Jesus the heart mender

I have long held it to be true that Jesus was the Christ, or Messiah, that would change the world and that his death and resurrection was part of a world-changing plan. But my understanding of how God was working in the world has undergone tremendous change. When I first believed, it was all about me for many years. Once I got dunked, my incomplete understanding about God's work stayed at the same level because I'm basically slow to get it. Now, with help from caring people who helped me get it, I realize that God wants us to be his children who help him in the world. Even though he continually works, he wants us to participate as well - like a small child helps her mother make a cake - as our pastor recently explained. God is doing the deep work of transforming hearts that we can't do very well ourselves. We are only expected to follow his directions and later enjoy the cake together.

An unexpected transformation happened to me about two years ago. At that time I was too shy, spoke to only a few others when needed, but didn't have any deep relationships or meaningful conversations about faith with anyone. I was far from understanding that I should do personal work to love and encourage others. Then I began meeting with a man, Roger Rockenbaugh, from my church. At the time, we started a small group and it was typically just he and I at the beginning for several months. We read a book about the commands of Christ. Each week we would discuss a new chapter. And we would talk about each other's lives and families and pray for any concerns. And it was during this time that it dawned on me that I was supposed to love other Christians and help them just like Roger was doing for me.

So I remember asking God to put His love into my heart. I knew it was missing. And his answer came very quickly by the next Sunday. And it has grown continually since then. Now, I love in a new way, and when I see others who were like the way I used to be, I even want to help them get this amazing eternal love. God carries out such transformations through the Holy Spirit. John 14 through 17 in the Bible explain the Holy Spirit's work in the transforming of hearts and how that was made possible as part of God's plan to save the world.

I realize now that I can't help people if I don't love them. They won't want my Christianity or even a relationship with me if I don't love them. I'll just give one example that makes me sad to realize that in the past I was the unloving man, very far from God's character. I was visiting my daughter and helping with some ice storm preparation work - collecting and chopping firewood in case their power went out. A new next-door neighbor, Daniel - the unloving man, introduced himself and mentioned a few others in his family, emphasizing that they were church-going people, while taking long drags from his cigarette. And he bragged that he had helped two other women with their stocks of wood, one of them also a church-going woman. I was a little slow getting what Daniel meant, but after thinking about it for about five minutes, I realized that he was trying to hide that he had judged my daughter's family as non-church-going in contrast to his church-going family and acquaintances. I have to admit that I am ashamed that I have been that unloving man in the past. I need to work on fixing those past mistakes.

God can't work through un-loving neighbors. That is why he commanded us to love God with our all and love our neighbors as ourselves. We need to tap into God's love first in order to receive the great love only He can put into our hearts - so that we can be the loving person. When God fixes our hearts then we are equipped to love everyone, even Daniel. I'm going to keep Daniel in my prayers. He needs to have God change his heart into a living heart like God's.

I truly believe that God fixes one heart at a time, by addressing their deepest needs as only the Creator of the world has the ability to do. We are too far from God's ways and too weak to do anything on our own to help ourselves, much less others. And we are living in the time between the Messiah's first coming to forgive us and the next coming to reclaim the world for God. This it the time when we can be in cooperation with God's work in this world and be amazed what He can do through us.