The Heart of the Matter

UV 2219/10000 The Heart of the Matter
Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD.
Psalm 27 v 14

The heart of the matter is a matter of the heart. The heart is the first organ that is formed in the womb. Though it implies our physical heart, the emotional and spiritual centre of our lives, the inner core consisting of our beliefs, our life goals, our priorities, our attitudes and emotional orientation pump energy and the courage to live to different parts of our lives. When we make our hearts a place of continual worship, prayer, thanksgiving and conversation with the Lord, He will fill it with strength. We need to wait on the Lord in the sense that we look to Him for our provision, our promotion, our vindication, our fulfilment, our protection..

As we wait on the Lord, He will fill us with hope and joy by the power of the Holy Spirit. To wait for the Lord means to place our hope and trust in His word, that He would never fail to fulfil His promises to us. It also means that we walk in integrity and honesty of purpose and action. We expect nothing from anyone else except the Lord. We will not try to “ help God” like Sarah in providing his servant Hagar as a mistress to Abraham, her husband in order to procure an heir. We will not act in haste but be patient. We will look and ask for signs of His favour. We acknowledge that He alone is our shield and our help, our sword of excellency.

Strength and courage are equated and often spoken of together in the scriptures. It implies that our faith and personal relationship with the Lord engenders confidence, a sense of absolute security and endurance in us, knowing that regardless of how long the struggle lasts, in the end we have victory. We look upon ourselves as winners and not whiners and at no point will we grumble or mumble about the hardship we are currently facing. Scripture says, “Guard your heart diligently for out of it are the issues of life.” The heart being the repository of faith in the Lord and the natural heart being deceitful, easily deceived as well as deceiving, it needs to be circumcised or cut by the Spirit of God. The world and its sinful or shortcoming-laden ways need to be separated from our hearts. This can come only with a lot of diligence or careful study and application of the principles embedded in the Word. Once our natural heart is healed or cured or made whole, then love, peace and joy would flow from it like unceasing springs, streams and rivers of the Spirit. The evil crop or evil fruit of our old nature would be replaced by our new nature fruit of the spirit. Emotional stability and emotional dynamism are both a result of spiritual maturity. We are not blown like flotsam and jetsam by every wind or wave of new doctrine or teaching. The spiritual heart touched by Jesus is also a discerning and wise heart, able to distinguish the chaff from the grain.

Prateep V Philip