Heart

GRACE, FAITH and LIFE
A Personal Statement of Christian Faith and Practice

See Scripture related to the mind and heart.

When the Bible speaks of the heart, it is not talking about the organ, but about the innermost part of our mind ...?

The Heart is a significant term in the Bible. The heart is described as being wicked and needing to be changed. The heart is regarded as the innermost part our mind or soul. It is the part of us which drives our body and soul, it is the seat of our desires, beliefs, motives and choices.

It is in the heart of man where moral and spiritual battles take place. The heart is not the spirit. The words used for heart are leb, lebab and kardia. The words used for spirit are ruwach and pneuma.

Now we're going to talk about how our mind works. All of the things described in the "In Us We Have" panel and in the "World" are what affects our thinking and is the information we have to think about. Another part of our mind is sometimes called our heart - heart and mind are used together a lot in scripture. The natural person can only apply what they have in their mind to determine what they ought to do for themselves and for others. (Values). This is the heart. The Bible says the heart of man is ... Our heart is also called the eye of our understanding.

A part of our heart is what we have discerned as truth, our belief in what ever we believe in. - learning, education - politics - causes - money, job What we get involved in, is where our heart is. This is our self-motivation, why we motivate ourselves to do the things we do.

This may be who we think we are - our "identity"

Sometimes our identity is what we depend on to give meaning and purpose to our life. Whatever we depend on for meaning and purpose will tend to control us. (And eventually will usually disappoint us.)

Sometimes other things motivate us by deception. We are deceived into wrong thinking, which may cause us a lot of trouble. For example, If a parent constantly degrades and provokes a child, that child will learn to react in certain ways, which may even effect a child's temperament.

WILL SELF-WILL FREE-WILL

Another concept or part of our heart is our "will".

Will is how we use our mind to direct our thoughts and behavior, which is sometimes called self-will or free will. The will is an expression of our total self.

Our heart is how we will (choose) to think and believe, considering all of the information, facts and fiction shown in the panel representing our mind. We have freewill just like Adam and Eve. We also have something in the Flesh, which tells us we know right and wrong, we can be independent of God. Our will expresses THE ATTITUDE OF OUR HEART, toward God, toward ourselves, and toward others based on an intellectual process of sorting all of this out. Some people are known for being STRONG-WILLED; this "I want to do it my way" attitude is PRIDE.

Now remember this is all in our mind. We haven’t considered how all of this gets in there and how that affects us.

THINKING:

Thinking is another part of our mind. Thinking is cognition, perception, reason, and our intellect. A part of our mind, which processes information similar to a computer - and like a computer garbage in, produces garbage out. Thinking is the process whereby we draw conclusions which are the basis for our actions, beliefs, commitments, values, opinions, etc Sometimes with certainty, sometimes with doubt, sometimes we guess, sometimes we lie to ourselves and to others, sometimes we make decisions with a lot of anxiety. Sometimes perceived undesirable consequences to ourselves, or those we care about, will cause us to give more thought, to be surer before we say something or do something. Sometimes these perceived consequences would cause us to lie. Sometimes we wish we could take it back. Sometimes we just react - that is our temperament.

OUTCOMES:

Thinking produces certain results or OUTCOMES, which are:

ACTIONS, BELIEFS and EMOTIONS '

BELIEFS:

Beliefs are the continuous discovery of certain relationships between our mind (data) and our heart (desires) concerning expected consequences or outcomes, which guide our future thoughts and actions according to the power (commitment) or submission of our will. This is our "motivation" or "purpose of our heart".

If data and discernment are insufficient, or beyond our comprehension, we may develop or accept superstition as the basis for our beliefs.

Why would someone choose to live in the darkness of the "soul" rather than the light of the "Spirit"?

Beliefs are things, which we should accept as being sound. But sometimes we are deceived and sometimes we seem to want to accept deception. There are degrees of beliefs. Strong beliefs are convictions. These are the basis for our "commitments" and "resolutions". I think that we will all agree that we may have the will to state commitments and resolutions, but we rarely, "in the Flesh", have the "power" to keep them.

A person without the Spirit of God living in them has only their conscience and self-image and knowledge of things to believe as the basis for their beliefs.

EMOTIONS:

Reactions to our fears, anger whether we have peace of mind or anxiety, worry and stress. These emotions are always a result of what we are thinking. If we are thinking these thoughts, we experience these emotions: jealousy, anger, depressed, happy. We have all learned how our nervous system works and how we can't move an arm or a muscle without our brain causing it. Emotions are the same way. They are caused by what we are thinking at the time. Our emotions will change if we change what we are thinking. Confession is a good example of acting on our emotions. Even our body responds to what we are thinking. For instance think about eating a big bowl of nice ripe strawberries and cream and see what happens to your glands.

BEHAVIOR:

Behavior is what we do and what we say. Behavior is usually geared to obtaining a certain emotional response - if it feels good do it. Or, avoiding things, which produce undesirable emotions. For some, behavior is getting attention. They do things to be noticed and to get recognition.

Choosing is the basis for our behavior. We make choices based on our beliefs, desires, past experiences, expectations, intuition, discontent and disposition.

DOUBT:

Doubt is simply the lack of sufficient information to draw a conclusion, an uncertainty based on the information at hand, or information, which is not consistent with our experience, lies and misinformation, or unresolved conflicting information (CONFUSION).

MEMORY:

Memory has to do with association, relevance and soundness. We remember things, which we think we will use or which has some association with something, which we have already remembered. There is a ranking of relevance. Things, which are real relevant, we store on top or upfront and other things we kind of push to the back, sometimes unconsciously.

Memory is like a databank constantly being renewed. It is being renewed by our senses and by our thinking. That is why to have our mind renewed, we have to think about it. We read scripture and think about the truths in Christ, which are revealed to us. (See John 2:20 27) This is the fallen nature of humanity. The flesh. The flesh has an insatiable desire for self-love, self-fulfillment, self-satisfaction and even self-condemnation.

Emotions, imagination and temperament, can all affect how we think and can affect what we believe. What we let control our lives. Left to our self, many of us get tossed around by our feelings. All of this, in one sense, makes up WHO WE THINK WE ARE as defined in terms of:

- OUR PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER

- HOW WE GET ALONG WITH OTHERS

- HOW WE GET ALONG WITH OURSELVES

It is important to remember that what we do and what we say is a result of our thinking. The things in our minds are not separate processes. They are parts of a whole, which interact with one another. When they get out of balance, it is manifested in different ways of controlling us, usually because we are focusing on the very thing, which is causing the problem. Everyone has different personalities and problems to deal with, but no matter what the problem, the solution is always in understanding the fullness of the grace of God. The solution to our problem is a change in focus away from the bondage of dealing with our problems with our imagination and conscience to understanding our relationship with God and allowing the Holy Spirit to renew our mind.

Let's talk a little more about how this works, in the flesh. What does the Bible say?

So what motivates us? Depends on a lot of things.

WHAT ARE ALL PEOPLE, AT SOME POINT IN THEIR LIFE LOOKING FOR?

ACCEPTANCE	PURPOSE
LOVE	SIGNIFICANCE
UNDERSTANDING	SUCCESS
SECURITY	RECOGNITION
TRUTH	5c CUP OF COFFEE (good things out of our past)
HAPPINESS	FREEDOM FROM ALOT OF THINGS

WE CALL THIS MEANING AND PURPOSE.

Our search for meaning in life is extremely complicated. Sometimes we think we have it for a little while and then it is gone.

In this world and in our mind, we have trials and tribulations our search for meaning is a search for hope and meaningful relationships. Because everything seems to work against us much of the time, we may look for these things in people, places and things. These relationships are ways of winning in terms of our temperaments, character and flesh.

Because everything is so unreliable, and because of our unrealistic expectations everything effects our emotions, we become controlled by our emotions, our worry over the future and anger over the past.

When things are good, we feel good and we can cope. When things are bad, everything is bad, things are worse for us than they should be and we don't understand why. So what happens?

This is where everyone starts, IN THE FLESH. Who are we in this? What is really you? Is it - your self-image - your will - your temperament - your ability or specialty - your personality - your reputation Are you really who you think you are?

Sometimes we think who we are is what we're good at. Sometimes a person is known by their most prominent characteristics. In some respects, why you do what you do is who you are. We may be known by our TEMPERAMENT or our emotions - how we react to things.

What we do is our behavior, why we do it is the attitude of our heart, our motives. We are programmed to win. The World expects us to win. Our temperament and self-image govern how we play that role. A pro football player has an extremely aggressive winning attitude, not just against the other team, but also as an individual to make the team. This is why we cannot judge others. We can judge their actions, but not their motives, this requires looking on the heart, which only God can do.

All of these things of which we are made are imperfect and unreliable. Your emotions are unreliable because they are usually based on your imagination, conscience or temperament.

UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS

Most of what the WORLD tells us is unreliable. This is all unreliable because it changes all the time. Whether we want it to or not it changes. And yet, we can't change it even if we want to. Think about it. It can be or is in control of us most of the time. How can we expect to know who we are in all of this? Sometimes we think we have it for a little while, then things change and its gone. What does this do to our emotions and behavior? In one sense rest is the lack of worry or anxiety. Are we at rest?

All of this is a part of the mind. There are a lot of different functions and compartments of the mind, which no one really understands. This is OUR SOUL our MIND, EMOTION and WILL it is OUR SELF the FLESH.

This page last updated on March 8, 1997.