Last Sunday I preached about a vital key to living an emotionally fulfilled life. There's far too much detail to include in this short post but if you're interested in going into more depth you can download the audio recording from the C3 Church Mount Annan podcast list HERE.
Emotional distress is rife in society today. It's virtually just as prevalent inside the doors of church as it is outside. At least in part I believe that's because we don't understand what I call the 'New Heart' life. Most of us acknowledge that we have areas of brokenness. So often though we spend time trying to heal up our broken hearts, fix up our mistakes and heal up the hurts. While that's a noble pursuit to be sure I believe that at times we come at it the wrong way.
Nowhere in the bible does it tell us that God heals our broken hearts and yet we spend much of our time trying to do that very thing. However on many occasions it's recorded that He gives us a 'New Heart'. This new heart is a whole heart, a heart that desires to relate to God and live for Him. Our job as Christians is to learn the power of living life from our 'New Heart' and overcoming the power that our old and broken heart still has upon us. It's what Paul calls learning to "Walk in the Spirit." You see it's impossible for us to fix ourselves, that's why Jesus died for us. He's fixed us. Now we need to renew our minds (Rom 12:2) and allow our 'New Heart' to have sovereignty over our thoughts and deeds. The problem is that our 'old broken heart' is still hanging around wanting to have sway in our world. That's why Paul says that we should, "through the Spirit put to death the works of the flesh." (Rom 8:13) Now there's no time to unpack the importance of that scripture in this post but if you have any area of emotional trauma in your life I'd recommend you get serious about understanding what it means to "Walk in the Spirit."
All emotional wholeness must begin with an understanding that in Christ we are a New Creation, the old has gone and the new has come. (2 Cor 5:17). Once we understand that we are accepted by God just as we are, many of the reasons that cause us to become emotionally unstable lose their power.
Next to the understanding that Jesus died for our sins I believe a revelation of the 'New Heart' life is perhaps the most important truth any Christian can know. In fact it's really inseparable from the Salvation experience for that's what Jesus meant when he said "You must be born again." (John 3:3)
If you'd like to do some more study here's some scriptures to check out...
- Rom 7:15-8:15
- Gal 5:16-25
- Rom 5:17-19
- Tit 3:3-7
- Rom 1:18-32
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