“I know that I can trust God,
but…” I have heard others say it and I
say it myself, at the same time realizing that I am much like my children when
I tell them I want them to do something (e.g., take the trash out). Their immediate response is, “I knowww
(exaggerated response here with tone of disgust),” and then it doesn’t get
done. I wonder if it annoys God as much
as it does me.
However,
we would be amiss if we fail to nurture our heart relationship with God. Several times in Scripture we are told to “love the Lord
your God with all your heart (heart is always first), mind, strength and soul.” As Robert Mulholland suggests, we need
to respond to what we read in Scripture with our heart and spirit rather than only
with our “rational, cognitive, intellectual faculties (“Shaped by the Word”).” In my book (“Here’s My Heart, Lord”) I argue
that while God initiates, we are called to respond to God’s heart with our own.
Tohoyiko Kagawa writes, “Love alone introduces God to me. Love is my sanctuary…I have my sanctuary everywhere I go in the universe. Where Love is, there God is…Love is the ultimate religion. Classify me not by creed: I belong to nothing but Love.”
I know I can trust God, but I
get stuck when I am confronted with trusting God beyond what I am able to
see. Alice Fryling speaks of “moving
from the head down to the heart.” It
doesn’t mean I leave my mind out of the picture and trust only in my
feelings. It does mean, as Fryling
states, “moving from theoretical knowledge to actual experience (“Seeking God
Together”).”
I understand that God has given me a rational mind to
use, the ability to predict, plan, and process information as needed. Paul writes in I Cor. 2, after exposing the
futility of the world’s knowledge, that we have received “the Spirit that is
from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God…spiritual
truths.” These are things that can only
be spiritually discerned, according to Paul, for “we have the mind of Christ.”
However,
we would be amiss if we fail to nurture our heart relationship with God. Several times in Scripture we are told to “love the Lord
your God with all your heart (heart is always first), mind, strength and soul.” As Robert Mulholland suggests, we need
to respond to what we read in Scripture with our heart and spirit rather than only
with our “rational, cognitive, intellectual faculties (“Shaped by the Word”).” In my book (“Here’s My Heart, Lord”) I argue
that while God initiates, we are called to respond to God’s heart with our own.
Tohoyiko Kagawa writes, “Love alone introduces God to me. Love is my sanctuary…I have my sanctuary everywhere I go in the universe. Where Love is, there God is…Love is the ultimate religion. Classify me not by creed: I belong to nothing but Love.”
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