ONE DIRECTION OR THE OTHER

At its roots, Christianity isn’t about feelings or thoughts, it’s all about the heart.

In the same way Christianity is all about the heart at its roots, disbelief is all about the self. When we say no to God, we’re saying yes to ourselves, and vice versa; when we deny ourselves, our only reason is because we believe there is something higher than ourselves worthy of submitting to. But even then, in order to recognize something as worthy, the heart has to be penetrated by the fruit of that which carries such worthiness.

Essentially, both ‘yeses’ are the same at the core: our heart is facing one direction or the other. But make no mistake: they’re opposite directions.

ALL ABOUT THE HEART

“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:21) Why did Jesus say this if Christianity isn’t centrally about the heart?

We only have one heart, and we only have one life. We also never know if we have more than one more day to live. How we live our lives and utilize our time describes the position, aim, and trajectory of our heart. This is because everything about Christianity is, at its core, all about the heart.

REFLECTING GOD’S GLORY

Christianity is about our souls being redeemed back to God, but redemption doesn’t happen without faith in the reality of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Our lives are meant to be a conduit for the glory of God to show Himself in our lives, that others would see His intervention and involvement and believe in Him. Everything about us—how we think and speak, what we believe and how and act—everything is meant to give God glory; to reflect His existence in us, through us, and around us.

Life is so short in fact, that everything about the way we live and behave matters. How we respond to adversity, trauma, heartbreak, and victory… the way we respond to our enemies just like how we respond to our friends… everything points back to what we believe in most, and in whom we place our deepest trust.

The question is: if not God, who or what are we glorifying?

HEARTS OF MAN TODAY

By choosing not to spend time thinking about this and considering its ubiquitous relevance, we are reflecting the very standards of a world already presupposing there is no God because of the coldness of the hearts of man. It’s when someone truly surrenders to God and lives in such humble obedience—especially in the small things—that people start to see that there is a God, even if they don’t want that to be what they see.

When it comes to matters of faith, it doesn’t matter how we feel. All that matters is, who are we worshipping with our time? It doesn’t matter what the world thinks—what do we believe in our heart about God and Jesus?

DISTRACTED FROM KNOWING GOD

What we believe is determined by what’s in our heart. Sometimes the damage from worldly experiences can make it difficult to be wiser about decisions we make; decisions that begin in our heart. We don’t experience any delay in feeling the pain of life, instantly and without any doubt, but we have a hard time experiencing God because of just how much the devil tries to get in our head and distract us from knowing God in our hearts.

FAULTY REASONING

Remember, it’s all about the heart in Christianity. Even reasoning answers to the heart. Do you recall Peter, who became afraid after initially trusting Jesus by joining Him in His walk on water? Peter’s brain started working harder than his heart and he lost faith (Matthew 14:22-33).

Or, sometimes our reasoning questions everything by lacking confidence: we say we’re confident that there is no God because of what we, and/or others, have been through; our faulty reasoning conjures a tale of mistakenly interwoven ideas that embark on embedding any notion of truth into our minds because in our hearts, that’s all we want to know. With disbelief, we don’t want to know that what we don’t want to believe makes more sense than what we do believe.

Of course, if the heart is soft and docile enough, we may be open enough in our hearts to make sense of God in our minds, too.

A CLOSED HEART AND MIND

Our brain wants to make up a world without God even though life doesn’t make sense without Him, and we let our reasoning tell us that a Godless reality has to make sense, even though it doesn’t. Our reasoning tells us that God wouldn’t do this or that, but we have no idea of what the character of God is because we haven’t read the Bible, and we haven’t prayed. Our heart wasn’t included in making the decisions we’ve made thus far because we responded from a closed heart, and therefore a closed, critical mind.

DEALING WITH THE ROOT CAUSE

Without the heart, there isn’t much God can do because He doesn’t play with the symptoms, He deals with the root cause. If we won’t acknowledge we’re hurting, the only healing He could do would lead us right back to another symptom. But God doesn’t want us burdened with symptoms, He wants to break all of our chains. And in order to do that He must address the root cause, which is the heart.

The heart has to be willing, and for many people, all we have is our mind because our heart has spent too much time in worldliness; too much time around people who don’t believe, who don’t pray or read the Bible; people who make sense of what they need to make sense of to live the kind of lives they want to live, even if how they live and what they claim they believe doesn’t make sense when pressed against the arguments for the morally perfect, theistic biblical God.

FAITH NEEDS TO BE GENUINE

Nothing else falls into place without the heart. Nothing about Christianity makes sense without the heart. The arguments Jesus made, the parables He told, the miracles He performed, the actions He took and the suffering, death, and resurrection—none of it lays any kind of foundation if it hadn’t begun with the heart. The mind cannot comprehend this, but the heart can comprehend enough to understand that the mind won’t fight any harder if the heart isn’t humbled. Faith itself doesn’t need to make sense to our brain as much as it just needs to be genuine in our heart.

This flies over the head of those who depend more on their mind than their heart. Faith isn’t about being rational unless being rational refers to the act of being committed due to the fact that we have placed our faith in Jesus.

In other words, it isn’t rational to commit ourselves to a belief that we don’t trust, and placing our trust in Jesus requires the heart, not the mind.

THE GOD WHO ALREADY MET OUR NEED

It isn’t rational to trust something that we don’t believe to be true. We won’t believe Jesus is who He really is without the heart realizing that it’s not about logical conclusions, it’s about the heart being humbled into understanding why the narrative and reality of Christ in the Bible is so fitting for the history of humanity, and to believe its veracity.

If we’re so serious about Christianity, it’s because we logically conclude that the human heart is broken and in need of healing, but because humanity broke its own heart, it cannot heal itself. We have a need that we ourselves cannot meet. But we’ve been introduced to the God who can meet it, and He has already met it in the person of Jesus Christ.

A HUMAN-HISTORY SHAPED DELINEATION

The heart must comprehend that our brokenness is real, that sin is real, that the consequences are real because objective morality is real, because God is real… and therefore, eternity is real. How we live and why we believe what we do is all part of a large-scale masterpiece, a human-history shaped delineation of God’s creation culminating in our existence, His granting us free will and giving us the freedom to choose ourselves or Him, but then putting Himself on the line to save us when we failed to choose Him. This is the ultimate sacrifice, that no greater love than His will do, to give one’s life for one’s friend (John 15:13). Because God considers His children His friends, not His enemies.

All because of His grace.

VESSELS THROUGH WHICH GOD BLESSES OTHERS

Therefore, to understand this is the beginning of living out what Christianity looks like. We are called to seek His Kingdom above all else, but it begins by wanting who God is; a relationship with Him. It’s not about religiosity, how we’re dressed at church, what job we have or how many children we’ve raised; rather, it’s all about how we love God. It’s about how we know God, and how we can become teachable and humble vessels through which He can work to bless others.

ALWAYS ABOUT THE HEART

We are all living lives meant to be lived to give God glory and reflect His character. There is no reflection of Him if there is no recognition of what we’re seeing. If we don’t see God when He’s right in front of us (in faith), we cannot reflect Him to others. We can’t argue God out of existence, and we can’t make sense of a belief that our heart doesn’t want to embrace. The mind is weak only when the heart won’t accept the deep healing it requires by the hands of the God who created it. There is no life without God, but there is no relationship with God without choice, and no choice for God is made without a humble heart.

With God, it’s always about the heart.

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