A Disciple's Heartstyle

[HKHaugan]

“It’s absolutely beyond belief” is an expression we use to describe an extraordinary event we have witnessed. However it may mean something more when we talk about discipleship. A disciple of Jesus moves beyond belief to an openness in the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Jesus, the Holy Spirit. We move from belief, which is a mind organizer, to the level of trust, trusting what we believe. Trust is the essence of heartstyle. Trust is stepping out of the comfort of belief to the invisible commitment to a person and a way of life we can’t see but have to let happen every next moment. Trust is placing control in the hands of an invisible person with an invisible will to do what He wants in an invisible way. Trust is facing and placing our ‘every next moment’ lives in the complete assurance that, regardless of the outcome, be it even life or death, the person who holds that outcome will see us through. That is really the in-depth meaning of ‘beyond belief.’

Notice how Jesus calls us to go beyond belief when the condition of the heart warrants it. John 14:1, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, trust also in me.” Jesus knows what troubles the heart, the fear of not being in control. That fear arises from sin. Control is a sin issue. The fear of not being in control springs from our isolation from God. We are each of us alone and need a way to understand and handle that condition. It’s heart time, trust time, time for the heart to trust, trust to turn control over to the Lord.

Every human being asks three basic questions, “Who am I?” “Where am I going?’ and “How am I going to get there?” How we chose to live apart from God before we were introduced to Him was our anxiety-laden answer to those questions. Most likely the answers we came up with were incomplete, frustrating and ended up not working. It’s depressing not to really know who and what you are, why you are here, where you are ultimately headed and discovering personal control doesn’t work. Without a personal revelation of God life in this world is just physical and emotional survival. All of this is what Jesus understands as the nature of the ‘troubled heart.’ Trust is beyond belief and the only answer for the heart. “Trust in God, trust also in me.” Trust is what makes belief come alive, the mind open and ready and the heart moving with God’s beat.

What is Jesus asking us to trust? John 14:1-11

First, our identity. We are restored as the Father’s children having been born again through Jesus.
Second, our destiny. “My Father’s house” with its many rooms. Jesus will return to take us there.
Third, our way there. The way of the cross, which is faith in Jesus for every next moment.
Fourth, how do we know? Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. The way He yielded to His Father in everything, the truth He speaks in His Word and the Holy Spirit life He lives within.

Getting the Heart in Shape, Heart Conditioning

Prayer and Fasting

First, Prayer.

“Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.”

Some questions to ask before we get into it:

What does it say about the Father?
What does it say about the world?
What does it say about us, who we are, where we are, what we do and where we are going?

Did you let these questions sink in? The reason I ask is because the very depth to which this prayer is intended to take us can never be reached in the manner it has been used over the centuries. Having become a rote prayer it is recited in a way that neglects the Lord’s purpose in it. Over time it has been used like a rabbit’s foot, a magic amulet for protection and a verbal escape hatch in the midst of fear. In worship services it becomes a quick summary for what has gone before it. Then, considering it is called the ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ we can be easily persuaded to think it possesses a mystical quality that can secure us and make us feel good after its recitation. Just by naming this set of verses a prayer changes their nature and intent. There is no indication from Scripture that Jesus meant for us to use these verses any differently than the rest of Scripture.

On the contrary the Lord’s Prayer is a set of teaching principles on prayer. They take us into the presence of the Father. They, like the Psalms, are a meditating experience, a word-by-word, phrase-by-phrase mind and heart opener. Yes, a recitation of principles can keep us centered but their collective purpose is to bring our minds and hearts into a deeper and more mature relationship with our Heavenly Father. They are designed to encourage our relational dependence on Him, to let Him mold who we are as He moves His Spirit in us and then to share the wisdom and maturity gained from those principles with others. Could it be that what we have done to the ‘Lord’s Prayer’ is to quench its real purpose? Isn’t it rather, as we have said, really a set of prayer principles that provide us with a pattern to come closer to the Father and He to us?

Look at the context. Jesus is contrasting hypocritical religious behavior and personal spiritual humility before God. “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full (Mt.6:5)…And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him (vs.7).”

Jesus is teaching about prayer as a personal experience. It is not a recitation but a principled step-by-step withdrawal of self into the presence of the Father. Thus He embeds His instruction to retreat in between these two verses, the first, impressing others and the second, impressing one’s self. Perhaps, more to the point, the first is deceiving others and the second is self-deceit. So when Jesus teaches that we should get personally honest with God He has two confronting verses that get us in touch with our motivations when we are ‘out and about’ (vs.5) and then reminding us when we are willing to go ‘in and within’ (vs.7).

Jesus is teaching that to be with the Father is a special time. We retreat from the world outside and go within the rooms of our mind, heart and spirit. That takes deliberate effort to set aside a time for external to internal shifting to allow an internal probing by the Spirit. It is opening ourselves to intimacy with the Father as we align ourselves with Jesus in the comfort of the Spirit. “But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly (vs.7).”

Second, Fasting

The second heart shaper is fasting. While prayer is a mind and heart concentration it is fasting that brings the body under the authority of God’s Spirit and our spirit.
Here we look at:
2Chron.20:1-3, 12, 17
Joel 2:13, 28-32
Jer.30:18-22
Mt.6:16
Acts 13:2-3, 14:23

Generally in the Bible fasting involves the periodic refrain from food and drink, which were the basic daily social pleasures. Here Esther 4:15-16 contains that generic kind of fast. But in our age of optionality with movies, TV, cell phones and a host of other social pleasure offerings the call to fast can find numerous outlets for placing the body under discipline. 1John2:15-17 can be a helpful guide as to what fasting may involve for us as individuals in any generation.

Let’s look at the passage. “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.”

If the Lord God calls us to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, it would be advantageous for our overall mental, emotional, physical and spiritual health to apply that passage as the evaluating diagnostic tool for our heartstyle in our earthly human experience. It gets us to check what we love in the world that keeps us from loving God with our total being. This is where fasting really begins for us in our day. Where do we spend most of our time, our energy, our abilities and our money? What are we most passionate about? What consumes our thinking and why? What erupts our emotions the most?

Fasting has long been limited to food and drink intake. In our time obsessive behavior in regard to material availability has blunted our spiritual growth. It has opened us to immersion in secondary and superficial searching in social, political, interpersonal and material anesthetics. Perhaps we need to fast by limiting these distractions and taking on an intensive immersion in Scripture, extra worship in the Body and personal prayer time. Less politics more Scripture, less Facebook more prayer, less food more meditation, less TV more interpersonal sharing, less sitting more exercise, less loose spending more responsible budgeting, less indulgence and more denial. Revisit your daily schedule and rebuild how you start, carry out and finish your day.

Now we are into real fasting which is truly rebuilding our heartstyle giving us a heart for the Lord, ourselves and one another. We don’t fast because it is a good thing to do but because the Lord fills up the emptiness that comes when we give up the world’s distractions. He fills us with His Spirit. When we fast as a Body we open ourselves up to the spiritual leading that builds us as images of God and draw in those yet to believe. Here is another fasting passage:

“ Now we ask you, brothers, to respect those who work hard among you, who are over you in the Lord and who admonish you. Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. Live in peace with each other. And we urge you, brothers, warn those who are idle, encourage the timid, help the weak, be patient with everyone. Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always try to be kind to each other and to everyone else. Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. Do not put out the Spirit’s fire; do not treat prophecies with contempt. Test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil. May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The One who calls you is faithful and He will do it (1Thess.5:12-24).”

Now we are into being disciplized, into the process of disciplization and hopefully into discipling others. This is how we build trust, which in turn builds the heart so that we have a heart for the Lord and one another.

One more thing a disciple needs to consider and that is attitude. Attitude is how our heart presents itself. It is the residence for spirits not of God to take root and shape how we respond to the world, how we want others to see us. Attitude is what we pick up from the hearts of others. Attitude is what a person’s heart is like. It reveals the spirits that have taken root there. It may not be self-evident but others pick it up. Do we present ourselves in such a way that others think us prideful, that we have a need to tell others what we have done and who we know. Do we present ourselves in such a way as to have others feel sorry for us, pity us or give us special treatment? Are we cynical, stubborn, lustful, prone to do anything to look good, greedy, fearful, worried, etc. Let Php.2:5-11 be our attitude guide.

To sum it up what human beings apart from God want is instant gratification for any and all perceived needs. There is a distinct difference between perceived needs and real needs. Perceived needs are what we believe will satisfy every next moment our body or emotion makes a demand on us. Real needs are relational, personal and spiritual. Instant gratification and perceived needs are what fasting helps uncover and change. We are looking for dependency on God in everything. This means shifting into submission to the Holy Spirit and the positives He gives us to replace the negative.

Next we want to look at spiritstyle, the work of the Holy Spirit in a disciple.