But the much of the world would have you believe otherwise.  Yes, the world and the Devil would want you to think that your true hopes, your inner feelings, are not important to the grand scheme of God.  That he’s got bigger and more important things to care about.  That he’s a Father too wrapped up in his work of “saving the world” for him to really notice one of his kids in the corner, crying.

This is the best lie Satan has offered us – and we’ve bought it.

We’ve bought the notion that God makes us as purely rational, emotionless, detached brains – and that all the emotions we feel are the whims of the flesh – something to be suppressed and conquered.  If that’s what the heart is for, we should go ahead and cut all the Psalms, and most other parts of the bible straight out.  But thanks be to God – your heart matters.

So how do you engage your heart as a means of connecting to God?

• When you approach God in prayer, start by approaching yourself. Let your own heart be a starting place for conversation with God – “the water cooler” topic between you and your Creator is “How ’bout them emotions?”
• Start each journal entry with “God, this morning, I feel ___(insert emotion here)__ .” Maybe you can go on to explain why, or maybe you have no idea at all.  Just be honest with the LORD.
• When you feel you’ve laid all the cards of your heart out on the table in prayer before God, sit for a moment in silence and emptiness and then ask, “What do you have to say about all of this?”

Funny thing is, he wants that honesty more than any words of empty praise you could offer him.  It offers a kind of translucence in your dialogue – a frankness that cuts through the rout prayers and the laundry lists that block you from true communion with God.

Live your whole day aware of your heart.  When you are angry, notice what’s happening inside and offer that up to God, when happy, or when sad… he cares.  Your heart matters.

In fact – it is your heart that matters most to God. Rescuing our hearts has been God’s project from the beginning – after the Fall, humanity finds our heart distant and blocked from God’s heart.  The process of redemption is learning to cross the chasm and authentically share our true selves with God – and in that intimate moment of full self-disclosure, we can have faith that God’s whole heart will be revealed to us as well.

Your heart matters more than you can ever imagine.

The human inclination is to short-cut our relationships – we seem only able to take a friendship so far, before we simply can’t keep up with the complexity of another human heart.  We’ve all been there.  I meet someone new, I ask them those basic questions – name, occupation, etc, etc.

But the truth is - I’ve already pidgeon-holed them; how they look, how they speak, what their body language is saying to me…I quickly “size them up” and file them away.  Filing is great when its the junk lying around my house, its absolutely lethal to a true friendship.

But it seems only natural.  My brain can’t take the infinite uniqueness of how God has created you.  Its just easier to short-cut things between you and me.  At some point in our friendship – I tacitly choose in my mind to constrain you to some distorted caricature of who you truly are.  You become a cardboard cutout of a person…

2D friendships are aplenty in our society today.  We’ve mechanized the categorization of our friends – what else is Facebook good for?  My profile page gives you instant access to the 2D me - my likes, dislikes, political leanings…on and on it goes.

So how do we overcome the caricaturization of our friendships, and live in the delight of authentic relationship?

How do we push back the boundaries of our finite human brain to live in the infinite complexity of one other person?

…We must live with the urge to connect.

When we have that urge to connect – when we are never satisfied with a status update or a Tweet to fully express the boundless beauty of “the other” — we live in the hunger for learning more from each other.  We’ll do anything to connect with the true human heart sitting across the table from us.  We’ll cross oceans of fear, doubt, and self-centeredness to find just out something about the other we’ve never heard before.

Its that easy…and its the most difficult thing I’ll ever do.

So how does someone dwell in a text?  How does an entire community dwell in the Word? Here’s an idea:

Whenever you meet, as an family of faith, house church, leadership team, training group, work team; spend the first 20-30 minutes dwelling within a particular scripture.  I recommend starting with the text Luke 10:1-12; it is a text of mission, of being sent out with the most basic of instructions, dependent upon our receivers’ hospitality, proclaiming that the Kingdom of God is near!

As you listen to the text being read, consider how the text impacts you personally, at a family level, at a congregational level, and how it impacts our world.  Let God speak in the silence, as well as in the written words.

As we consider our decisions and actions in congregations and church bodies, in creating partnerships, in venturing out in mission… this text speaks to us, sometimes moving us forward, sometimes making us think differently about what is happening to us and how we should respond.

You can have this habit, too.

1. Choose a passage - perhaps a lectionary text for this coming week, perhaps a passage already meaningful to your group, and read it aloud.
2. Read the passage 2-3 times, preferably read by different readers each time, and optionally changing translations.
3. Between each reading, sit silently for 3 minutes, letting certain words, phrases and images to surface in the minds of the participants.
4. Sit together with the passage, in silence, or in conversation, sharing with one another where your imagination was caught or where a memory was triggered. Let the passage draw you together as a group.
5. Bring the passage up throughout the day, or when you’re trying to make a decision. See what it says to you then.
6. Close with a prayer of thankfulness to God for what was revealed.

Bring up the passage again during the next meeting, in the same manner.

Live in the passage for several months. It will bring more and more to you as you revisit it!

Some other Scriptures to get you started in Dwelling in the Word (also known as “Lectio Divina“)

God “dwells in light” (Ti1 6:16; Jo1 1:7), in heaven (Psa 123:1), in his church (Psa 9:11; Jo1 4:12)