Who Owns Your Heart

This blog is designed to give people an inner look at a devotional life. Taking time each day to spend time with the Lord. The hope is if you travel on this journey with Rev. Jacob Shaw, you may be more inclined to spend time with the Lord as well. I encourage the use of a devotional, a scripture reading and prayer, then finally some form of artistic mark to tie it all together. 

Today's devotional is taken from: Zacharias, Ravi. The Logic of God: 52 Christian Essentials for the Heart and Mind. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2019. [E-Book] Chapter 19: Who Owns Your Heart

Opening Thought: Today’s devotion asks the question, who owns your heart? The obvious point would be that Christians ought to give their hearts to God. There is a wonderfully cute meme, of a person holding up their heart to Christ and say, “it's is all I have”. And Christ in return saying, “it's all I want.” I think we can all agree that love in powerful, but we as finite people, who do not always understand ultimate Godly love, sometimes we let our worldviews strip us of our love, or replace it with a false definition of love. Or another way to put it is to say a proper worldview is essential for Godly love to be lived out in us. In short, it’s not just what you do, it is what you believe.  

The devotional begins with: Proverbs 3:3-6

Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart.  Then you will win favor and a good name in the sight of God and man. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.

Second Thought: We know that love is powerful, because we see it at work in the world. Hopefully, you see it at work in your own life. I know for many parents; they discover a fuller meaning for love when they have their first child, because suddenly they realize that their hearts can live outside themselves. And the powerful love for one, can make all the difference in the world. I know young fathers, who for years could be considered womanizers, trying to further the number of women that they could add to their list of bedded victories, then suddenly, they have a daughter of their own, and their love for their daughter and seeing their daughter as a human being worthy of proper love consisting of respect, suddenly changes their tunes about the use of woman for cardinal pleasures.

This love of our children come from a very special place, our worldview, that in each human being is innate value, and in each child is this potentiality for a wonderful person to come out and benefit the world from that innate value. When they are our own, we also get to see our own image within this potential, and we long to love and care for this even more, to give that opportunity. We generally as a wider society share this, even if you don’t like children to socialize with or care for, there is the general principle that they are inherently valuable, more valuable than an adult. So much so, that people will give up there lives in effort to save children, even if the child is not their own.

However this is not how the world has always been, in many part of the world throughout history, children, often baby girls, were killed intentionally out of survival convenience, warfare, ritual sacrifice, and due to lack of resources. Children were not valued, or their value was merely chattel. It took worldviews, more-often religious worldviews, to break this brutality and recognize the intrinsic value in people and in children.

Continual Work: Ask yourself what is love? Most people think of it as a soft warm emotion, but that is how we experience love, but love it more than an experience it is also intentional and rational. Dive into a deeper expression of love today and think about what it means to love?

What Rev. Jacob is Working On: I would love to spend a year writing on the theological gifts in finding the balance of emotion and worldview. I would also add 'reason' into the mix of conversation. But for now I will let it play out in my head.

Rev. Jacob’s Scripture time: Proverbs 3:5

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;

I want to finish out by focusing in on one verse. One the fundamental ideas in the worldview of Christianity is that God is the standard for all things. This means when we love, we do not just love by what is suitable for us, but we are called to love to a level that is suitable to God. That doesn’t mean we will ever hit that level of perfect love, but the lofty goal keeps us from idolizing what we define as love. That goes for all elemental ideas and emotions, love, justice, mercy, righteousness. When we put God on the throne, we will not bow to out our impulses. Yes, we will all have our own understanding, but in having a worldview of Christianity, we know that our understanding must lean on the ever lasting love of God.  

Prayer for your day: Lord, help us see beyond what we feel, and move us to a point where we understand why we feel, and where these feeling originate from, and seek validation in a worldview that holds to Your will. The more we come to know You, the more our love will speak to Your own, and we will help to share Your love into the world. Amen.  

Artistic Close: Could there be any other image today.