18 Amazing Secrets of the Heart

Keith KettenringAncient Paths, Christian Living, The Uncommon Journey

I have struggled for over 40 years to know God. I remember crying out, “I just want to know You! Help me!” What I was taught in church, books, and school was to think my way into a deeper relationship with God. Accept this theory. Know these doctrines. Understand these concepts. Think and grow. I did all that and was left short of actually experiencing the reality of God. What I was missing in the struggle was an understanding and experience of the heart.

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Our guide on this journey to the heart is Dr. Meletios Webber, a counselor, monk, pastor, and teacher. He writes succinctly about the heart and then describes it.

When it comes to describing the heart, words begin to fail, and the experience of silence becomes more and more important. There is no rightness or wrongness here. Here there is simply awareness.

The heart:

  • is quiet rather than noisy
  • is intuitive rather than deductive
  • lives entirely in the present
  • accepts the reality God gives in the here and now
  • does not seek to distance or dominate anything or anyone by labeling
  • begins with an awareness of its relationship with the rest of creation
  • accepts rather than rejects
  • finds similarity rather than alienation
  • finds likeness rather than difference
  • knows no fear
  • experiences no desire
  • never needs to defend or justify itself
  • never seeks to impose itself (unlike the mind)
  • is patient (unlike the mind)
  • is undemanding (unlike the mind)
  • CAPABLE OF CONSTANT AWARENESS OF GOD and we can see that awareness, even in a weakened state, whenever we quiet the mind long enough to hear the silence
  • functions at a more profound level than the mind
  • is removed from the vanity of emotion

Your heart plays the central role in your relationship with God. As you look over this descriptive list, you can see why. As much as you are told to think your way into a relationship with God, it does not work. It is in the heart that you commune with the Triune God. The heart is the place of awareness of God, not the mind. Is this why Jesus elevates children as those who live in the Kingdom? Their simple and innocent hearts know God.

Notice, the heart is not the place of your emotions. Hollywood talks like that. People describe the heart as the place where emotions dwell. “He has no heart” meaning, he lacks emotion. Or, “feelings of love come from the heart.” But, emotions are responses to thoughts. Granted, at times, the heart and mind are so intertwined it seems there are feelings in the heart.

The heart is often said to be subjective. In actuality, it is the mind, with its changing thoughts, theories, reasonings, “convictions” and emotions that is subjective. Yet, as the mind and heart are healed and unified, subjectivity begins to lessen and reality begins to be experienced. Then God is becoming real in you…and you are becoming real in God.

Read over the secrets of the heart again. Share your thoughts below. Share this post with a friend. 

Dr. K