The issue of our dealing with our heart is that we love the Lord more. Our heart is keen and adequate to function. What is the function of the heart? The function of the heart is to love the Lord. The heart is the loving organ, the organ for us to love the Lord. Mark 12:30 says, “And you shall love the Lord your God from your whole heart.” The heart that was created in us by the Lord is for us to love Him. Thank the Lord that we have a heart. Just as we could not see without eyes, hear without ears, or think without a mind, we could not love without our heart. I am sorry to say that even many Christians do not know what the function of the heart is. They know the function of the eyes, the ears, the nose, and the mouth, but they simply do not know the function of the heart. Now we all have to be clear that the function of the heart is to love.
In Chinese, the written character for heart is embedded in the middle of the character for love. Love is a matter of the heart. We cannot love people with our nose or our hands. Whatever we love, it is with our heart, the loving organ. Before we turn our heart to the Lord, our heart loves something other than Him. No one can say that he does not love anything. Everyone loves something or someone, either the Lord Himself or something else. No one can say how many things we love, but what is certain is that the more we turn our heart to the Lord, exercise our heart to believe the Lord, and have our heart sprinkled from an evil conscience, the more our heart will love the Lord. This is the function of the renewed heart. Every morning our heart must be renewed so that we may love the Lord more and more.
All spiritual experiences begin with the loving of the heart. If we do not love the Lord, it is impossible to have any kind of spiritual experiences. Even the first experience of our Christian life, our salvation, is a matter of the heart loving the Lord Jesus. Not one person who truly repents has no love in his heart toward the Lord. Perhaps he does not have the words for it, but he has the sense within him, “Oh, Jesus is so lovable!” I can recall the time I first received the Lord Jesus. I cannot tell you how sweet He was to me. I did not have the words, and no one taught me to say that the Lord Jesus is lovable or that we have to love Him, but I had the true sense that the Lord Jesus was so sweet and good. At that time I could not even say the word sweet; I could only say, “Too good! Oh, Jesus is too good!” This kind of love is the reflection of the Lord’s love in our heart. We all must learn to exercise our heart to turn it again, to believe anew, to be cleansed again from an evil conscience, and to be renewed again that we may love the Lord more and more.
The degradation of the church is firstly due to the loss of our first love for the Lord (Rev. 2:4). To lose our fresh heart of love for the Lord is to be fallen, to be in degradation. We all must learn how to turn our heart again and again and be renewed again and again, that we may have a new love, a fresh love, toward the Lord.
The Bible tells us that originally we were dead, and at the time we received the Lord Jesus, we were made alive. Colossians 2:13 says, “And you, though dead in your offenses and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our offenses.” Ephesians 2:1 and 5 are similar to this. These two passages prove that we were originally dead in our spirit, but at the time we received Jesus as our Savior, this dead, dormant spirit of ours was made alive.
When I was young, I could not understand how we were dead. It seemed that I was still living and not yet buried. Later I came to know that this means that we were dead in our spirit. As we have seen, the function of our spirit is to contact God, commune with God, receive God, and worship God. Due to the fall, however, our spirit was dead and out of function. At the time we received the Lord Jesus as our Savior, the all-inclusive, wonderful Holy Spirit came into our spirit. By the Spirit’s striking our spirit, our spirit was made alive. It is hard to adequately translate the Greek word for made alive. It means that by touching life, life is ministered to us. We can illustrate this by electricity. If we are touched by electricity, something of the electricity is transmitted by that touching. The Holy Spirit came into our spirit to touch our spirit. By that touch, that striking, the very life which is the Holy Spirit Himself was imparted into us. Then our dead, dormant spirit immediately became alive.
To be made alive in this way is more than a miracle. We may think that for a person who is dead physically to be resurrected is miraculous, but for the Holy Spirit to make our dead spirit alive is more miraculous than that. Thousands and even millions of people throughout history who were dead were immediately made alive in their spirit. A person who is dead in his spirit can be made alive because the Holy Spirit is more powerful and is transmitted and imparted more quickly even than electricity.
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