Are You Being Held Captive?

[HKHaugan]

Is Your Heart Being Held Captive?
Is Your Mind Being Held Captive?
Is Your Spirit Being Held Captive?

These are three questions we will try to address in the next few days as we consider what Holy Week is all about. Since all three are intertwined we only treat them separately in order to encourage their balance so when the moment to be a witness arrives we act more definitively, more courageously and more faithfully. Let’s look at the heart first.
There are 790 references to the heart in the NIV with the bulk of them being in the Old Testament. So the heart is of major concern to Jesus. He quotes Isaiah 29:13 to show how what we say doesn’t match where our heart is, “They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” He makes a direct and detailed assessment of the sinful condition of the heart and its lusts in Mark 7:20-22, a heart separated from God, a heart He came to recover.
What is there about the heart that is so central? Three indicators. First, it’s the dwelling place of our emotions. Second, it’s where we trust. Third, it’s where we make decisions. We may try to articulate what we feel inside but that is the mind taking what the heart experiences attempting to reason through its insecurities. This usually ends up with the mind rationalizing or justifying its confusing nature. This is why we need to have a belief in the mind that informs the heart which in turn informs the spirit. How this combination works is unique to each individual.
But back to the heart. Because of sin, which affects each heart in a unique way, we are out of balance. Alone we bounce from mind to heart to spirit never really knowing any sense of balance in the three. The heart’s real need is a person to look up to who provides an inner sense of purpose, meaning and inspiration to overcome the traps that sin puts in our path. God has provided His Son to be that perfectly balanced person, with whom we can have a relationship to transform us from within and rebalance us.
For some the mind will be the relational starting place, for others the heart and others the spirit. He knows where the imbalance is in each of us. Jesus has that sensitive mind, heart and Spirit that can meet the need for balance in each person right where they are at any time. When the mind needs belief He gives it through His Word. When the heart needs comfort He provides it through trust. When our spirit needs faith He brings His Holy Spirit to support us. The result is that the recovery of each believer is personal and unique because every person is a unique image of God that has never been before or ever will be again. We are His witnesses for every moment in the unique existence each of us has. Each of us is unique to the unique moments that lay before us.
And it is the heart in each of us that relates to Him and to others. The heart is the door to who we are and to who Jesus is.
But let’s review the heart we are familiar with. We talk about wanting a heart-to-heart meeting that reveals real honesty between persons. When we want to really achieve a goal we ‘put our heart and soul’ into it. Then there is the recognition we give an empathetic person, ‘he has a heart for people.’ If we are romantically inclined we ‘give someone our heart.’ And if we’re rejected we have a ‘broken heart.’ Of course when someone puts pressure on us and we want them to release it we say ‘Aw c’mon, have a heart’ or “you’re just hard-hearted.’ How about the moment when something strikes a chord in us and we’re lost for words, what do we say? “I just know in my heart of hearts.”
It seems the everyday human heart is very vulnerable, sensitive and defensive. It’s alone, needing acceptance and love, struggling to know the difference between good and bad. The heart is confused, not sure of what it feels from one minute to the next. It has no direction in and of itself. It tends to pride, self-deception and building self-protective shields we call strongholds. This is what sin is all about. The heart apart from God is going to follow what the mind, body and spirit senses as the need of the moment. It searches using a kind of trial and error method, stumbling through one experience after another, accumulating survival techniques and then, one day, death claims another piece of aimless driftwood on the sea of regret.
But there is good news. The heart is changeable, trainable and transformable. A heart transplant is available in a relationship with Jesus. He plants His heart in ours to reclaim, to recover and restore ours. That vulnerability we spoke of before is a good thing. It’s the open door to be vulnerable to the Holy Spirit’s touch through Scripture. There the heart can feel the warmth that comes from trust, trusting the Person that appears in the words. The person of Jesus comes alive as He speaks His words. It’s that inner sight, insight, that sees the image of Jesus emerge and sparks the heart.
So what does all this have to do with Holy Week? Holy Week is about the Cross. It’s about the sacrifice that Jesus made that each of us could find and have a ‘change of heart.’ Jesus gave us, through the Cross, the way of life that restarts a dead heart. It is facing each and every next moment with Jesus as the light for the heart’s walk through the ‘valley of the shadow of death (Ps.23).’ What Jesus does is to clear a path through the valley the heart knows it is in. He is the Person the heart is searching for, the Heart of hearts, the open-armed, hands-outreached-heart, the ‘valley guide.’
He knows because He has been there. He’s been in the valley of temptation, the valley of hostility, hard hearts, betrayals, subterfuge and desertion. He suffered the indignities of religious persecution, ethnic insult, social rejection and family fears. He faced the evil spirits that wreak havoc within and without. All of this in the valley of the shadow. They were all there in the valley through which we all walk. He walked His ‘last mile’ after an unjust trial by unjust people in an unjust world---for our sake.
When He rose from the dead He showed He is the light that dispels the ‘shadows,’ cleared the valley and cleared the path for us to walk. Holy Week reminds us what He did, what His work for us was and what our work for Him is all about. Holy Week gets us to look forward not back, to set our eyes on things above (Col.3:1) not on earthly things. Holy Week gives us a chance to start with praise, thanksgiving and prayer for balance in our witness, so that when we need to lead with the mind, lead with the heart or lead with the spirit we know who ‘has our back.’ We can gladly open our hearts to His heart secure in the knowledge of His presence wherever we are because “It is for freedom Christ has set us free (Gal.5:1).” Amen.