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Recovery of the Heart
If an unguarded heart is what sets us up for an affair, the best
defense against an affair is to guard our heart. This will free
us to live wholeheartedly in a romance of epic proportions. Paul
expressed this wholehearted living when he wrote:
I eagerly expect and hope that I will
in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now
as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or
by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain (Phil.
1:20-21).
To live wholeheartedly
means to live redemptively. It is to enter each day courageously with
eager anticipation for what God will do in and through us because
of our confidence in being caught up in the most passionate love story
of all time—the story of redemption.
But wholehearted living puts us in touch with our hurt in this world
and our hunger for heaven. Paul described the inescapable tension
of wholehearted living as inwardly groaning in a painful world we
cannot escape while eagerly anticipating our eternal home which we
cannot create (Rom. 8:23).
Oswald Chambers recognized that the only way to silence our demand
for heaven now is to wholeheartedly embrace life with the full knowledge
that "there is only one Being who can satisfy the last aching abyss
of the human heart, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ." The psalmist
stated it this way: "Whom have I in heaven but You? And earth has
nothing I desire besides You" (Ps. 73:25).
When our hearts are enraptured by the love of our God who would sacrifice
all for us, then His request of us to love others the way He has loved
us becomes a delight and not merely a duty. His perfect love casts
out our fear of loving (1 Jn. 4:11,18) and opens our hearts to redemptive
living, which can triumph over the most heart-deadening of betrayals—an
affair.
Few things have more power to entice others to wholehearted living
than the stories of God's redemptive work in the lives of His people.
Our stories of tragedy and triumph, suffering and celebration are
small parts of God's larger story. So sharing our stories is crucial
to building a community of faith that remembers how God worked in
the past, of hope that dreams of what He will yet do in the future,
and of love that moves with confidence and courage to redeem the present
in the face of evil (Eph. 5:16).
So share your stories.
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Managing Editor:Dean Ohlman
Cover Photo: Terry Bidgood
©2000
RBC Ministries —Grand Rapids, MI 49555 Printed in USA
Used with permission.
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