The person who comes to God must believe that God is, and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. —Hebrews 11:6The heart continues to be the location of the most profound personal discovery I have made through the walk of faith. The center of my self has changed. Before, I always thought I weighed evidence to get to my conclusions. I always thought that my belief began in my mind. My “heart,” the spiritual locus of who I am—to the extent that I considered such a thing—then followed along accordingly. So I thought.
The truth I discovered is that belief starts with the heart. The reasoning mind is a powerful instrument for reaching conclusions, but the very scope of its possible conclusions are shaped by what the heart reveres—and every heart reveres something. I discovered this only in retrospect. My heart changed and my mind changed with it. I saw what I had never seen before.
Yet God didn’t take that heart by force. He didn’t storm his way in, as of course he could have. We are small—yet somehow we are also significant, and our choices are significant. The hope of God is that we care enough about the existence in which he has invested us that we will peer intently into it, catching a glimmer of what is truly real. His hope is that we care enough about the hearts he has given us to lay them before him voluntarily.
The choice is necessary, because that same heart is where deception flourishes. Our hearts chase after what is corrosive, imprisoning, or poisonous—in each case calling it good. Jeremiah 17:9 expresses this. The deceived heart that shapes what we know is the very heart that must be redeemed. For this to be possible, it must be that a part of us remains unstained—a part that can make this choice. There is a locus of the self even deeper than the darkened heart. It is out of this hidden part of who we are that we still call to God, and it is within this hidden part of ourselves that we still can recognize the One who calls to us. It is the small and still-pure part of the self that declares I do have a heart and I do hear God, so that with these declarations the One can begin to heal the other.
In other words, you lead your own heart. You choose, and perhaps tremblingly, you stand with the choice. You believe—maybe even before your heart does.
We saw this with Saul, who was to become the Apostle Paul. Before his transformation began, he made his own decision to identify the One who met him on the road as Lord (Acts 9:5).
We saw this in a negative way with the other Saul. Saul in the Old Testament was a king chosen by God, but this Saul made the choice to turn away. He held his own pride before men in higher esteem than his humility before God. And God honored the choice—as God honors all our choices. Thus, it was God himself who sent the very darkening of the heart that Saul was seeking (I Samuel 16:14).
All of us have God. He is the One in whom, said Paul, we “live, move, and have our being.” We might lose the touch, feel, and communion with him over the course of a life in which we cage our spirits within cynical or protective shells. But God is still speaking, still calling, still trying to touch us where we are vulnerable, and still daring us to be vulnerable to him—still ready to lead us through the process of breaking those shells so that we can live joyously and free.
We choose.
Our hearts might not even be in it at first—but that’s OK. The important thing, the transformative thing, is what gets into our hearts.
