Home

Tropical Sands Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

Fine-Tuning Your Heart Brrrrump Bump Bump Bump. Brrrump. Brrump puhp puhp. That's what my last lawnmower sounded like. And the one before that. And the one before that. I just do not get along with internal combustion engines. Now, I have an electric mower, and it goes zzzzzzzzzzz! I run over a lot of extension cords, but at least I'm not throwing away good lawnmowers. So there's this kid on my block who checks the curb every week to see who is throwing away lawnmowers. This kid understands internal combustion engines. And with just a screwdriver and fresh gas, he can usually take those thrown-away lawnmowers and have them running great in just a few minutes. And you can hear the pitch of those motors changing when he works on them. Eventually, he hears what he wants to hear, and the mower is running fine. You can do the same with your spiritual heart. In this way, I'm talking about the heart that feels emotional pain, the heart that hears God or not, the heart that feels for other people, and the heart that breaks over suffering. Our Good News Bible will use the word "conscience", or it will simply say they were stubborn and uncaring where other versions refer to hardness of heart. The old King James Version sometimes refered to "bowels of mercy". We don't like that metaphor, but it points to something deep inside us, a gut reaction. It is this emotional heart that feels for others and hears the voice of God. It's the part of us that cares whether we are in step with God or not. But this emotional heart can get out-of-tune; it can grow hard and quit working like it should. But when it is finely tuned, it makes Christian living automatic. Let's hear the word of the LORD: My children, our love should not be just words and talk; it must be true love, which shows itself in action. This, then, is how we will know that we belong to the truth; this is how we will be confident in God's presence. If our conscience condemns us, we know that God is greater than our conscience and that he knows everything. And so, my dear friends, if our conscience does not condemn us, we have courage in God's presence. We receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him. What he commands is that we believe in his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as Christ commanded us. Whoever obeys God's commands lives in union with God and God lives in union with him. And because of the Spirit that God has given us we know that God lives in union with us. -- 1 John 3:18-24 (GNV) In this letter, John is telling us that if our conscience convicts us, then God will surely convict us. If our conscience is clean, we are pleasing God. But John is talking about a heart that is in-tune with God and in love with Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, that doesn't always apply. You know that some of us are involved in prison ministry. There are people in prison whose conscience does not bother them at all. They don't see their crime as wrong, or they don't care who they hurt. If they read this verse and nothing else, they might say, OK, I'm fine with God. I've seen prisoners get saved, and over time they come to understand what love really means. They start caring about how their actions affect others, and some even try to make amends. To fully appreciate the mercy of God, we have to see how wrong we were, and how much we need God's forgiveness. In this fallen world, there is no heart that is perfectly in tune. No matter how well you hear God, or how much you love others, your heart can be tuned even better. That kid with the screwdriver has to stop adjusting sometime, but the engine goes out of tune again, and he learns with every mower. We need to know what an in-tune heart sounds like, so we can examine ourselves and recallibrate once in a while. Otherwise, we just go duller and duller until our hearts end up on the curb with the trash. Our pew Bible has Jesus at times saying, "Are your minds so dull?" when other versions say, "Have your hearts been hardened?" That is what happens when the conscience does not signal that our actions are wrong. It happens when we rationalize our actions, when we ignore our conscience, when we fail to act. Eventually, our hearts grow hard. Like a mind that has to listen to a long sermon, it goes dull and ceases to understand. When we ignore our conscience, it stops working so well and needs a tune-up. The New Testament book of Hebrews says if you hear God's voice, do not harden your hearts as your ancestors did in the wilderness. It is the same thing. We hear the call of God, and we ignore it, and our hearts grow hard. The next time he calls, we won't hear it so well, until finally we don't hear God at all. Or we grieve the Holy Spirit, letting what our head wants take us away from what we know is right in our hearts. Eventually, it gets easier, until we can't even hear our own hearts. We think that our out-of-tune heart is running just fine. Now only you and God can hear your heart well enough to tune it. But when a heart gets way out of tune, you can hear it across the room. A heart out of tune has a distinctive sound, and you can get it in tune if we adjust it so that it stops making that sound so much. This is the sound of a heart out of tune: "me me me me me me." "I, I, I, I.." "Mine, Mine, Mine." "My way, my way, my way." You see, your heart is designed to hear three things: How you feel. How others feel. How God feels. When my heart is out of tune, I have no trouble hearing how I feel. In fact, if that's all I hear, then it gets louder, and louder, until I know exactly how I feel about every little thing. I'm not going to ask you to close your eyes, because I don't want anyone falling asleep. But when you close your eyes, you see the back of your eyelids. If you keep them closed all the time, you'll see the back of your eyelids as long as your eyes are working. And that's fine, but there is so much to see in this world than the back of your eyelids. That is a waste of eyesight. My heart is the same way, and so is yours. No matter how hard my heart gets, no matter how calloused over and closed it is, it will always see how I feel. I will always feel my pain, and if my heart is closed, I will feel it deeply, and all the time. But I won't be listening to God, or to how others feel. My heart is still doing what it was meant to do, but it is way out of tune. Like a knocking engine, the heart out of tune says, "But what about me? Don't they care about me? Don't they know who I am?" "Don't you care how I feel?" Jesus taught that greatness is in serving others instead of ourselves. He taught that we should exalt others instead of ourselves; that it is better to give than to receive. The Christian with a finely-tuned heart does just that. He or she hears how others feel, and cares about it, and is even more likely to hear God when He speaks to their hearts as well. You know, standing up for yourself, defending your own rights, making yourself look good -- these things mean nothing in the Kingdom of God. They are beside the point. The Christian heart is not designed to take care of itself; it is designed to take care of others, and to hear the voice of God. As a Christian, I should focus on others, and let God take care of me. In Romans, Paul said we should do nothing that would offend a Christian brother or sister; so a fine-tuned heart is trying to be less offensive to others. And in First Corrinthians 13, he says that love is patient and kind; it is not jealous or conceited or proud; it is not ill-mannered or selfish or irritable; love does not keep a record of wrongs -- some versions say love IS NOT EASILY ANGERED. If it's "me me me" I care about, then I probably stay mad at other people all the time. Now there is a place for "me me me" in the Christian heart. As the airlines say, place the oxygen mask on your own face, then place the mask for your child. I can't help others if I don't take care of myself in some minimal way. Jesus gave us another use for "me me me." "Why do you notice the speck in your brother's eye and not the beam in your own eye? First remove the beam from your own eye; then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye." The proper place of "me me me" in the Christian heart is, "It's me, it's me, it's me, oh LORD, standing in the need of prayer." So I ask myself every day, is my heart in tune? If I hear "me me me" all day long, probably not. I pray Jesus has a screwdriver and lots of patience. If I exalt others, care about others, reach out to others, put others ahead of myself, then I'm probably closer in tune. If I do that, and my conscience is clean, then I have confidence before God -- but I still trust Jesus with the screwdriver. Joel Tucker Tropical Sands Christian Church May 6, 2006