Heart – Hebrew = Levav or Lev
Det 6: 4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”
In Hebrew culture, the heart is an organ, but it is also linked with our brain. But when the Bible was written there was no word or concept about the brain. Or the understanding of how the brain works. In Hebrew culture they thought that all our feelings and intellectual affections came from the heart.
Today we can relate with this teaching because in our body we have the sensations, I mean feelings in some organs. Like head, muscles, heart, belly. For ex; we shake when we are nervous, we have a headache when we are tense, we say my heart is racing, aching, light, full, heavy, in love, broken, and different other sensations in our body related with our heart, also with our belly, stomach- we say we have butterflies in our stomach or that we have a gut feeling about something.
Let’s go back to our heart.
I want to teach you today about your heart and how to love God.
First of all, we need to understand the different meanings of the word heart in the bible. It is very important for us to have this knowledge. As readers of the Bible which comes from a very ancient culture, we need to be able to get what is the culture of the people of God, the Hebrews, the Jews.
We can see in the book of Proverbs that wisdom dwells in the heart, it is where you can discern between right and wrong. It is where you can think and make sense of the world.
“4 Then he taught me, and he said to me, “Take hold of my words with all your heart; keep my commands, and you will live.
5 Get wisdom, get understanding; do not forget my words or turn away from them.” Proverbs 4:4 and 5
Let’s see in the bible some examples of these four areas:
Thoughts
“Hannah was praying in her heart, and her lips were moving but her voice was not heard. Eli thought she was drunk” 1Samuel 1:13
Physical
1 Samuel 25:36 -38 “Then Abigail went to Nabal, and there he was in his house, holding a feast fit for a king. Nabal’s heart was cheerful, and he was very drunk, so she didn’t say anything to him until morning light.
37 In the morning when Nabal sobered up, his wife told him about these events. His heart died and he became a stone.
37 “Then, after he had sobered up, she told him everything. He suffered a stroke and was completely paralysed.”
38 About ten days later, the Lord struck Nabal dead.”
Emotions
The expression broken heart comes from the ancient biblical Hebrew
1 Samuel 1:15 Ana felt pain in her heart because she couldn’t have children 1 “No, my lord,” Hannah replied. “I am a woman with a broken heart. I haven’t had any wine or beer; I’ve been pouring out my heart before the Lord.”
In your heart You can experience also:
Fear, Distress, Depression and Joy
Jeremiah 15:16 “You spoke to me, and I listened to every word. I belong to you, LORD God Almighty, and so your words filled my heart with joy and happiness.”
Choices (Free will)
The heart is the centre of your life
Proverbs 4:23 “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”
“The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? “I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve.”
Is in our heart that we make choices, and without the work of the Holy Spirit we are going to please our flesh not God.
Jeramiah is saying that our heart is deceitful,is his opining there is no cure.
For us, to love God with all our heart we need to circumcise it.
Deuteronomy 30:6 “The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live.”
We need a pure heart and as we pray, repent and align our heart with Gods word, our life starts to change.
Psalm 51:10 “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”
A heart of soft flesh. This is a promise for those who turn back to God.
Ezekiel 36:26-27 “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.”
How can I soften my heart?
How can I be a man/woman after God’s heart? Acts 13.22
First – Search your heart
Ask God to search your heart. Our God knows our heart- Act 1.24
“And they prayed and said, You, Lord, Who know all hearts (their thoughts, passions, desires, appetites, purposes, and endeavours), indicate to us which one of these two You have chosen”
Be sincere, are you mad with someone else, with yourself?
When we are full of negative thoughts, we can’t love God, we can connect with him, we can pray properly or even read the bible. We can’t concentrate.
Second – Repentance
It starts with searching our heart every day.
Don’t allow fear or bitterness to control your heart
“See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end. As has just been said: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.””
Heb 3: 7-19
7“The Holy Spirit says, “Listen to his voice today.
10 That is why I was angry with them. I said, ‘Their hearts are always going down the wrong path. They have not known my ways.’
12- Brothers and sisters, make sure that none of you has a sinful heart. Do not let an unbelieving heart turn you away from the living God.
13 But build one another up every day. Do it as long as there is still time. Then none of you will become stubborn. You won’t be fooled by sin’s tricks.
14 We belong to Christ if we hold firmly to the faith we had at first. But we must hold to it until the end.
15 It has just been said, “Listen to his voice today. If you hear it, don’t be stubborn. You were stubborn when you opposed me.” (Psalm 95:7,8)
19 So we see that they weren’t able to enter. That’s because they didn’t believe.”
Third – Grow, accept challenges.
Accept challenges – if you want to have a heart like Jesus’ be prepared for the challenges – people that are different from you ( opinion, tastes – like food, family , culture). They are in your life for you to grow in love, to challenge you. It is very easy to love those who are like us, isn’t it ?
Accept discipline – its not only correction, also time management, abandoning of sins, sanctification. Hebrew 12:4-6
“4 In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.
5 And have you completely forgotten this word of encouragement that addresses you as a father addresses his son? It says, “My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you,
6 because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.””
Because I love Marcio, I married him, and I don’t want our love to grow cold.
Because I love my husband, I make choices that are good for our relationship to grow.
Ex:I don’t do anything without his approval, I go to bed at the same time as he goes to be with him, I prepare food that he likes, we talk, we walk together. I don’t do things my own way.
Our hearts are united, and I don’t want to hurt him because I love him
And how about God?
What did he do for me?
He created me
He rescued me
He gave me new life
He gave me hope.
Because of all this goodness I surrender my life to Him, he loved me and I want to love him back. I need to watch my heart.
Is 61: 3
“He wants me to help those in Zion who are filled with sorrow. I will put beautiful crowns on their heads in place of ashes. I will anoint them with oil to give them gladness instead of sorrow. I will give them a spirit of praise in place of a spirit of sadness. They will be like oak trees that are strong and straight. The Lord himself will plant them in the land. That will show how glorious he is.”
If I received from God all of these things, now I am part of his family, I have been adopted.
I need to build this relationship with him. I need to love him.
I need to take care of my heart.
Remember you are called to love God with all your heart and it’s not about emotions. When you see the word heart on the Bible now you know. It’s much more. Your heart is your
Thoughts
Emotions
Physical body
And Choices
Det 6: 4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”
Prayer: Lord today we surrender our heart to you, change it, take away all bitterness, change my stone heart to a flesh one, a soft one. I want to have a teachable heart. Full of love and gratitude.