The heart of the matter is the heart (continuing Feb 18th's post)

In his prayer to the Ephesians Paul prays that they be given a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, enlightening the eyes of their heart (Ephesians 1:17,18). The last phrase is a literal translation of Greek, which also follows the word order. The implication (missed in many translations) is that a spirit of wisdom and revelation is the vehicle by which the eyes of the heart are enlightened. This is important because to know Him is to know that He is Love (1 John 4:8). In particular the enlightening of the eyes of the heart includes the revelation of His unconditional extravagant healing love for me and for you. Without this ongoing progressive revelation we will not be able to bear some of the other aspects of the enlightening of our hearts (John 16:12). God's primary goal in the enlightening the eyes of our heart is for us to have an ever deepening heart connection with Him.

It takes two to make and maintain a heart connection in any relationship. In the cross God has done everything necessary, from His side, to make it possible for us to have a heart connection with Him. From our side there are many blocks (or it would already have happened), and we need both a revelation of His heart for us, and a spirit of wisdom to get past the rationalization to even see, let alone dismantle, these blocks.

In this post we will be examining the blocks that prevent a heart connection with Him, and we will be saying more about the Love that enlightens the heart. In subsequent posts we will be considering our response to the enlightening of our hearts and the results of the enlightening of the heart.

The Greek lexicon defines heart (as used in this context) as the centre and seat of spiritual life, the fountain and seat of the thoughts, passions, desires, appetites, affections, purposes and endeavours. That the eyes of the heart need to be enlightened is clear from Matthew 5:18 where Jesus tells us that out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony and slander.

As part of my journey to faith I went through a broken marriage where I initially placed 100% of the blame for what went wrong, on my former wife. At the time I had no doubt about this, and I had murder in my heart. The scarey thing is that I am not at all sure that I would not have followed through, if I had thought I could have gotten away with it! Sometime later the Lord opened my eyes as to my own part in it all, and I came under heavy conviction of sin, selfishness and pride. I saw that I had been blind to my own substantial faults.

After I was saved I came across a verse in Jeremiah 17:9 which says that the heart is deceitful above all and desperately wicked. It was a major step in my acknowledging that the Bible is the Word of God. This book knows us, this book knows me. This revelation would have been devastating had I not known I was loved and forgiven. Gently He started to show me my almost limitless capacity for self deception and rationalization. I started to know something of the depth of the depravity of my heart. I have gotten into trouble for sharing this even with other Christians. As a result of this I have come to the conclusion that many Christians don't even have a clue how easily their hearts deceive them, and just how much our thoughts, passions, desires, appetites, affections, purposes and endeavours need to be enlightened.

As I said, this revelation of the deceitfulness of my heart would have been devestating were it not for the spirit of revelation of the Father’s Heart. With the enlightening of the eyes of my heart came the understanding of how much He loves me (and you). When Paul was enlightened he could say “The Son of God love me, and gave Himself to be the atoning sacrifice for my sin" (Galatians 2:20). When, through this spirit of revelation I see the cost of the sacrifice and the personal nature of it (for me!), I also see that God loves me in spite of the state of my heart. For me this is the saving grace.

This revelation of His love is so much more than a rational understanding of the fact that He loves us, it is to know His love in the three ways that I discussed in the previous post. That is that the revelation of His love comes, yes through an intellectual understanding that He does, but it also comes by the Spirit (who testifies with our spirit that we are the children of God Romans 8:16) and by experience, as the love of God is poured out in our hearts (Romans 5: 5). This tangible revelation of His Love is meant to comfort our hearts, to strengthen our hearts, to bring peace and security, and to equip us to be all that we can be in Him. The heart of the matter, is the heart!

Knowing and experiencing the unconditional love of the Father enables me to get honest with myself, and creates a safe place with Him where He can enlighten the eyes of my heart without destroying me. In the safety of His unconditional love I can increasingly bear the truth about my incompleteness and know that just as a loving earthly parent loves his or her child even when they have done wrong, so He continue to love me even in my imperfections. In the security of this love I can allow Him to deal with what needs to be dealt with in my life, and so be transformed by the enlightening of my heart. Truly the heart of the matter, is the heart

Needed: a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him

The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Ephesians (perhaps the most mature Church in the New Testament) prays that God would give them a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. That he would think this was necessary for the mature church speaks volumes of how much it is needed today. But exactly what is he praying for?

In the secular West our view of what we know is primarily about logic and reason. Certainly reason is important since we are told to love the Lord with all our mind, but it is not the totality of how we know. In fact there is a “trinity” of ways we know. So yes, we know by reason, but we also know also by intuition and experience. Perhaps we learn to trust only by experience.

Regarding intuition, Einstein tells of how he discovered the theory of relativity laying on a grassy grassy bank gazing at a sunbeam through half closed eyes and wondering what it would be like to ride on a beam of light, when the theory of relativity came to him intuitively. He goes on to say that he then went to his laboratory and proved it. Notice the relationship here between the rational and the intuitive. On the one hand, it was not by a series of logical steps that he arrived at his conclusion, on the other he needed the logical steps in order to prove his theory. What I am trying to say here, is that the three ways of knowing are not independent, they intricately interconnected, they are a trinity.

By analogy we know a person by words, by that persons' spirit (the intuitive aspect), and what we experience of him or her at a sensory level. Knowing their words is obvious, the spirit perhaps less so. A person with a spirit of negativity is perhaps the easiest to discern. It is, for example, easy to spot a spirit of bitterness, or anger, or greed, or arrogance. Less obvious perhaps is a gentle spirit, a spirit of humility or of trustworthiness. We are talking here about the character (good or bad) of the person we are encountering, and we often discern these things first through our feelings, our senses.

The Scriptures tell us that the mature have their senses exercised to discern between good and evil (Hebrews 5:14). That they do need to be exercised is clear. It is not innate, it is something we learn, something we grow into. We can start with noticing the tension in the air that we feel when someone is angry or someone is trying to manipulate us. Jesus often sensed what was happening in the natural. He was given words of wisdom and words of knowledge (1 Corinthians 12:8). We too can access these things, and many times they come through our senses, by what we feel.

Applying all this to what Paul is praying, we see we need to know God in this way, through His Word (the Bible), through His Spirit (manifesting His character through His faithfulness, mercy justice etc., etc.) and through encounter where, for example, we feel the love of God poured out into our hearts by the same Spirit (Romans 5:5). We all need more and more of this. It is in and through such encounters that we loose the orphan spirit that permeates so much of our culture. To use a secular turn of phrase, we need to have our love deficit cancelled by allowing God to fill up our “love tanks.”

Without such encounters we will likely continue to seek love or fulfillment in all the wrong places, through our various addictions be it substance abuse or perfectionism or Workaholism etc. And this is where the spirit of wisdom comes in. We need the spirit of wisdom to unveil our wrong beliefs. I remember a friend (who has given me permission to share his journey) who was convinced that he was a looser. It was what he experienced and continued to experience though self fulfilling prophecy with his confidence level at zero. During one of our sessions the Lord gave him a word of wisdom for himself. He suddenly blurted out “This belief is evil isn't it?” It was the last thing on my mind, but I immediately knew it was true and of the Lord, and this revelation allowed him to repent of believing it, and to start to recover a sense of worth and confidence in his (awesome actually) abilities.

So then we need a spirit of revelation to know Him, and how much He loves us, and we also need the spirit of wisdom to know what of our ungodly beliefs are currently keeping us from a deeper relationship with Him. We need to pray this prayer (I do) for ourselves and those we love.