CHRIST IN OUR HEARTS

     Many may say that they have Jesus Christ, but this could mean that they have Him on their tongue. Others may have him on a paper icon and say that he has Christ and honors Him. Another may have a framed image of the Lord hanging on the wall telling others that he honors Him as his Lord. But Christ does not need honor from us nor does He accept this as true worship. Christ seeks much more for He seeks the hearts of men as His dwelling place. And those who have Christ feel His presence in their hearts   where they love and magnify Him.  Thus, it is only when Christ dwells in our hearts that He becomes our Master and God.  If we are not aware of His presence within our souls, all we must do is ask and ask again, and if we are sincere, He will come and dwell in us and make us aware of His presence.. 

     What is man composed of  and where is his heart?  Man is the image of God, who was created body and soul from the clay of the earth, and then a breath or spirit of life was breathed by God into the first man’s body and soul, and he received life from the spirit of life and became a living soul. The Bible does not say that God breathed a soul into man for the soul was not breathed into Him, rather the soul comes from the earth.  Thus, God did breathe a spirit of life and not a soul out of himself into man. 

     Man is formed of body, soul and spirit. The soul of man has three faculties which are intellect, affection or feelings and a free will. Man’s intellectual faculty is located in his head, which is also called the mind through which he cognizes, responds and remembers. He has a heart with which he feels love and hate, joy and sorrow, his heart being located in his breast. Man has a will also located in his breast, which decides what to accept or reject, or whether something is true or false. So we must know God through our minds and love Him with all our hearts, and firmly decide with our will to obey and worship Him in spirit and truth. 

     If Christ is not in our heart, but on paper or on a wall, then He is a plaything, for God must be worshiped as the first commandment says “with all our hearts, in spirit and in truth.” Our hearts are small organs but God can does choose to dwell in our hearts and He will fill them abundantly to overflowing if we approach Him in deep and abiding faith and if we open widely the doors of our hearts to Him. God is life and is the source of all life and by His dwelling in us, He causes our hearts to be filled with His life and delightfully enjoy the love He offers to all. We in turn, upon being aware that our life comes from God, will gladly return our deepest and sincere love to Him, and this mutual love will cause our hearts to jump for joy as we thrive on His sweetest love.

For these things to take place, we must  read the Bible every day, giving our attention to the many important things which God clearly tells us; we must with all our strength strive to do all that He commands. We must not have the Lord only on paper icon or in a frame on the wall, but must have Christ living within our hearts and there He will quench our thirst; such consequent delight and joy cannot be found elsewhere. But we cannot we cannot welcome and invite the Lord if we have any contrary or corrupt ideas or thoughts in our hearts for they are poisonous. We must say with David the Psalmist: “Create in me a clean heart O God and renew an upright spirit within me.”

OUR RELATIONS WITH GOD

   OUR RELATIONS WITH GOD

     “God is the Lord and has revealed himself to us, blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” The Jewish people were once the people of God or the people who knew the true God and worshiped Him in spirit and truth. But when He came down as the Son and Logos and was born as a male child from the Ever-virgin Mary, the Jews ended up by rejecting Him completely and worked against Him.  They supported the wicked rulers when they decided to kill Him by nailing Him to the Cross, and enthusiastically agreed., crting: Let Him be cricified! They lost the greatest treasure that can ever be known to man and in doing this they condemned themselves to eternal perdition.

     Jesus Christ is the Son and divine Logos of God and therefore He is God and man. When Jesus opens His mouth and speaks, every word is directly from God the Father for He is one with the Father. Jesus said: “I am the light of the world, he who follows me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life (John 8:12).

     When the Jews committed Christ to the Cross, although some did accept Him, the majority did not want him, crying for his death. No man spoke like this man, declared many. Indeed!  Jesus had said: “I am the bread that came down from heaven! He spoke as our Creator and God to us humans, and He spoke with complete authority and extreme love for man. We must remember that Love of the Creator for His humble creatures cannot be neglected without consideration.

     But are not we Orthodox Christians treating Christ with similar disrespect as the Jews who thereby committed their bodies and souls to eternal suffering? Christ did not just speak a few words, He taught a complete change in our way of life. “Depart from evil and do good.” He taught is that the kingdom of God was more important than all food and drink, more important than wife and children, than life or death! We need to train ourselves to completely love God who is good even more than we love anyone or anything else. Our present life may end sooner than we think and we will be judged for what we have believed and what we have done. Today is the day of repentance and prayer to God for tomorrow may be too late!

     In this world we get so used to catering to our body and its desires that we can think of nothing else, and for people who have no faith or hope in the future life, this is their way of live.  We however, if we desire eternal life need to prepare for the future while we are still in this world, for there is no way to change after death removes us from this life bringing us to the terrible judgment. The most important thing is that Jesus Christ teaches us all through the Scripture what we should do, but if we do not habitually read the Bible every day, how can we become informed. Scriptures are filled with life and without them we are dead to spiritual life and to God, who speaks to us through Scripture.