Pastor's Pondering
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Heart Over Head
by Duane Mabee on December 22, 2021Very many Christians have no sense of the great difference between the Christianity of the mind and the Christianity of the heart, and the former is far more diligently cultivated than the latter. They do not know how infinitely greater the heart is than the mind. It is this that causes much of the feebleness of our Christian life. (Andrew Murray Waiting on God.)
To have true faith, we must engage our hearts as well as our heads. The mind must take in knowledge of God and His Word, but it must do so in order to feed the heart. But we tend to stop with the head. Murry continues:
People imagine that if they are occupied with the truth, the spiritual life will, as a matter of course, be strengthened. And, this is by no means the case. The understanding deals with conceptions and images of divine things, but it cannot reach the real life of the soul. Hence the command, Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding, (Proverbs 3:5 ESV). It is with the heart that man believes and comes into touch with God. It is in the heart that God has given His Spirit to be the presence and the power of God working in us. In all our faith, it is the heart that must trust and love and worship and obey. My mind is utterly unable to create or maintain the spiritual life within me.
We have bought into the idea that educating the mind with Biblical truth is all that is necessary for spiritual growth. Knowing the Word and knowing the truth is absolutely essential, but if we stop there, we have missed the fullness of what God wants for us in relationship with Him.
Rom 10:10 says, “For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved,” ESV. Matt 15:18-19 says, “But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander,” ESV. We miss the meaning of these passages because we equate the head and heart. Biblically, they are two different entities.
Gods wants to transform our hearts, not just our minds. He wants the truth we know to penetrate deep into our souls to transform who we are, not just what we know and do. There is an old saying that the longest distance is the distance between the head and the heart. That explains why many Christians have heads full of Biblical knowledge, but hearts that have not be transformed. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths, Prov 3:5-6 ESV.
