Truth Ministry: Head To Heart

Short Trip

Here's a fascinating complication with truth-based ministry: simply inputting truth does not guarantee that the hearer/learner will believe it. A hearer can receive, recite, and even restate truth without it feeling real to them. Even more interesting is that there are people that not only learn, but even go as far as to teach truth and find themselves feeling that the truth they are teaching others is actually not true to them personally. It doesn't seem or feel real on the inside. Thus they struggle between what they read, write, and say with what seems real in their heart. Unfortunately, what registers, resides, and even roams in our minds is not guaranteed to make the short trip from the mind into the depths of our soul and int our heart where that truth can seem and feel true to the individual.

Acting Out

The truth that resides in our heart is what we effortlessly live out of. It's what feels or seems right that we base the actions of our lives on. We live out of the truth that seems or feels right to us without attention or effort. It's how we're designed as human beings. That which feels true is what we live from. In the area of action, we call this belief: acting out of what feels or seems true. In the area of communication, we call this confession: speaking out of what feels or seems true. This is the genuine self - to act and speak directly out of what feels or seems true without hesitation.

Long Journey

The disparity between what goes on in our minds and what resides in our hearts is amazing. Some have said that it's the longest 18 or so inches in the human experience. The sad truth is that no matter how hard one tries, we are unable to force a truth from mind to heart. The heart is not to be forced, but coerced into accepting something as true. And much like tickling oneself, this process is not one that we can do consciously. We cannot force truth into the human heart. We can focus our minds on it, involve ourselves in activities that include or center around it, and in many saturate our lives in it. But we cannot thrust truth into our heart. The heart is a mighty fortress of belief. The journey that truth makes there is long and sometimes never completed.

Persuaded

What molds the truth in our hearts is persuasion: the act of convincing a person to either receive a new belief or replace an existing belief that they hold to. This is both remarkably simple and noticeably difficult at the same time. How is one persuaded? How do they persuade another? What convinces a person that something is true as opposed to something else? This is part mystery and part mission. The reward is high because once one has been persuaded that something is true, they tend to hold to that - they become a convert to that belief. They mystery is in how people are either soft towards or hardened against areas of belief in their lives.

Authority

One key factor in the head-to-heart journey is authority, that spiritual aspect of presiding over something or someone. Those we recognize as having authority have a particular inroad to guiding such a journey, sometimes even to the point of suggesting new journeys from head to heart than what we intend for ourselves. Many a movement, for better or worse, have been guided by individuals that carry a measure of authority in an aspect of life or over a people group. For Christians, this slot is reserved for Christ Himself. We are the sheep of his pasture and He is our Good Shepherd. It is His Spirit, the Holy Spirit.