Waiting - Part 3

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, PATIENCE, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. - Galatians 5:22-23

"Lord, I pray for patience. And please give it to me NOW!" - Christian prayer

:)

I believe that as Christians, our spirits have been born again (1 Peter 1:23) - made into brand new creations (2 Cor 5:17). We've become partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). We've been joined together with God (1 Cor 6:17). Christ is in us (Col 1:27) and we are in Him (1 John 4:13). We are complete in Him (Col 2:10). He has perfected us forever (Heb 10:14). This is good news! It's the reality of who we are in Him, and it's all due to His loving kindness and grace. Again, I believe this is the truth about our spirits. "God... made us alive together with Christ... and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (Eph 2:5-6).

I believe it's a different story with our souls. What I mean is, although our spirits have been made new creations and are complete and perfected, and have become partakers of the divine nature, there is still a daily sanctifying work of grace going on in our souls (our mind, our will, our emotions, etc). I can tell you for certain that my will does not always line up with that of the Spirit. My emotions do not always reflect the truth of who I have become spiritually in Christ. My thoughts vary from moment to moment. Put simply, one moment I can be thinking pure, holy thoughts and the next moment I can be lost in impure, ungodly thoughts. Happy one moment, sad the next. Trustful one moment, doubting the next. And so on.

But yet in this soul-life, through the daily, ongoing work of the Holy Spirit, I'm growing. And to get specifically to the topic of this post, this growing process isn't instantaneous! A lot of waiting is involved. Since we are joined with God spiritually and have become a partaker of His divine nature, our natural desire when we realize that in our souls (minds, wills, emotions) we're not patient with our spouse, our children, our parents, our friends, our coworkers, ourselves (or on a bigger scale the overall development of our own personal life stories), is to become more patient. And since we're impatient in learning patience, we wish God would simply snap His fingers and make us patient!

Of course it doesn't work that way. Patience, along with all the other fruit that comes out of an ongoing relationship with the Holy Spirit, takes time. It's not instantaneous. There's a process going on, and I think that most of the time we don't even understand all that God is doing in and through us to bear His fruit. I do believe there are times when we're given revelations and insight about what He's doing, and those are wonderful times, but we generally don't see the bigger picture. However, in all of this we've been given a gift that I believe can and should help to melt away all the doubt and uncertainty when we don't see. That gift is faith.

I wholeheartedly believe that faith truly is a gift, and not something that we can earn or muster up by ourselves, and yet there is yet a growing process involved in learning to walk in faith. To walk in faith is to know that there is a bigger picture, even though we can't see it. It's to know that God is at work in us, to will and to do according to His good pleasure (Phil 2:13), even when we don't sense what He is doing. There is a growing process involved in which you "let your roots grow down into him (Jesus) and draw up nourishment from him, so you will grow in faith, strong and vigorous in the truth you were taught" (Col 2:7 NLT).

Growth by its very nature is not quick or instantaneous, so it naturally involves patience ("long-suffering"). Patience involves waiting. Waiting expectantly requires faith. Faith requires believing what you don't see, but again it's a gift and it simply means that you are believing and trusting in the One through Whom all things were created - the One who is before all things and in Whom all things consist! (see Col 1:16-18). It's a well-placed trust, no?

More on "the heart"

Once again I was responding to someone's comments (this time Aida's comments on The heart post from earlier today), and I found my comments becoming longer than what I had planned. :) And that's a good thing, because this is some good stuff to be discussing. So anyway, again instead of typing it all in the comments of that post, my comments have become this new post.

Without getting too deep into definitions, I'll just say that my understanding is that "heart" can have more than one meaning, and our one word in English can come from more than one Hebrew word or Greek word.

But apart from looking at the original language, we can also see the meaning of each instance of the English word according to its context. I'm by no means an expert here, but I'll just break down two particular meanings of the word. One is "spiritual" and one is "soulful."

Spiritual
God says in Ezekiel 36:26, "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh." Also, both Hebrews 8:10 and 10:16 quote from Jeremiah 31, in which God says, "I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts..."

In these cases, my understanding is that the "heart" here has to do with our spirits. One reason I think that is because Rom 2:29 says that "circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter" and 2 Cor 3:3 says, "clearly you are an epistle of Christ...written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart."

We have been given a new heart (in our spirit) that is a heart of flesh and not stone, and that has the law of God written on it. This is God's doing, obviously not a result of anything we've done, or do, or will do or not do. This "heart" doesn't fluctuate, but has the requirements of the law fulfilled in it, and loves the law of God, because this heart is holy and the law is holy. As opposed to the deceitfully wicked heart that we once had, this heart is pure and clean.

Soulful
There are many, many scriptures that speak of the "heart" in a different way than the above scriptures. I believe the above scriptures represent an entirely different meaning than the following instances of the word "heart."

Rom 9:2 "I tell the truth in Christ... that I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart..." (Paul was grieving for his brethren, the Israelites).

2 Cor 4:16 "Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day."

2 Cor 9:7 "So let each on give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity, for God loves a cheerful giver."

One of my favorites, Heb 13:9 "For it is good that the heart be established by grace."

Do you notice the difference between the "spiritual" heart that is fully and completely established in God's Spirit (the heart referred to by "I will give you a new heart"), and the "soulful" heart that has feelings, thoughts and emotions that fluctuate and that needs to grow and become established in grace?

I hope this provides food for thought, and I know the process of processing the truth always continues in each of us! Thoughts anyone?

The heart

This blog post is by no means a deep, exegetical explanation of "the heart." I was responding to a comment made by Lydia in my last post (All of life is spiritual - Video blog), and I found my comment was getting longer than I thought it would, so I decided to just make it into its own blog post. This way, too, if anyone happens to have any comments on this particular issue, it can sort of have it's own section on this blog.

I think the heart is one of the many parts, or "attributes," of our soul. Speaking in generalities, we would say that the soul is made up of the mind, will and emotions. I would say that "the heart" is included in this. "Believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead... for it is with your heart that you believe and are justified..." (from Rom 10:9-10).

So one thing the heart does is to believe. For example, with the heart we either believe or reject the truth. The heart can trust, or not trust. It is with the heart that we believe, and it is our spirit that then becomes a new creation.

The heart is the place where we as Christians need to be settled in truth that we are not condemned. The truth is that we are not condemned. However, look at what John says. "For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart , and knows all things. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence toward God." (1 John 3:20-21).

We can intellectually (with our mind) know what the Bible says ("there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus"), but yet in our hearts, even though we intellectually know the truth, we may still wrestle with that truth. Our hearts may condemn us if our hearts are not settled in the truth of who we truly are in our spirits - born again, a new creation, one spirit with God, the righteousness of God, etc. Even though God does not condemn us at all, not even an ounce, if our confidence is not "toward God," then we may feel condemned in our hearts.

Again, this is not a deep study by any means. It's simply the thoughts that came to mind as I thought about Lydia's comments, and I welcome your thoughts!

All of life is spiritual - Video Blog

I started on this post about 10 days ago (Feb 2), but I just couldn't quite get it right as I typed it out, so I thought I'd try something different... a video blog post! This went longer than I thought it would - the total is about 11 minutes. I didn't realize that youtube has a limit on the length of videos, so I broke it up into two parts. Lemme know what ya think.

Part 1


Part 2