Heart Trouble
When you hear the phrase, “Just follow your heart,” do you believe that if you do, you will be kept out of trouble and on the right path in life? If we follow our heart sometimes we get into a real mess. What about the phrase, “Follow your head not your heart?” Which one of these phrases is a motto for our lives?
The disciples asked Jesus in Matthew 13, “Why do you tell stories?” He replied, “You’ve been given insight into God’s kingdom. You know how it works. Not everybody has this gift, this insight; it hasn’t been given to them. Whenever someone has a ready heart for this, the insights and understanding flow freely. But if there is no readiness, any trace of interest soon disappears. That’s why I tell stories – to create readiness, to nudge the people toward receptive insight. In their present state they can stare till doomsday and not see it; listen till they are blue in the face and not get it; I don’t want Isaiah’s forecast to be repeated all over again – Jesus says.
“Your ears are open but you don’t hear a thing.
Your eyes are made awake but you don’t see a thing.
The people are blockheads!
They stick their fingers in their ears so they won’t have to listen.
They screw their eyes shut so they won’t have to see,
So they won’t have to deal with me face to face and let me heal them.”
Does this sound familiar to us today? Do we have a readiness for the insights from the Bible to help us live the kind of life that in the end will bring us peace and a strong relationship with Christ? Are our eyes screwed shut and do we have our fingers in our ears?
He said, “But you have God-blessed eyes – eyes that see! And God-blessed ears, ears that hear! A lot of people, prophets and humble believers would have given anything to see what you are seeing, to hear what you are hearing. But never had the chance.”
You know I am reminded that a calling to preach God’s Word is an incredible honour and with it comes a responsibility to try to get people to see that Word and to really hear that Word. It has a lot to do with the condition of people’s hearts.
I can talk all day long and we can sing God’s Word till the cows come home, but if a person doesn’t have their heart ready to receive the message, it is all just nonsense to them. Speaking of famous phrases; What about this one. “He just didn’t have his heart in it..” What do you think the outcome of that venture would be? If the person doesn’t have their heart into something then you can be pretty sure that very little is going to happen.
We have to have our heart in a condition to see and hear and understand. Notice what Jesus says about human hearts. What does He draw attention to about our interest to His message, His Word? How does He deal with our resistance? What does He want for us?
I’m going to read a part of this passage again.
Listen to the words as if Jesus is talking directly to you, personally to you, privately to you. Meditate on these words as you hear them until the message becomes familiar. Then ask yourself, “What stands out that relates to my life?” (Matt 13:18-23)
Something I want you to do… Search your memory for any insights that God has given you in recent weeks. You may brush it off and say that He hasn’t given you any insights at all. Is it because you haven’t had your ears open in church? Is it possible that God hasn’t given you any insights because you haven’t done a devotional in the morning in ‘who knows how long?’
God has supplied you with His entire Word. You are the blessed. While your thinking about it, has there been a time when God has invited you to act on or think about something, but you ignored the request? Or did you put it off? Do you know why you do this - knowing that you are one of the blessed who have His Word at your disposal. And if you call yourself a believer – Have you thought about why you continue to resist what you know to be true?
God’s greatest desire is not to get you to act in any particular way – It is to engage with you in a relationship. Think about how you have participated in that relationship.
This is the motivation of the church – to enable people to develop a relationship with God, through the Holy Spirit to accept Christ as their Saviour and to live in His light.
But let me take you back to the Scripture, here were Christ is answering the pivotal question – “Why do you tell stories, or why do you use parables when you talk to the people?”
There were reasons why Jesus used parables. There were obviously some who didn’t understand these stories at all. And even when Jesus answered them – there was a degree of haziness in His explanations. Let me try to explain why Jesus began to use parables or stories from this point through to the end of His ministry.
His enemies rejected his teachings and the multitudes had become indifferent. It rings a familiar tone to life today. They were interested in seeing miracles, but they had no interest in the spiritual application of those miracles. They wanted a big show, not learning. We have the same problem today. We are not always dedicated to the learning of spiritual truths as much as we are in demanding that God do this or that. Jesus resorted to the use of parables to get the interest level of the masses up. But more importantly He used parables to feed the appetite of those who wanted to learn – those with their eyes open to the truth.
Paul did the same thing in 1 Corinthians 2. He said “no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him. But God has revealed it to us by His Spirit.” Then he goes on later and says, “This is what we speak, not in words taught to us by human wisdom but people who aren’t Christians can’t understand these truths from God’s Spirit. It all sounds foolish to them because only those who have the Spirit can understand what the Spirit means. We who have the Spirit understand those things, but others can’t understand us at all.”
This great method of Christ is still applicable today. We can use every means to try to get people to understand spiritual truth, but they must want to understand them before these things can be made real to them.
It breaks down to this: If a person’s heart and eyes and ears are open and they want to know, then the Holy Spirit of God is going to bring in the truth to their heart. God will make these things quite real and living for that person.
Deep sea divers enter the water with tanks on their backs. These tanks contain oxygen. The purpose of these tanks strapped to their backs is so that they can make it in a foreign world. Water is not their natural habitat; it’s not that normal place for them to live, so in order for them to survive in this foreign world of water, they need to be connected to a life source from their real world. In order for them to make it in that world, they need air from this world. In other words, if they get disconnected from the air from this world, they won’t last long in that world. Their connectedness is the key to their survival because they weren’t meant to live in water. So they borrow from this world in order to live in that world. That life source in the life of a Christian is the Holy Spirit. God has given the Christian life this source because this world to the Christian is foreign territory. In order to live here and make it, you need to be connected to a life source from your real world. If you are now, or in the future, get disconnected from the life source from your real world, you won’t make it in this world as a Christ follower. You’ll be gagging for air that this world does not offer because it is a foreign territory. This life source comes through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
The challenge to humanity as a whole is; Are you going to accept the Holy Spirit into your life and learn what the Scriptures have to teach you?
Learning has a lot to do with trust. It’s amazing how people want objective standards for everything else, but not for how to live their lives. But suppose you went to the doctor and you needed an operation. What if he said, “well I think I have to make the incision here, but my partner doctor thinks it should be there. And our associate doctor thinks it should be over here. Well lets just try the incision here and we will see how it works out.” What if you went to the pharmacist and they tell you that the prescription you gave they can’t read, but they will take a good guess of what to give you. Then they call around and find out that there are other guesses from other pharmacists at what to give you – then he says, “let’s try this one and see how everything turns out.” Or what if you are boarding a plane and you hear the pilot talking to his crew about what button to push to take off, and the answer is; well it could be any of those three, let’s try this one and see if the plane will fly. Now at the doctor’s office you want the truth, and at the drug store you want the truth. And for sure, when you board a plane you sure enough want the truth. You search for the truth in every aspect of your life.
Well, if you can respect the truth of a doctor, and the truth from your pharmacist and can respect the truth of a pilot – how come God can’t be trusted? He is truth – an absolute truth, a standard of truth which is found in the Word of God, the Scriptures.
We are His church, the arms of the Bride of Christ. It is from this place that the Word of God is broadcast. We don’t have parables to use, just the plain Word of God. If it resides in our heart then we are ready to spread the seeds of truth to the world.
God’s Word is the seed that falls. What kind of soil are you today? Do you have your heart open, ears open and eyes open to that Word?
The important thing from this parable from Jesus in the concept of reception. How did the ground receive the seeds. It is not so much where we sow God’s Word, whether it is to another person or to our self. We have all seen trees that have managed to grow up from between the crack in huge rocks. The important thing to that seed which produced the tree is not so much where it landed but how it was received once it landed. Open ears and open eyes signify an open heart. How is yours recently? Amen.
