The Heart of Love by Amber

 Love and heart have captured my attention lately.

It started several days ago when I heard that perfect love casts out fear.

This got me curious about love, so I started looking into it. The verses that struck me were found in John, and they stated “whoso keepeth His word, in him verily is the love of God perfected; hereby know we that we are in Him”.

And: “If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and His love is perfected in us”.

I found it very interesting that it’s by loving that love is perfected.

I think in my mind perfect love always came with fireworks and possibly a package deal of perfection all around, but it’s starting to look like it must be practiced to be perfected.

This led me to a new question: what does our heart have to do with love anyway? Why does love create a feeling in our heart?

It didn’t make much sense if I thought about it, but I knew there must be something to the fact that a heart shape is used as a symbol of love around the world.

So this was the next thing I began searching for, and a very interesting article turned up.

Entitled “Emotions And The Heart”, in the article, scientists explained that they used to think that love was just a mental state.

But they now know that love and other emotions originate in the heart, and that our heart sends way more information to our brain than our brain ever does to our heart.

Emotions like anger, frustration, anxiety and insecurity stress the body and drain our energy, causing our heart to beat erratically, constricting blood vessels, raising blood pressure, and weakening our immune system.

People that frequently experience these feelings, or spirits, are at much greater risk for heart diseases and attacks.

Conversely, experiencing love, appreciation, care and compassion produce a very different heart rhythm.

Your heart pattern smooths out, like gently rolling hills. Your blood vessels open and your body begins to work harmoniously.

This produces the warm feeling around your heart, a signal that it feels good and is working as it should.

It literally makes you healthier.

All this was very profound to me, the physical manifestation of the spirit realm.

I had just been wondering this:

Why was it that love was so hard for people to grasp; why, when we come from the very foundation of love, can it be so difficult to receive or even comprehend?

I realized this is because Adam and Eve sold our soul to the devil all those years ago.

When Christ died he broke that curse and made the way, but our soul still lives under that curse.

Our heart is God’s, and even our heart has dominion over our brain.

Our spirit is stronger than our soul.

And yet we have the choice whether or not to allow our soulish, normal, every day feelings dominate us.

It is mind boggling that where you are at in your spirit or feelings can affect you so physically.

You would never suspect something like an emotion to have such physical substance, but it really does. This must be why giving up can lead to a stilled heartbeat so quickly.

It is at once heartbreaking and profound.

How to Be Somebody

 

Do you feel like a loser?

Do you feel like you’re never quite good enough, and you’re always surrounded by people who can show you up?

Let me share a secret with you. 

You don’t need a college degree or a certain amount of money to make it in life. You don’t even need a big fancy house.

The fourth chapter of Luke tells about how Jesus was called to Jairus’ house to heal Jairus’ sick daughter. On the way there, Jesus was thronged with people, young and old. The high priests could have well been there, who were considered the leaders in Jerusalem.

Some centurions, the high ranking guards in the Roman empire, could have even been around Jesus around the time.

Jesus didn’t pay attention to any of them. Even though they were right there, brushing by him, even well respected and perhaps people of prominence,

Jesus didn’t see them. Until, suddenly, everything stopped.

“Who touched me?” Jesus asked.

His disciples stared at him. “Master, the multitudes throng You and press You, and You suddenly want to know who touched you?”

“Somebody,” Jesus said. “Somebody has touched Me.”

It didn’t matter how much money one of them had in their bank account or how many men were under their command.

It didn’t matter how good they were at basketball or football or how skilled they were.

It didn’t matter how high some of those ranked on their SAT tests or how many PhD’s they had.

It didn’t even matter what car they drove or what kind of career path they held or what generation their phone was.

It didn’t matter how attractive they were or their spouse was, or even how good their personal hygiene was.

None of those were qualifications to becoming ‘somebody’ to Jesus.

What was it?

How did one person in those multitudes of people become a standout?

One woman, in a desperate, broken, hopeless place, ripped off by the medical industry, reaching the end of her rope, in one moment, chose to do something completely remarkable.

She chose to believe and act on her belief.

And Heaven shook on her behalf.

Her belief stopped everything. Jesus had to respond. He had to.

This woman’s choice to believe catapulted this loser, this reject into becoming a VIP in the kingdom of God.

Personally, when someone tells someone, “you’re a winner!”, I almost reflexively tense up.

That’s because I hate the idea that we grade people as winners or losers based on physical attributes, accomplishments, or abilities.

It feels like we judge how deserving people are of love.

I remember somebody talking to me about a certain restaurant: “You know, only losers work there.”

“Why would you say that?” I asked them. “Why would you judge those people just because of how they look or where they work?”

I know what it feels like to be a loser.

I hate it when other people categorize people as ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ because I’ve spent too much time in the other camp.

But when I heard it the other day, God touched my heart, and said: “No, listen, there are real winners and losers in life.”

In Christ, you are a winner. When you listen and follow God’s will, you line yourself up for God’s blessings.

How did God say it in Deuteronomy 30?

“I set before you a blessing and a curse”.

If you obey God, it commands a blessing. If you choose to turn from God? It commands a curse.

Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God.

Call on the name of the Lord, dare to believe in how much God loves you, boldly approach the throne room, and become a “somebody” in the eternal kingdom of God!

Don’t Fence Me In!

Do you wonder why it’s hard to connect to God? Do you feel limited in receiving God’s blessings? You might have fenced Him out and not even known it!

Someone described it to me once: “o-ffense” is literally “a fence”.

Except offense doesn’t work as advertised.

It doesn’t fence the bad things out. It just fences us in.

A month or so again, I went through a situation with someone. It wasn’t pleasant.

I wouldn’t say: “oh, I’m mad at that person.” But later I kept thinking about the situation, and I kept thinking: “well, she’s sure going to have to answer for that sometime. I’ll make sure I bring it up to her.”

“You’re taking on offense towards that person,” I heard a familiar still, small Voice say.

“No, I’m not,” I said, justifying myself. “I’m just aware this person is going to reap the consequences in one way or another.”

“No, you’re offended,” the still, small Voice persisted.

It should’ve been tell-tale sign that I was calculating the emotional debt this person was racking up(“she’s sure going to have to answer for that sometime”.)

That’s a surefire way of discerning offense.

Offense always keeps an IOU--or, rather, UOme.

Later on, however, something happened that confirmed what God was speaking. She asked me for help, and I didn’t even want to respond. I didn’t even want to see her.

Finally, that feeling was the second set of symptoms that clued me in. I realized then I had let in a spirit of offense.

I promptly repented to the Lord for it and let it go.

Now, I actually can’t remember what that horrible thing was she said or did.

It doesn’t matter, and I’m glad I don’t know. I don’t want to remember.

What we consider little in this carnal realm is, more often than not, large in the Kingdom of Heaven.

These “debts” we hold over people’s heads and petty offenses are far more destructive than we could imagine.

I’m sure you’ve heard God can forgive your sins. However, Matthew 6:14 says: “if”.

God’s heart is always for “giving”(that’s the meaning of forgiveness). But our actions can put us outside of receiving His forgiveness.

“If you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses,” Matthew 6:14 says.

In Matthew 18, there’s a story about a slave who owed 10,000 talents, which someone told me is worth about ten million today! I don’t know if the slave had a gambling problem or really bad investment advice.

But basically he lost his shirt, and it was impossible for him to repay it.

However, the king had compassion on the man, and forgave him the monstrous sum.

But immediately, that slave went out and found one of the fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii, and he seized him and began to choke him, saying, “pay back what you owe”.

His buddy entreated him, and begged him to have patience with him, but the man wouldn’t.

He threw his friend in prison.

Someone said his friend’s hundred denarii is equal to $18 dollars today. So after being forgiven ten million dollars, he comes down hard on his friend for $18 bucks.

The king was furious when he heard of it. He promptly handed his slave over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed.

Here again, in Matthew, Jesus reiterates:

“So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if you from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespass”.

A woman, a Christian, in the ministry, had an offense against her mother-in-law.

Her and her husband had also adopted a child who had developed epileptic seizures. The doctor said it was the most severe case he had ever witnessed.

This woman knew God could heal her child.

She even had witnessed many miraculous healings. However, her child kept getting afflicted, and this woman couldn’t understand why.

The seizures kept coming. Finally she reached out to a man of God who had seen God heal many people through his hand, and she asked the man of God to pray over her child.

This man was staying in a hotel nearby at the time. When he got the call, he got into the car with his wife to drive over there, but as he did, he heard God speak to him in an audible voice.

“Don’t pray for the child. Don’t lay your hand on the child. Say to the mother: ‘under the old covenant, I said to Israel, walk in my statutes, keep my commandments, do what is right in My eyes, and I’ll take sickness away from the midst of you, and the number of days you’ll fulfill’.”

“Now under the new covenant I’ve commanded you to walk in love. Under this new covenant, I will take sickness away as well. So say to the mother: ‘tell Satan, get your hands off my child. I’m walking in love.’ “

When the man of God got to the mother’s house, he spoke what God had commanded him. Before he had barely finished speaking, the mother responded, pointing at the child going into another epileptic seizure.

Immediately, the child recovered, and the epileptic seizures never returned.

Offense can mask itself as an angel of light. Someone told me recently: “well, I learned I can’t trust anyone. I’ve gone through things and been burnt.”

It almost sounded like discernment–which is a gift from God. But it wasn’t.

A few years ago, I got offended with a woman, Sally the Terrible.

I felt she had betrayed my trust by leading me astray. Again: I would not have said at the time, “oh, I’m mad at Sally”.

Instead, I said, “I just can’t trust her anymore. I’ve been burnt.”

Offense masked itself as discernment, and I didn’t realize how that deadly beast wormed in until a few months later when I was forced to work with Sally.

Because I hadn’t dealt with offense properly months ago when it first wanted to sink its claws in, now I felt I had a monster. That monster wasn’t Sally the Terrible. That monster was offense.

“This thing has gotten bigger than me,” I realized, almost panicking. “This offense could rob what God has been doing and poison my inner man. Sally the Terrible isn’t toxic. This offense is.”

God says: “take every thought captive”. But when I went to rise up to take the offense captive, I felt offense had captured me. I needed help.

When battling for freedom in my heart, I’ve learned it’s helpful to reach out for a comrade in the Lord.

But who could help me?

The only person in the vicinity was the worst person in the world.

Sally.

(By the way, that’s not an actual picture of Sally. That’s an AI generated picture based off my mental picture of Sally during this time.)

The thing was...despite Sally the Terrible being obviously terrible and all, I also knew her under another name: Sally, daughter of the most high God.

My inner freedom was a battle worth fighting for.

So I did the hard thing.

“I need help,” I told her. “Offense towards you is wanting to steal my peace and joy.

“Could you pray with me to help me break it?”

By the time we were done praying, my vision cleared and God showed me the truth.

Sally hadn’t used the most wisdom in that long ago situation, but I was far more to blame than I admitted.

There had been a check in my spirit, a “stop” that I had overridden. God had been trying to guide, but I had resisted because I wanted to do it differently.

When I realized my part of it much more clearly, it changed everything.

In other words, I was no victim.

God set me free.

Petra’s old classic song: “Don’t Let Your Heart Be Hardened” keeps speaking to me lately.

“Don’t let your love grow cold. May it always stay so childlike,” it says.

I beg of you, take down your fences.

I don’t care how big or small your offenses seem to you. The spirit of offense is demonic, black as the night, straight from hell, pure poison.

I don’t care what dosage you’re taking. It will destroy you.

The kingdom of God is in joy and peace in the Holy Ghost.

Keep your heart open to receive from the Lord.