Honesty and integrity were stressed and illustrated in dramatic stories with wonderful outcomes and strongly encouraged and enforced. I accepted these instructions and became super-conscientious about always being honest. I developed great fear of the dire consequences I might suffer if I was dishonest in any way and went to greater and greater lengths to be meticulously honest. In the process I became very reticent about making promises of any kind. I also developed a very strong reaction of intense anger and shame if anyone questioned my honesty or did not trust me about something. My mother noticed this strong character trait in me and sometimes used it to her advantage to manipulate me into altering my external behavior. My aversion to making promises even troubled me deeply when I realized I would have to make an unequivocal promise when I got married. As hard as I tried I could not find any alternative to making that promise short of not getting married.

Until this morning I have always believed that there was nothing to add to this part of my story. But as the experiences of the past few weeks have chipped away at the ice and stone surrounding my heart in attempts to find my real identity, it has occurred to me that the deep sense of honesty that has been such an intense part of my psyche all of my life was, in fact, only half of honesty. It was just an “intellectual honesty” that I many times found ways to circumvent through rationalization and creative schemes to avoid the pain of exposing what my real heart was feeling. So ironically, while externally maintaining strict honesty factually I was really being trained to be almost wholly dishonest about the condition of my heart and thereby losing touch more and more with my true identity.

The result of this is that I have become a well-groomed and self-deceived hypocrite with deeply embedded habits of thinking and reacting that are very difficult to overcome or to even perceive now. Living from my heart is such a foreign experience to me that I grapple with even understanding where to begin and how to continue. It does help to explain some of my baffling gaps in my character like my lack of natural compassion and my lack of appreciation.

Learning to live from my heart is very difficult to do after years of training for the opposite. It means for me being honest about real emotions and desires in the present tense and getting acquainted with my true heart vs. the false god heart. I am now realizing that I need compassion and pervasive forgiveness to completely replace bitterness and resentment in my spirit so that when I am under pressure and being squeezed, those attributes will be what spills out of me. For whatever is filling me on the inside is what will spill over on others when I am pushed or offended.

The thought came to me this morning that I must be a safe enough person for my opponents to confess their faults to without fear of my censure or shame. That was a shocking thought to me when I began to apply it to all the people that I am prone to criticize and find fault with. I have an awful lot of growing and maturing to do.

When I sat down for my communion time with God this morning I read this in My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers, a devotional book that I have read every day for at least 5-6 years now. “If there is sin, confess it, not admit it. Are you willing to obey your Lord and Master whatever the humiliation to your right to yourself may be?

“Never discard a conviction. If it is important enough for the Spirit of God to have brought it to your mind, it is that thing He is detecting. You were looking for a great thing to give up. God is telling you of some tiny thing; but at the back of it there lies the central citadel of obstinacy: I will not give up my right to myself—the thing God intends you to give up if ever you are going to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.” (UHH 9-24)

The story came to my mind of Moses striking the rock in anger in his frustration with the blindness and rebelliousness of the people God had asked him to lead to the promised land. The reason God gave to Moses for punishing him over this incident was not a reprimand for not following God's orders nearly so much as for misrepresenting who God is before the world. Moses presented a distorted picture of God’s passion and spirit toward the disobedient, setting the stage for the present terrible misunderstanding about hell and how God relates to those who oppose and reject His love. We are still struggling to overcome the ill-effects of Moses' wrong choice centuries later and still largely believe the lie about God that he acted out.

It is time for new examples and demonstrations of what God is really like. He desires to incarnate Himself in me just as much as He did through Jesus and demonstrate through my spirit and actions how he feels about lost human beings. To do this He has to get me to begin living from my heart the way He designed me live, the same place that He lives, and fulfill the destiny through the identity that He created me to be. I don't know what that looks like, but He does, and He's in charge of growing me into a man that reflects this aspect of Him to bless those around me through encouragement, compassion, unconditional love and honesty of heart, not just of mind. God, you've got a lot of work cut out for you, but you have my permission to do whatever you desire to fulfill your plan in me.

We Prefer...

We Prefer

Men prefer darkness rather than light

We prefer force rather than compassion

We prefer confrontation rather than humility

We prefer argument rather than heart work

We prefer to be right rather than to care

We prefer tradition rather than transformation

We prefer to inflict pain rather than to admit pain

We prefer fear rather than love

We prefer to blame rather than to accept responsibility

We prefer to be nice than to be honest

We prefer fake perfection rather than vulnerability

We prefer preaching rather than careful searching

We prefer pleasure rather than deep satisfaction

We prefer to mask our pain rather than face it honestly in community

We prefer a pretend religion rather than real spirituality

We prefer a God who reflects our own image rather than a God who cannot be manipulated

We prefer an angry, wrathful God rather than an intense, passionate lover God

We prefer to have a list for right and wrong rather than wrestle through issues of a committed relationship

We prefer truth rather than spirit

We prefer spirit rather than truth

We prefer simplistic, prepackaged doctrines rather than continuous openness to growth

We prefer cultural exclusiveness rather than joyful unity in the full body of Christ

We prefer minimal growth rather than challenging exploration of our potential

Men prefer darkness rather than light

Resist not Evil

I have been struggling for days, even weeks with a situation that remains unresolved and frustrating to my spirit. One of my closest friends has shut me out of his life and closed off all communication with me without any explanation whatsoever. I have made repeated attempts to contact him in various ways but without any response. This has left my mind open to running all kinds of scenarios to come up with possible reasons and explanations for why this is happening. A pain is deepening on the inside that I now realize is called attachment pain. This is the deepest level of pain known to humans and is the most difficult to remedy.

I have reason to believe from past communications that they may be doing this believing it is for my best good, to pressure me into a position of spending more time getting close to my wife. If I knew this to be true it would give me great relief, although I feel it is an extreme measure on their part to accomplish something that is already taking place without their withdrawal. But to simply stonewall every attempt on my part to seek a reason for the sudden disconnect of what has been a long and close friendship has caused me to analyze my deep pain and how I must come to terms with it.

But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. (Matthew 5:39 KJV)

I have realized for some time that resistance produces heat. That has helped open up my mind to the real truth about hell and has radically changed my picture of God over the past few years. But the resistance that produces hell is resistance to love. When Jesus says I should not resist evil it creates questions and conflicts in my mind as to what He really means.

James 4:7 says, “Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” So apparently I'm supposed to resist the devil but not resist evil. This is not a theological argument that I wish to engage in, this is a principle of Reality that I must come to understand if I am to be in harmony with Reality.

I looked up the original word for “evil” used in the verse from Matthew. I found it very interesting, as is often the case when checking closer to the original than what translators assume. In this case evil involves a number of possibilities that include; hurtful, calamitous, vicious, mischief, malice, anguish, pain. This kind of evil brings in the necessity of forgiveness as an antidote to preventing bitterness from taking root in my soul.

Forgiveness itself is a most misunderstood concept in most people's minds. It usually means something along the line of accepting excuses or trying to just forget an offense. It often means for many people trying hard to not feel anger and resentment toward someone who has hurt them which becomes very hard work with very little good result. None of these, of course, are a part of real forgiveness.

But without real forgiveness our hearts quickly begin to fill up with pain and unresolved issues left open to grow and torment us. Our minds resent the idea of forgiveness if we are honest about it. It seems majorly unfair and unjust. Why should people who cause us so much pain be forgiven and thus apparently get off without any consequences for the pain they have caused others? Something inside is rises up and demands that they should feel as much pain at least as what they have inflicted if not more. That takes us back to the issue of temptation. (see Reflective Temptation and Temptation and Worship)

Real forgiveness is very painful, even excruciating business. It involves coming to the point of taking full ownership of all the pain someone else has caused us, or is causing us even in real time. It means releasing all “rights” to retaliate or even desire to get any amount of revenge. That point is well beyond natural human ability. Forgiveness takes full responsibility for the pain and consequences I am suffering because of someone else's choices.

Responsibility does not mean that what they did to me was my fault. That is an issues that many struggle with in trying to understand this. Responsibility has to do with “ability to respond” instead of react. When I react to pain it will almost always be to return what I have received which only increases a vicious cycle and is rooted in the back of my brain that just wants to do anything to make the pain stop or the problem to go away. To respond means to accept what is dealt to me, take ownership of it without resentment (but not without pain), and then choose to act from the front of my brain under direction from my true heart as to what is best for our relationship. This takes maturity.

If I resist evil, the hurt from calamity or mischief, or maybe the anguish and pain from malice or just rudeness, or maybe even simple misunderstandings; if I resist then I am living in reaction instead of responding. Resistance amplifies the pain I am experiencing. And I have seen that in my own experience all my life, sometimes to other people's amazement. A heart that values justice is a heart that especially notices what is unfair and can be deeply hurt by those things. But in resisting those experiences it amplifies the pain beyond its original intensity. No wonder Jesus recommended not resisting evil. Evil is bad enough on its own without me amplifying its effects in my soul and emotions.

So I see my need for an antidote, a balm as some call it, some Oil-based lotion that can bring soothing and relief to my aching heart and return me back to joy and peace. Forgiveness is not fair, but it is indispensable if I am to grow and thrive. It is also impossible given the mental equipment I received growing up unless I receive it through grace. “Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Heb. 4:16.

Salvation by Competition

Believing that what someone else believes is wrong does not by default make what we believe right. We have an unconscious idea that black and white thinking means that if I'm not on one side then I am on the other. We become so caught up in competition of beliefs (evangelism) that we completely fail, or at best largely ignore the issues and problems with our hearts. We have elevated correct information to the level of God and thereby have made it a god that prevents us from knowing God.

We like in constant fear that we may entertain or overlook some piece of wrong information that will cause us to be lost. We believe that we will be judged and saved based mostly on the purity of our doctrines and secondarily on our relationships. In fact, we view many relationships as a threat to our obsession for pure doctrine and so avoid having meaningful connections with anyone whom we perceive or suspect may “corrupt” our accomplishment of “truth-gathering” up to this point in our lives. This has the growing tendency to cause us to associate more and more exclusively with only those who most nearly agree with our viewpoints and we more and more shun and pull away from everyone who makes us religiously or intellectually uncomfortable.

Evangelism as we see it today is largely an attempt to forcefully persuade people in a short time to align their intellectual/religious beliefs and external behaviors to be very close to ours so we will then have more people we can feel safe to fellowship with. If we can convince them to change with enough proof texts and arguments to switch sides from outside our church to inside our church then we suppose they are now converted and secure. From then on they only need weekly doctrinal maintenance and updating through unifying lesson quarterlies and formal sermonizing. Fellowship is considered a perk or maybe even a necessity, but only as a means of support for doctrinal growth and settling.

This is the model and reasoning developed and practiced by the Jews in Jesus' day and further fine-tuned and perfected by the Holy Roman Catholic Church for centuries. And as much as conservative protestants despise the Catholics they are, in fact, following very closely their lead and beliefs in how to correctly arrive at “truth” and “salvation”. If the truth were really exposed, it might be discovered that our animosity toward Catholics is rooted deeply in jealousy at their successful control over so many minds creating overwhelming competition for us in our desire to control other people's minds. Our doctrines may be different but our spirit and methods may be very similar. Jesus says to us as forcefully as to His own closest disciples, “You do not know what kind of spirit you are of...” Luke 9:55.

Expectations are Prophecies

Expectations are permissions, compulsions, prophecies. This is how they operate both between people and within ourselves.

I have noticed for many years that when I wanted to change the way I acted and related to people, it was very difficult because of their expectations and assumptions of who I was and how they expected me to act. I did not have permission to be different than how I had always been or perceived to be. Their expectations of me also became my expectations of what I was supposed to be and became a strong compulsion to be that way. In that way they actually became self-fulfilling prophecies that obey the expectations.

For instance, I grew up with the expectancy of the people around me that I was an ungrateful, unthankful person. They tried to correct that by attempting to force me to say grateful things against my will and it usually turned into a very unpleasant experience. Since memories are indexed in the brain by emotional category my mind probably since then has associated gratitude with feelings of force, shame and even anger. Since I don't enjoy re-experiencing those kinds of emotions over and over I unconsciously avoid the behavior that is associated with them which unfortunately in this case is gratitude.

When I was ungrateful as a child I was also condemned for being an ungrateful child. I can even somewhat remember occasionally people prophesying dire futures of what I would become because of my ingratitude and selfishness. Prophecies have an amazing power in our lives. They are not unlike the spells of witchcraft. They have magical powers in our lives to cause things to happen. They are powerful expectations that embed themselves deep in our psyche and cause us to view ourselves in line with their predictions. That is why “reverse psychology” is such a destructive idea. It is not the wonderful motivator for positive growth that it is often assumed to be.

The results of my family's expectations of my ungrateful spirit has produced in the rest of my life just what they predicted. I have struggled all my life with both feeling grateful and expressing it. Sometimes even when I feel it and want to break out of my “mold”, I don't have permission to be different and feel compelled to continue to fulfill the image people have of me yet today.

On the surface this looks like a simple problem with a simple solution. People around me say, “Just choose to be different. You don't have to stay that way. We're not forcing you to be that way. We don't like it any better than you do, so why don't you just change?” But underneath and woven through their statements is still the same old expectancies that continue to inhibit me, raising feelings of shame and fear that again drive me into self-defeating behavior even though I really want to be different. It is back to the Romans 7 scenario again.

The key word in the transition between Romans 7 and 8 is the word “condemnation”. Condemnation is the active ingredient in negative expectations. It is the compelling force that was injected early in my life and casts its ugly spell over me yet today. It is also subtly present in the expectancies of the people around me today and especially in my mind. It is usually camouflaged as some other motivation but is always present when these symptoms exist. Condemnation is very tenacious and grows deep tentacles into my mind and heart. It thrives and feeds on shame and fear and dispenses the same back into my heart and out of me to others as well.

This situation is like a locking mechanism in the mind. Like the lock on a ratchet when it is engaged, the harder you try to work against it the harder it locks you down. Trying to overcome it by more force, logic, persuasion or threats only creates more resistance. The ratchet wheel on my boat trailer seems to be a good illustration. The only way I can release it to allow the boat to slide free into the water is to turn the wheel slightly in the opposite direction and then unset the latch before the wheel can spin freely in the right direction and release the safety strap. Once it is relaxed I can then unlock the boat from the strap and can enjoy the full freedom of boating without being tied down to the trailer.

Negative expectations are like that latch that keeps the ratchet locked. Those expectations need to be exposed (slightly turning the ratchet tighter at first creating even more tension) and then changed or unlocked. Part of this process is the discovery of old vows and expectancies that keep us yet in bondage and acting to renounce those vows, both from others and in ourselves. But what I see as just as important is the replacement of those negative expectancies with new and opposite ones.

This can be very tricky at this point, however. It is not unusual for many people to actually camouflage an old expectancy just beneath a new one. The words may sound right but the old spirit is still sending the old message very subtly. That's when the word “expect” has the alternate meaning more familiar to me. “I expect you to do _____,” or “I expect you to be this kind of person...” with the insinuation that if you don't perform as expected you will be in trouble (shamed and devalued). The expectations may be worded properly but the message is still the same – “I don't really think you have changed but I expect you to anyway, so you better try harder this time.”

New, positive expectancies have to be a heart experience. They have to be projected from one heart that believes in you and sees (prophecy's) something good in your heart that you cannot even see yourself. They have to be insistent as well as heart-felt and genuine. That person will persist in the face of repeated contrary evidence to believe in you and remind you often of what they see in you and in your future. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Heb. 11:1 This kind of faith is rooted in love and creates hope, “and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” Rom. 5:5

This begins to create an atmosphere of permission so that it finally feels safe to be a different person than I always knew myself to be. When I receive repeated, genuine, heart-originated expectations irregardless of how I currently feel or even act, my own heart slowly begins to awaken, hope begins to flicker and I begin to perceive a different identity than what I always believed about myself. This new identity is very unfamiliar and maybe even a little frightening at first.

As I begin to shed my old identity I go through periods of terror, fear of death of the different parts of who I am, without confidence yet as to what is to replace it. I need to see my real self in the “face” of another person who will really care about my heart, who believes in me more than I believe in myself, and who is committed to a long-term relationship with me, especially if I can believe they will never abandon me. I need repeated reassurance and reminders of who I really am in my real heart because I easily loose sight of it in the clamor of the old gods losing their grip on my soul. I need to know that someone understands how I feel, that my deepest motives are good even when evidence seems to all point to the contrary. I need an environment starved of condemnation and enriched with confidence and life-giving nuggets of joy and affection. This creates in my soul the rich, plowed earth that will begin to produce much good fruit and overflow to affect other people's lives.

“All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.” 2 Cor. 5:18,19 This is the life-changing opportunity we have to release each other into freedom. Taking people through this process who are locked down under multiple ratchets of negative expectations and vows, seeing them through the eyes of heaven and then injecting into their hearts and minds a new vision of who they really are and what they are becoming; this is the ministry of reconciliation that God has committed to us to fulfill. It is spreading the contagious infection of hope, joy and love setting people free from the heavy chains that have bound them all their lives, “and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage.” Heb. 2:15