The Heart. I don’t get it right all the time. Often, the words I write constitute beautifully packaged wisdom, but they don’t show the hard fought, ugly battles through which that wisdom was gained. In real life, I am crippled by fears, sin, and invisible brokenness. There are two versions of me: the version that desires to love the Lord and honor Him daily and the version that is selfish, weak, and susceptible to every kind of wickedness.
I can confidently say I am the most secure of insecure people. I am infinitely secure in my salvation and the Anchor of my hope. The Lord has sealed my soul and lifted my spiritual feet to the high places. Everything else I am – that is Adam’s flesh and Adam’s bone – makes me insecure and mentally broken, full of anxiousness, pride, and isolating darkness.
I see the faces of people I love and watch their journey through life as they search for fulfillment. I hold Truth in my heart but am incapable of speaking Him to them. I wish I could say it comes from holy fear that I will misrepresent who God is in my clumsy endeavor to share His gift and follow His great commission. But that would be a lie. I am more afraid of their rejection. If I tell them that Jesus is the way, I will sound hard and unyielding. So, I keep silent. I don’t love them enough to risk my own pain in order to show them the light of the Everlasting. That is the shard of darkness hidden in my heart of hearts.
Science has discovered the human heart emits a rhythmic, powerful magnetic field that envelops the body and the surrounding space. This “aura” if you will can be detected from several feet away. The magnetic field has the power to influence its immediate vicinity. No wonder the Bible is so concerned with our hearts. Imagine the sickly rhythm a heart beating to the drum of wickedness and sin emits into the surrounding air. I don’t want that to be my heart. Every day God must work to replace my heart of stone with one of flesh.
The Horse. One of my dearest friends has a new mustang. She is young, just three years old and was born in the long term holding corrals of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Wild horses in the western US are captured and managed by this organization. The white brand on each horse’s neck tells when it was born and where.
This horse was born in long term holding, which means that she had never known freedom. Her mother most likely ran wild with a herd before being rounded up by helicopter and funneled into overcrowded pens. Yet, for this young filly, freedom is not something she ever experienced. She didn’t know what she lost because she never had it to begin with. High fences and limited space were all she knew. Imagine her surprise and pleasure at being brought to my friend’s beautiful farm full of wide open, grassy pastures and love. She was suddenly free to run.
Sin is like long term holding for humans. We are born into it because of Adam’s curse. We don’t even know what we’re missing until someone else shows us the way. Jesus is like our loving trainer. When we come to Him, we are shown the vast, surprising liberty that comes with forgiveness and a glimpse of what the world will be like when He returns and makes all things whole and perfect again.
Horses, like humans, have hearts that emit an energy field. Only theirs is much bigger and stronger than ours. It’s so strong in fact, that the horse’s heart rhythm can actually change ours just by being close to them. In addition, horses have a “coherent heart pattern” which is affiliated with increased calm and healthy emotional states. Their hearts literally talk to ours when we are near and make us feel better just by their sheer presence.
The thing about the mustang from long term holding is that her heart remained strong. Our hearts might be marred by sin but God has the power to cleanse us from our unrighteousness and purify our hearts. He can restore our “coherent heart pattern” and bring us close to His own heart. That’s what God wants for us. That’s why Jesus died and rose again for us.
The Breath. I read recently that Biblical scholars have researched God’s name, YHWH. In the Old Testament, Moses asked God His name. God answered, YHWH. We translate this as “I am that I am” in English, which is pretty powerful when you think about it. But, going back to the Hebrew for a moment, the pronunciation of YHWH is literally the sound you make when you inhale and exhale: breathing. Hebrew has consonant sounds that we don’t make in the English language, but when God said His name in Hebrew, He breathed. When God breathed into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life, He breathed His own name. When we say scripture is God-breathed, it IS Him. It is His name, I am who I am. Every breath we take we utter His name aloud. We may resist God, ignore Him, disdain Him, or love Him. No matter what we do though, we breathe Him.
The Laminin. Pastor Louie Giglio describes just how literally all things hold together in Christ. The molecular structure that enables our cells to stick to one another is called laminin. Laminin bears a striking resemblance to a cross. Without it, our bodies would literally fall apart.
So, to recap so far: God knows our hearts. He made them so powerful that hearts can influence one another, even across species through their magnetic rhythm. God’s name is literally the breath of life. God used a cross molecule to glue our bodies together.
The Locus of Control. The Locus of Control Behavior Scale is a tool that psychologists use to evaluate how people perceive themselves. In sum, it looks at whether a person believes the power of control lies within or outside of themselves. The idea is that a “healthy person” has a balance between internal and external loci of control, realizing that some things in life are not within their ability to manage and some things are totally theirs to control. The scale consists of seventeen statements that you rate based on how much you agree or disagree with them. Examples include comments like “luck or chance determine’s one’s future,” “a person can be the master of one’s fate,” “a great deal of what happens to a person is just a matter of chance,” “people are victims of circumstances,” and “being a success is a matter of hard work, luck has little or nothing to do with it.”
The more I studied this scale and worked with it, the more I came to realize the statements you are asked to rate are a poor attempt to measure the truth (or at least what a person believes to be true). Every statement made assumes there is a standard somewhere to be measured against. However, the scale itself ineffectually tries to remove that standard. Fate, chance, luck are all concepts directly contrary to the nature of God, but are placed there in lieu of God.
Luck does not determine the future. God says He knows the plans he has for us, plans to prosper and not harm us, to give us hope and a future. No one can be the master of his own fate. The truth is that many are the plans in a man’s heart, but the Lord’s purpose prevails.
God is the Locus. God is the Control. We can do all things through Him because He gives us the strength. But He also gives us the choice. Just like the wild mustang, we can choose to set God aside and find another locus. Find another answer. We can stay in the pen of sin and long term holding, never to experience the freedom He offers us. We can choose that, but we will still breathe the name of God simply by being. We will still experience the heart rhythms of the creation that God breathed into existence. We will still be held together by cross-shaped molecules, and we will still walk through a world that is really His to control.
I don’t get it right. I am broken and frail. My heart constantly rails against the “coherent rhythm” God wants to place in me so that I am within His perfect will. My mouth doesn’t always uphold the truth of the gospel. My thoughts stray from what is true and noble. My actions and my plans are selfish. And yet, despite all that, God chooses to use me. He chooses to let me breathe His name even when I am at my most ungrateful and disobedient. His grace is sufficient for me, no matter what.
A. A. Wordsmith
Selah Vie! 