Thursday, May 14, 2009

All Four Chambers

Deuteronomy 6:5
And thou shalt love the Lord thy God will all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might.

Yesterday I wrote that to love is “to make one’s choice in”. And thou shalt make your choice in the Lord thy God with all…

And that’s where I have stopped and meditated. ALL…

What a word. It means:
the whole amount, quantity, or extent of…
When was the last time I used the whole amount…to it’s fullest extent, my heart, my soul and my strength on loving God? It would be better to ask…when do I begin?
as much as possible…
Again…have I even yet considered the capacity of possible?
the whole number or sum of...
How many components are there that I haven’t even yet tapped into?
every, all manner of...
Didn’t my mother teach me to use my manners?
nothing but, only, completely taken up with, given to, or absorbed by
Oh, let my heart be absorbed with loving Him! Let my heart be completely taken up with my Lord! Let my soul be completely taken up with my Lord! Let my strength be completely taken up with my Lord!
having or seeming to have (some physical feature) in conspicuous excess or prominence, for example: "She's all legs."
Oh Glory…all God…all Jesus…all Holy Ghost…all prominent in Stacey!
paying full attention with, for example: "I'm all ears"
Just imagine walking away from someone and having them say, "They were hearing things that I have never spoken to anyone but God." Thus...ALL His ears. or "How did she see that in me? I don't show that side of me to anyone." Thus...ALL His eyes.
used up : entirely consumed
Nothing left…meat on God’s altar!
being more than one person or thing, for example, "Who all is coming?"
Go ahead! Invite me…but I’m never alone! How many people invite us knowing that they are inviting God too?

every member or individual component of
I saved this for last because this is where I want to camp out. I was reading a commentary on this passage (John Gill’s exposition) and he made this statement referring to all:

“with thy heart not divided about God, a heart not divided between God and the creature”

Sure, I can read this explanation and understand that my heart should not be divided between God and man or between God and any other thing for that matter. But my heart “divided about God”? That’s entirely different and a concept that I hadn’t considered.

Now get the picture of the physical heart in your mind and what does it look like?

First of all, I find it amazing that God made our heart to be the size of our fist. The kingdom of God is at hand and is also within us. That paints an interesting illustration for us doesn’t it? What a strong witness that the heart and the hand are one and the same.

The heart lies in the chest cavity between the lungs and works in conjunction with the lungs, circulating throughout the body what is breathed. The heart should work in conjunction with the God breathed word as well. Now, if the Word, if prophesy, the very things we long to hear God whisper to us each and every day as we read, pray, spend time and listen are God breathed…what then does that say of our heart?

The heart has four cavities, divided by a wall that causes two of those chambers to pump blood throughout the entire body and the others to pump blood only to the lungs. I’m no expert but interestingly enough as much effort or pumps have to be made to supply blood to the entire body as to the lungs which are surrounding it. Is this how my heart has been wrongly divided about God? All this time, I have just kept pumping to only the lungs to feel that oxygen rich life blood swell up in my heart again and again thinking that’s what loving God was all about. But no…God created the heart to love Him by not only pumping to the lungs…longing for His every breath filled with the life we need but to love Him by pumping that breath filled life blood to the body.

You see, yesterday I said that I identified what I was dealing with as “apathy” and it’s because of something Dr. James Dobson said. He said that today, we are so concerned about bringing pleasure to ourselves…we cater to it. We want to make sure we are comfortable and enjoying life and have even created all sorts of things for our pleasure…massage chairs, virtual realities in games and movies, computers, cell phones, ipods, mp3’s, etc. and the list could go on for certain. But we have spent so much time on this, that when it comes time to enjoy the natural things…the God made things that should bring us pleasure…we are desensitized to it and take no pleasure in it at all. We don’t feel.

Well, can it go to another extreme spiritually, all together? When we use all our hearts effort in pumping only to God and back to us so that we gain all the pleasure…does the heart suffer apathy? Does it even know the pleasure that would come from pumping to the rest of the body?

2 comments:

REG said...

If you wrote a book I would definitely buy it.

Melissa Flores said...

The pleasures of the Lord... vs. synthetic pleasures of man. Wow. Con-vic-tion!