Matters of the Heart

Recently I attended a worship service where we sang, “Lord, I Want To Be A Christian.” This song is very familiar to many, including me, but for some reason, I was very moved by the words this time. The verse that hit me was, “Lord, I want to be more loving in my heart.”

I’ve been thinking about the words to this song, and why it affected me this time and never before. It has reminded me about my heart, and why its condition is so important to God. I don’t know about you, but I think it is easy to become focused on the mind. We seek to fill it with information because we think the more information in there, the better. We think that Bible study is important because it feeds our minds. We forget about some key verses about the heart like “Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” (1 Sam. 16:7) Or, “Create in me a pure heart, O God. And renew a right spirit in me.” (PS. 51:10) Or, “Search me and know my heart…” (PS. 139:23). I’m not suggesting that knowledge isn’t important, but the Bible doesn’t say, “The Lord looks at the mind…” or “Create in me a pure mind…”.

Obviously, God is trying to point out that there is a big difference between our mind and our heart. To me, it is saying that we can think we are right in our minds (no pun intended), and act as such, but our heart may tell a completely different story. We can hide behind the front we project with our minds, but the truth of our character lies in our hearts.

Back to the song. It says we must be Christians in our hearts, not our minds. We must be more holy in our hearts. We should seek to be more like Jesus in our hearts. And the one that moved was to be more loving in my heart. I was confronted by the fact that many times my heart is pretty ugly. As I seek to draw closer to Jesus, I want it to go beyond my head to transform my heart more and more. Let us not forget the matters of the heart.