INTRODUCTION
There is a question in the Bible asked by God to me and to you us that we must know the answer to at some point in our Christian journey. We are going to need to know that answer not in our heads but in our hearts. God makes sure we don’t miss the question, so He asked it twice. If God, ask me a question once, I need to pay attention, it must be important. But, if God asked me the same question twice, bells and whistles need to go off, this must be very important. And if God directly answer that same question that He has asked me twice, so I don’t get it wrong, it must be extremely important that I get the right answer. With the right answer securely placed somewhere in my head, now my job is to get that answer to my heart.
In Genesis 18, God is having a conversation with Abram about the birth of his promised child next year and Sarah who is in the tent nearby overhears the conversation and laughs because of her age. To which God replies to Abraham and Sarah with a question: Is anything too hard for God?
Then years later in the Book of Jeremiah, Chapter 32, Israel is in the Promised Land, but they have not obeyed the Lord and so God was set to send in the Babylonians to siege the city and take many captives. And in that conversation God ask Jeremiah: Is there anything too hard for Me?
And it also in that same conversation that God gives us the answer through the words of the Prophet Jeremiah: There is nothing too hard for you.
Now, we know the question: Is anything too hard for God? Now we also know the answer: There is nothing too hard for God. But the question to each one of us is: “When we are put to the test, do we know nothing is too hard for God in our heart? For a lot of us I don’t think that answer has made the (18) inch journey from our head to our heart. So, in the time that I have I want to try to help move that great truth to our hearts.
1
TRUST.
TO MOVE SOMETHING FROM YOUR HEAD TO YOUR HEART, THERE MUST BE A TRAIL OF KEPT PROMISES SO THAT YOU CAN DEVELOP TRUST.
Think about dating, you might see someone, and your initial response in your head might be “I am interested”, and I want to see more of that person so I can know him or her better. So, you continue seeing that person over time, but you catch the person lying to you. Your friends start telling you stuff they found out about him or her. You ask that person to do something for you, oh, he or she says sure, but it doesn’t get done. If you are smart, you look at the trail of lies, the feedback from friends you trust, and the broken promises and you never let this relationship move from your head to your heart. Why, because that person has not proven himself or herself trustworthy. We move people or things to our heart that are trustworthy.
Now, listen to what the Lord says in Numbers 23:19 (NKJV)
19 “God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?
What God is saying, I give you no reason, (I don’t lie, I keep my promises) so that you can move what I tell you from your head to your heart. Think about your life, has God ever lied to you? Think about your life, is there a promise in the Bible that God had denied you? Nobody in this room can say God ever lied to them; nobody can say God didn’t keep a promise written in His Word given to them.
Let’s go back to Abraham. He was an old man and Sarah was an old woman when God told them next year, you are going to have a child. And when that proved true, Abraham moved from his head to his heart that nothing is impossible for God. Year later, God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son on Mount Moriah and Abraham was willing to do it. Why? There is only one reason Abraham would offer up his son, Abraham knew in his heart that nothing is impossible for God. Listen to what it says in Hebrews 11:17-19 (NKJV)
17 By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son,
18 of whom it was said, “In Isaac your seed shall be called,”
19 concluding that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead, from which he also received him in a figurative sense.
Abraham believed that if God took his son’s life that God would raise him up from the dead. Now that’s believing God can do the impossible. How could he believe just a thing? It was because he moved it from his head to his heart.
Have you moved what God has told you from your head to your heart because He has proved Himself trustworthy?
2
LOVE
TO MOVE SOMETHING FROM YOUR HEAD TO YOUR HEART, IT MUST BE SPOKEN BY SOMEONE I KNOW DEEPLY LOVES ME.
Realizing somebody loves me moves things from a head matter to a heart matter. Let suppose an acquaintance tells me something that he sees needs to be corrected in my life. I hear what he says but generally I am going to keep it as a head matter. He does not have the right to move that from my head to my heart. Now, a day or two later, my wife tells me the exact same thing that the acquaintance told me about myself that needs to be corrected. I take it to heart because the person who spoke it to me loves me. She has the right to move something to my heart because I know that she loves me.
Every Christian needs to know in their heart not just the head that God loves them. And so, God spends a lot of time telling us why He is worthy of our heart-felt love. Let me show you a couple of Scriptures which don’t even touch the surface of how many Scriptures there are that talk about God’s love for us.
1 John 4:9-10 (NKJV)
9 In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.
10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
John 3:16-17 (NKJV)
16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
John 15:13 (NKJV)
13 Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. (And we know that Jesus laid down His life for us.
So, what is Jesus telling us? The things that I speak to you should go straight to your heart. I earned that right because I demonstrated to you that I love you.
So, when God tells Abraham and when God tells Jeremiah and when God tells me that nothing is too hard for Him that needs to go straight to my hard. He has earned that right; He is trustworthy, and He loves me.
3
GUARD
TO MOVE SOMETHING FROM YOUR HEAD TO YOUR HEART AND KEEP IT THERE, I MUST GUARD MY HEART.
Proverbs 4:23 (NIV)
23 Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.
People come to me for pre-marriage counseling and then eventually to get married. In all the years that I have been performing this pre-martial counseling, I have never had someone tells me that I am marrying him or her, but I don’t love them. What I usually hear is that “I love them with all my heart.” Now, if I would visit some of those couples, I performed those wedding ceremonies for let’s say ten years later, likely I will find that some of them have ended in divorce. And I know why. It is because they did not guard their heart. One of both had allowed either someone or the world to get in and steal that love from their heart, the love they professed to God in the wedding sermon.
When I was doing research for this sermon, I came across an interesting statistic, I would like to share with you. Only 21 to 23 percent of faithful attendees at church divorced, while the rate nearly doubled for those who attended church infrequently, at 41%. What does that say about the church? The church helps you to guard your heart.
God told Abraham; nothing is impossible for Him. God told Jeremiah; nothing is impossible for Him. And God tells you and me that nothing is impossible for God. If I don’t guard that truth in my heart, when I need it, I am not going to have it. How do you guard it? Scripture, prayer, church to name a few. How do you lose it? Let the world start seeping back into your heart.
Guard your heart, keep the value things that you need in there.
CONCLUSION
Trust and love allow things to move from your heard to your heart. Your job is to guard your heart to keep them there.
Let us pray!
