The Heart

Good morning and welcome to another week of church here at the Bridge. I am so glad that we are able to join together and worship together this morning.

Let us pray together

Growing up i remember anytime we were on long car trips we would listen to a variety of things in the van as we traveled to see family or for a vacation. Now this of course was before the time of phones, dvd player and other devices in cars so we had to find ways to entertain ourselves for hours at a time in a small space. I remember riding in the van with the bench seats and i would be laying on the floor unbuckled my sister or brother on the bench above me and my other two siblings in the back row doing the same thing. It is amazing how many books you can get read in a car when you have 8 or more hours with not much else to do.

Like i said i remember though that some times we would play other things to help us pass the time like tapes of adventures in odyssey or sometimes my dad would throw in a tape of a Mark Lowry show. I look back and i remember them making me laugh even then but i go back and watch the videos of him performing on you tube and i realize now how many of the jokes he would make about our faith just flew right over my head because I was a kid. Yet, i remember listening to it and laughing because he was funny. I remember one sketch that he did was around the seat of the emotions.

Seat of the Emotions

This sketch stood out to me because he talked about open heart surgery and him watching this on the discovery channel. You know when the discovery channel was more about education than entertainment. I won’t try to recreate the who story but i remember his bit because he talked about the seat of the emotions and how in our western culture it is the heart. We use our heart to express our feelings of love. He talked about in other cultures, in some other language some guy somewhere could be saying to his girl.

“Baby, I love you with both my Kidneys” or “Baby, You make my liver quiver”

He also talked about in the Old testament the seat of the emotions was the bowels. So when the bible says they were “moved” you can only imagine where they were being moved too. Its this funny and interesting bit about where we talk about where we focus our emotions. So this morning let’st talk some more about the heart.

Turn with me to 1 John 3 It is amazing that John 3:16 is one of the most famous verses in the bible and this is what 1 John 3:16 says.

1 John 3:16–24 NIV

16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. 17 If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. 19 This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: 20 If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. 21 Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God 22 and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. 23 And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. 24 The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.

Actions and Words

Reading this passage we have to begin with the obvious. Our actions are important. We talked about this last week. Words can not be the only source of our faith we must remember that our actions speak loudly and this passage helps remind us of that. We have the example in verse 16 the power of what Jesus did for us on the cross and that fact that it in turn reminds us that we are to have the same humility that Christ had for us and we are to lay our lives down on the cross for our brothers and sisters. This life of sacrifice is a part of our faith. Yet, there is one crucial thing that we must remember with this though.

“The Surrendered life is not done to earn merit with God but to express gratitude for God”

We must always remember that these actions are not done to make us feel good or to help us earn brownie points with God. No these things are done because we want to express our gratitude to God for what Jesus did on the cross for us.

These first couple verses remind us that this life as a Christian is about our actions and our words that they must work in tandem.

1 John 3:18 NIV

18 Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

That’s why we have verses like this to keep that at our for front. To remember its about action and truth.

It is at this point we read the rest of the passage and see what else God has for us this morning.

1 John 3:19–24 NIV

19 This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: 20 If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. 21 Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God 22 and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. 23 And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. 24 The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.

Our Hearts at rest

Verse 19 helps us to see that we find rest for our hearts when we live a life that is marked by action and truth. It is here that we find rest because we are at a place we can know that we are serving him. It is only an active faith that allows us to find rest.

I thought about this long and hard. I mean really think about that for a moment.

When do we find the most peace with God?

I thought long and hard about this question. The reality is that we find the most peace with God when we are being active participants in our faith. I think of times when i was helping people or when i am actively trying to share the message of hope and it is then that i find peace and confidence that i know i am a follower of God. If i am really honest i get this feeling every Sunday morning when i preach. It i in these moments i know that i am serving and that i am trying to do what i felt God has called me to.

Yet, at times I do not have this same peace or comfort through the week when i am living my everyday life. It had me thinking about that long and hard this week because there is a part of me that wonders why that is? Why do we struggle with the parts of our lives when we are just living and it doesn’t feel like we are directly serving God?

I think we struggle with this because we read passages like this next part that make us question.

1 John 3:20 NIV

20 If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.

The Heart Condemns

We read passages like this and we get focused in on that idea that the heart condemns us when we aren’t living the way we should be. We read this passage and see a God who is sitting on a throne and is casting judgement because he knows everything. It is a heavy burden and if i am honest it makes us think of anything other than loving God. This idea of standing in front of God we are captured by the darkest thoughts that he knows every dark or horrible thing we have done.

This idea is what weighs heavy on so many of us. We feel condemned and don’t know how we can possible deserve to enter into his presence. If we are really honest this is the things that keep many people up at night who are struggling with their relationship with God.

I thought about these responses and I realized we have two responses that can come from this. We can view this position as defeat and we can give up trying to better ourselves. We can see this as something that we can never measure up to so why try. Or we can see these passages as opportunity to see where God is working in our lives are realize that we have work to be done to be better that we want to stand before God and be confident in where our heart has been by serving and loving others.

For all of this though i think there is a second way to read this passage that we can not over look...

The Heart Reveals

We read passages like this and we only see the bad. We forget the first verse we read today.

1 John 3:16 NIV

16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.

or verses like this

John 3:16 NIV

16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

or this

Philippians 2:5–8 NIV

5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: 6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; 7 rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!

The Heart Reveals

we forget that God knows the heart and that also means he sees our intentions and he sees when we are trying and when we are doing good. He doesn’t only look for the Bad he also sees the Good. WE can’t forget that despite all the bad that may be in our heart or the points that we fail that all we have to do is committe to him and to seek forgiveness and to keep tyring to push towards him that we are in a position of faith. We have so many examples to draw from not only from the scriptures but from real life. I am willing to bet you can talk to parents friends loved ones who are profession Christians and we can find story after story of failure and shortcomings but the faith remains because we know that we serve a God that Sent his son to die on the cross to free us from that sin. We do not have to be entangled by it any more.

The Heart Reveals God’s love for us.

The Christian life is: Interesting

I shared earlier about Mark Lowry and hi bit about the seat of the emotions. This funny moment of his show was all leading up to the fact that we talk about the fact that Jesus wants to enter into our heart. Now of course we know that isn’t a literal idea. Jesus doesn’t want to get in there and watch blood go by. He wants though to be at the center of our emotions and our thoughts and our actions. Mark than talks about the fact that the Christian life is marked by these moments of emotion (Rolling hills). He talks about the fact that many people will describe the Christian life as all peaches and cream its the best thing every. That is because we think of the Highs and we don’t want to share the lows. It is in the Highs we glorify God and its in the Lows we cry out God save me. Yet, we have to keep the focus on God.

I love the way Lowry describes the Christian life though. It is…Interesting.

Our hearts our emotions are an important part of who we are and there is not promise that these things will suddenly be perfect. The Chrisitan life is interesting because at the end of the day we have to look at our life and we have to examine who we are and we have to Look to God and know that he knows everything about us good and bad and we have to be confident that we can stand before him knowing that if we are trying to serve him we are doing what he asked for. All he asks is for us to believe and to then try. To try to live a life in pursuit of holiness. I life in pursuit of bettering our selves. We wont’ be perfect along the way but as we go through the good and the bad we have to always remember to keep him at the center of our focus.

Let us Pray.