Heart To Heart

 You will make known to me the way of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; In Your right hand there are pleasures forever. Psalm 16:11

In one of his devotionals, Chris Tiegreen writes a prayer that I have placed in my journal and have sought to make my own. It goes, "Holy Spirit, fill me with Your thoughts, acquaint me with Your ways, saturate me in Your presence." What would my life be like if this prayer is fully answered in me? What would yours be? More, why can it not be? We are the only blockage for it not coming to pass.

Dwell upon what is asked in that prayer. "Fill me with Your thoughts." Scripture tells us that we're to have the mind of Christ. How? The answer is both mystical and simple. The mind of Christ is present in the Holy Spirit. He's a Person, the third member of the Holy Trinity. We come to know His mind by dwelling in His Presence. Just as we can come to know another's mind by keeping company with them, even more so can we absorb His mind by intimate interaction with Him. The deep desire of the heart of God is that we know Him, and He has made the means for doing so abundantly available to us. That starts with realizing His words that tell us, "My thoughts are not your thoughts, or My ways your ways." When we admit this, we begin to surrender our flawed thinking, and have Him fill us with His thoughts and ways. This is where the mystical comes in. We find ourselves more and more thinking in ways we never did before. Seeing in ways as never before. It's the result of the ministry of the Holy Spirit renewing our minds on a day by day basis. We take on the mind of Christ, and it's a lifelong process.

The next step then would be He acquaints us with His ways as we discover His ways really are vastly different from ours. Our flesh is prone to react, usually poorly, to what is going on around us. His way is to respond, with His truth, His insight, and His heart. We're prone to volatile anger, and He has merciful patience. We quickly judge, while He looks past the surface to what is going on beneath the surface. He operates far beyond the realm of human logic and understanding, moving with a supernatural wisdom impossible for our fallen flesh to grasp. In the spiritual journey, His ways more and more become ours.

Last, to be saturated in His presence simply means that's where we "live." In His Presence. It means that as we live our day to day lives with all the responsibilities that go with it, He is a conscious reality to us. We sense Him and realize He's there. We can immediately enter into communication with Him, lay hold of His thoughts, His heart, and His will in any given situation. We can do this because over time, we have cultivated His Presence and we have come to know His voice. Jesus said, "My sheep know my voice." We may not care to be called sheep, but Jesus often called Himself the Good Shepherd. A shepherd is charged with the care of the sheep, and his care is such that he develops a rapport with them so deep that they recognize his voice when he calls. They follow him and will not follow a strange voice. So it must be with His people. We know and follow His voice, and we won't follow the voice of any other. As for being sheep, well, sheep can be incredibly stupid animals. Can we deny that we can be incredibly stupid people as well?

He invites us into His Presence, and the invitation is constant. Do we come? Or do we continue to act like wandering sheep, always getting ourselves into trouble, being deceived by the enemy, and slaughtered by him. I've a pastor friend who upon awakening each morning, invited His presence to saturate every part of his being. That's an invitation Christ will never refuse. Let us extend it to Him today. Let us do so right now. Let us live heart to heart with Him.

Blessings,

Pastor O