Heart Religion

Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner." (John 5:19)

Jesus had just been accused of both breaking the holy Sabbath day and of attempting to make Himself equal with God by calling God His Father. I have been trying to grasp what was possibly going on in the minds of these Jews that would cause them to have such a problem with calling God a Father. We are so used to referring to God as our Father in our Christian oriented culture that it seems almost bizarre to think that would be a problem to someone.

But this verse begins to unlock this mystery a little better for me. Evidently as implied by these words of Jesus, the Jews assumed that Jesus was trying to make Himself more important by His own efforts the same way they had been trying to do all of their life. They, just like us today, were trying to compare themselves and their lives with each other based on their professions of belief, their external achievements and any other number of criteria that would help them believe they had value and status with God.

Because of these innate assumptions that are a result of the false ideas we all inherit through sin, the Jews were using their standard ideas of life and godliness to measure Jesus the same way they measured themselves. They believed that God was carefully scrutinizing them to catch them messing up on the Sabbath, violating any of the meticulous laws or regulations they had put in place to keep God from getting upset about any infractions. They also could not fathom anyone daring to imply that God would ever want to have a close relationship with humans because of their deeply entrenched ideas about God being a stern Master more interested in punishments and intimidation than in anything else. Thus the notion that God might be a loving, caring, forgiving Father had become foreign to them.

We may think that we are now much more advanced in our views of God than were the Jews in Jesus' day, and in some ways I believe we might be. But we are certainly not exempt from clinging to equally pernicious lies about God that are suited to our particular culture or system of beliefs about religion. Our blind spots may be at times a little different than those of these Jews I am reading about but they are no less dangerous to distort and obscure the real message that Jesus came to reveal about the heart of the Father and how He feels toward each one of us.

Later in this book John goes much deeper into the words of Jesus regarding the kind of relationship that He wants us to have with Him. But at this point he begins to introduce us a little more to the radical idea that Jesus wants us to have a totally dependent connection with Him and with His Father that is very different than most of us have ever imagined.

Jesus came to this earth to demonstrate a number of things in human life. One of those was to show us what it looks like to live life like we were designed to live it – in total, joyful, humble submission to the only Source of life in the universe. Jesus never once depended on His own divinity to live a single moment of His life here on earth. He never performed a miracle on His own initiative in spite of what most people assume. Everything He did was initiated by His Father as was prompted by the Spirit of God dwelling in Jesus just the same way He wants us to live in total dependence on that very same Spirit to lead each one of us.

In addition to this important truth, Jesus also reveals here a vital concept that needs to be understood for us to be able to live the kind of life Jesus demonstrated. He spoke of seeing what the Father was doing instead of learning or knowing or some other means of communication. This clearly reveals and synchronizes with the fact that the control center of our brain is the right hemisphere. This is the part of the brain that does not deal in pragmatic, logical concepts but in emotions, creativity, intuition and our sense of identity.

This part of the brain does not learn from intellectual instruction but by imitation. Our right brain absorbs the attitudes and observes the spirit that motivates the people who have the most significant influence in our life. It learns to copy how others react under pressure or intense situations and falls back on emotional memories when under stress. A well matured right brain has also learned to respect the truths and facts stored in the left brain and allows the emotions to be regulated and guided by principles during times of stress, not suppressed by dogmatic rules and belief systems or given free reign to follow whatever our emotions impress us to do in moments of passion.

When Jesus speaks of seeing what His Father is doing, clearly He is not talking so much about physically seeing His Father as He is about staying in such close intimacy with His heavenly Father that His imagination and spirit can be instantly influenced by visual concepts stimulated at any given moment to know just how to respond during intense situations. Instead of depending on memorizing myriads of rules to know how to act in stressful circumstances, Jesus is stating here that a close relationship with God is the only safe protection against temptation and is the only reliable guide to keep one in harmony with God's will.

This in no way precludes our need to be very familiar with the Scriptures as a guide for our lives. Jesus had been brought up by His mother deeply immersed in the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit had employed that knowledge to reveal to Him His true identity over time. But the real power of Jesus life was that intimate connection that He had to maintain every day of His life staying very close to His heavenly Father so that nothing could interpose in His imagination and affections between Jesus and His Father. He allowed His imagination to be infused every morning with the presence of His loving Father and to flush out all the confusion of the world around Him so that He could start clean everyday in His ministry for fallen humanity.

This is one of the most neglected aspects of what it means to be a true Christian today. Many believe that if they study very hard and learn as many religious things as they can cram into their mind that they will somehow become right with God. But they miss the most important thing that makes them a true follower of Jesus – that daily, intimate heart connection with their loving, protecting, guiding Father in heaven. They fail to allow God into the heart area of their life, the right brain where their emotions are seated.

Many are terrified of allowing God into the emotional and vulnerable parts of their makeup because they have become convinced that God is more concerned with performance and doctrines than He is in intimate relationship. Many even believe that emotions should be ignored or even suppressed in order to please God and be a good Christian. But nothing could be further from the truth and they fall into one of the most subtle deceptions of the enemy. God is not against our emotions but wants to be the center of all of our emotions and affections. He does not want us to be controlled or guided by our emotions but neither does He intend for us to suppress or deny them.

Our emotions are very much like the gauges and indicators on the dashboard of any sort of vehicle. If a pilot were to ignore – or worse yet, to cover over – the dials and gauges on his panel, we would consider that pilot out of his mind and not qualified to operate an aircraft. We would be absolutely right in our assessment. But how often do we try to do the very same thing in our own relationship with God. Our emotions are God-given indicators that tell us about the condition of our spirit and it is extremely dangerous to ignore them.

Of course, it makes no sense in an aircraft to respond to warning lights or alarm messages from other gauges by trying to change the indicators themselves. That is simply absurd and is equally dangerous in our own experience relative to our emotions. We are not supposed to try to fix or suppress the symptoms by forcing our emotions to appear 'nice'. We need to learn what those indicators are trying to convey to us about the condition of our spirit and then develop the maturity to know what the real problems are that those indicators are revealing to us.

If we are learning to listen and respond to the promptings of the Spirit of God speaking to our spirit each moment, we will see that it is given to reveal to us the real roots that cause us to malfunction and cause our emotional indicators to mess up so often. Instead of ignoring or trying to suppress our God-given indicators we must learn to relate to them respectfully and know what the deeper issues are that lie below the surface. As we learn to relate to our right brain signals more effectively we will also find ourselves better able to hear the Spirit of God speaking to our souls. For I am convinced that the Spirit of God primarily touches the right side of our brain most of the time rather than speaking to our intellectual side.

One compelling reason I believe this is because the Bible speaks so often of our heart in relation to what God desires from us. And knowledge of anatomy has revealed that our literal heart is primarily connected to the right side of our brain far more than the left. I don't believe this is a coincidence at all. When God says He wants our hearts He is referring to both our heart and the emotional side of our makeup which is all inextricably linked together.

I can do nothing of myself. When we come to appreciate the real depth of meaning implied in these words we can come into much closer intimacy with God like that that Jesus enjoyed.