Do you know the Heart Reader?
Having just walked in the door of our home from three weeks away we received a phone call to meet an ambulance at the hospital carrying my 95 year old father. He was experiencing severe chest pain and tightness, symptomatic of a heart attack. Subsequent blood tests were negative for a heart attack, but the nuclear dye tests of the arteries in the heart indicated an abnormality. The next step calls for a heart catheterization, however being 95, the cardiologists say this is probably too great a risk at his age. So we cannot know for certain what is going on inside his heart without the heart cath.
This is true in all cases for every person when it concerns their spiritual center, the heart. No one knows another’s true heart condition other than possibly the person’s own spirit and God who made it. We have no capacity to peer inside and fully read the condition of another’s heart. Even a person’s own spirit does not fully understand or appreciate the unvarnished reading of his heart. This is exactly what the Word of God reveals to us on the matter. He alone knows our hearts, and the hearts of those we love, and indeed the hearts of all mankind.
How often have you experienced the complete shock of someone you thought you knew so well doing something you never ever expected in a million years? A close friend, even a near companion, becoming a total stranger? Or some words come from your child’s mouth, and in horror you say, where did that come from? It is not rare for some people to profess a particular set of beliefs for even a long time, and one day say they do not believe that anymore and consequently accompany it with behavior the opposite of all they had once held dear. You might say, “Did I really ever know them? This is not a comfortable frame of mind for any one of us; to think this could happen with someone so close. In fact, it is diabolically scary.
Is it something you fear happening? Or are you confident this will never happen to you or someone near you? It is not very healthy to live with a constant fear that something like this may happen. Nor is it healthy to be destroyed by it if and when it does. So how should you live now when you do not have the ability to perfectly and fully read another’s heart? Your only course to confidence is to know more intimately the Reader of every heart, and trust in this, that He alone knows the heart of the one you love better and more fully than you ever can. Together you can make it your mutual goal to assist one another in the same pursuit; knowing well the Reader of the heart. If you know your spouse, child, parent, or friend is truly engaged in pursuing the knowledge and love of Him whom to know is life eternal, your confidence can be made more sure that He will keep you both from falling and one day present you faultless before His throne. Yet your greatest confidence must always rest in the One in whom your own salvation rests. You can never put another in His place, for then your confidence will surely be shaken and you will experience disappointment.
Knowing God is also to know the deceitfulness of sin. . .in yourself and others. You should not be surprised by it, nor destroyed by it, if you are fully acquainted with its antidote and regularly apply it to your heart. This is never an over and done with proposition, but the Bible says as often as you sin, and you will, knowing the reality of sin’s persistence and your proclivity to engage in it, you must confess your sins and flee frequently to Jesus for pardon; over and over again. This is the everyday schedule of healthy spiritual life!
Whether or not there are blockages in my father’s physical heart, it is something that just may not be humanly possible to fix at his advanced age. But there is always hope for the spiritual heart no matter the age in each one, and this is infinitely more important! Only One can fix yours; the One who alone absolutely knows it.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
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