A young student once approached Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and said, “I would like to write a concerto. Can you help me?"
"You're too young," Mozart told him, "wait a few years."
"But is it not true that you were composing music when you were just seven or eight?" the student persisted.
"Yes," answered Mozart, "but I didn't have to ask anybody how."
People often recognize what is within their heart at an early age. It takes a jaded adult perspective to strip a child of the simple faith to believe that he can be an astronaut or inventor or even President. Children have no trouble trusting that their heart will tell them the truth. Maybe that is part of the reason why Jesus said we must become like a little child to live in God's kingdom.
To recognize what is in your own heart is a major step in fulfilling the plan your Father has for your life. Once a person has the capacity to know what is in his heart and, along with that knowledge, possesses a childlike faith to trust His heart, his realm of possibilities multiply exponentially. Your dreams and core desires aren't silly. They never were. They have been divinely placed within you. They aren't coincidental, but have been joined together by Divine Design.
To live from the heart is to reconnect with your core desires that have been divinely deposited within you. In rediscovering your heart you’re likely to learn that your gifts and abilities align perfectly with those desires. After all, a loving God who has a master plan for your life has created you.
Living from the heart is different than living from the head. Our minds rationalize, scrutinize and analyze to determine whether or not our dreams are possible. The mind considers the external factors related to the situation and decides whether or not to pursue the course based on what it perceives to be the probability of a successful outcome. The heart knows no such boundaries, but challenges us to reach beyond natural limitations as if there were no limits to what might be done.
To successfully integrate your faith into your daily lifestyle, it is necessary to learn to trust your heart again, as you did when you were a child. Your mind certainly isn't an enemy of your heart, but in a world where we have been programmed to believe that reason alone reigns, it is important to once again lay hold of the dreams of your heart and realize that you can trust what you discover there.
How do you recognize the calling of your heart? The answer is closely related to understanding what moves you, what matters most to you. Do you want to rediscover your heart? You can find it by identifying the things you value most in life. Your heart isn't interested in becoming rich, but in becoming real - to live from your authentic self. It is what matters most, not what pays most that captures the heart.
One highly successful man said to me, "I can make money, but what I really want is to make a difference." That man was speaking from his heart. The well-known statement about having climbed the ladder to the top only to discover it was against the wrong wall describes an all too common situation for many people. We know instinctively that we were created for a higher calling in the workplace than simply to gain prestige, power and possessions. Blaise Pascal said in the seventeenth century, "the heart has reasons of which reason knows nothing."
Many with a church background grew up being bombarded with the Old Testament teaching that, “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9). Because they have locked in on that single verse to the exclusion of others, they have come to doubt their own heart, believing it to be untrustworthy. While it is true that apart from God’s transforming grace, man’s heart is deceitful and wicked, you don’t live at that place. You have been embraced by the grace of God and have been transformed.
God promised in another place, “I will give you a new heart with new and right desires, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony heart of sin and give you a new, obedient heart” (Ezekiel 36:36, NLT). As a child of God, that is where you live. Your heart’s desire is to be obedient to God and to glorify Him. Why else would you be reading a book like this? Trust your heart. God has transformed it by His grace.
You can trust your heart because it belongs to Jesus Christ. You have become a partaker of the divine nature. (See 2 Peter 1:4) His life is your life. Learning to trust your heart will progress in direct proportion to choosing to believe that truth.
If Christ is your life (and He is), then you can live boldly and confidently, knowing that the One who has begun a good work in you will finish what He has started. (See Philippians 1:6) Your role is to trust your heart, knowing that Christ indwells it. His role is to see to it that the mission to which you have been appointed is discovered and fulfilled.
When you have learned to trust your heart, you will find that you become emboldened to experience the next characteristic of one who successfully integrates faith into the marketplace. You will be ready to live with gusto, drawing others to yourself by your enthusiasm.
If Christ is your life (and He is), then you can live boldly and confidently, knowing that the One who has begun a good work in you will finish what He has started. (See Philippians 1:6) Your role is to trust your heart, knowing that Christ indwells it. Step out in faith knowing that His role is to see to it that the mission to which you have been appointed is discovered and fulfilled.
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