Tag: Grief

Love From the Heart

I was led to a passage in Leviticus this morning titled, “Love Your Neighbor as Yourself”. Verse 17 of chapter 19 was the verse that led me here as I continue my study of the word “heart”.

“17You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him.” – Leviticus 19:17 (ESV)

This verse by itself does not speak of love directly. In fact, in the complete passage, including the title, the word love is only used twice. But the concept of love is fully given. Not in the common emotional sense, but in the action sense and that can be seen in the verse above.

Love is often considered soft and fluffy. It is this vision of the caring mother, the doting spouse, the affectionate parent, or the giving neighbor. Where this is love in action, it is also action of love to be frank with others and holding others accountable and not doing doing things that cause others to find grief or hardship and provide some relief.

The verse above tells us to not have hate in our heart. How do we do that, well, we fill our heart with love actions. Author and speaker Jon Gordon writes in his book “The Positive Dog”, “you can’t be stressed and thankful at the same time”a. Where this quote is not specific to love, it does speak to the idea that your heart cannot be full of hate if it is full of love. It is in love that we take action.

Love begins with God and when He fills our heart, we have no room for hate. With God in our heart, we will emit it all around us. No, it will not always be seen as the caring mother, the doting spouse, the affectionate parent, or the giving neighbor. But it will always be to not cause others to find grief or hardship and provide some relief. It all starts with that love from the heart.

What is your view of love and where it comes from? Are you stuck on the emotional side of love? What if you were to fill you heart with God, who is love, and leave no room for hate so that you can bring love to others from your heart?

aGordon, Jon. The Positive Dog. John Wiley & Sons, 2012, p. 18.

The Heart

This morning I am starting a new word study. I am studying the word “heart”. My study process is that I am guided through God’s Word by using the concordance of my Bible. I choose a word that I feel led by Him to focus on and then go through that word in God’s Word verse by verse as noted from the concordance. I allow God to speak to me without looking for anything specific. Sometimes the LORD leads me directly to the word and something He would have me learn or know, and other times it is the passage that teaches me.

“5The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” – Genesis 6:5 (ESV)

I begin this morning in the above verse, which is found in the passage titled, “Increasing Corruption on Earth” in my English Standard Version of God’s Word. We see here that there was evil in the world and that evil was not just in the few, but was overtaking the earth. And that evil was so powerful it had overtaken the hearts of the people. Not just surface evil to get a response or appear to be something in the “right” social circles, but deep within the people and had corrupted their being from the inside.

The time it took for this corruption was not short. From Adam to this time was about 1500 years. So it was a “Slow Fade” as the song by Casting Crowns notes. And can’t we see that even today. I feel as though corruption in the world is extremely great even now and we are at 2000 years after Christ came to this world.

“6And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 7So the Lord said, ‘I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.’” – Genesis 6:6-7 (ESV)

And just how did/does this land in the heart of God. Well, He was/is grieved. The LORD acknowledges His grief and disappointment. And decides to take action to start over again. Being truth, God was hurting that the truth was not being carried out in the world He had created. But, that hurt was given comfort with the next verse.

“8But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.” – Genesis 6:8 (ESV)

God found the truth again in Noah. He found the one to spare from His wrath. He was encouraged once again.

What I find here in the heart of these few short verses is that the heart is complicated yet very simple. The breadth of capacity of the heart is immense. From corruption to grief to love and favor. All of these are found in the heart. The heart is a powerful and wonderful part of our identity. And where is that heart, but deep within us.

We have a heart that drives our actions and so does God. We are subject to evil and corruption and anger and grief and love. Remember that God made man in His own image and with the exception evil and corruption, He experiences all that we do in His heart as well. It is all deep within us in our heart and the only way to deal with it is to allow God. I have to allow God to take over my heart and fill it.

What is your view of the heart in your life? Are you aware that it is the center of our actions? What if we did and allowed God to fill it with all that He is and take us over from deep within?