Having Jesus In Your Heart 18

The next in a series of articles based on the Gospel of Matthew intended to equip us to be better followers of Jesus Christ.

“Then Jesus got into the boat and started across the lake with his disciples. Suddenly, a fierce storm struck the lake, with waves breaking into the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. The disciples went and woke him up, shouting, ‘Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!’

“Jesus responded, ‘Why are you afraid? You have so little faith!’ Then he got up and rebuked the wind and waves, and suddenly there was a great calm.

“The disciples were amazed. ‘Who is this man?’ they asked. ‘Even the winds and waves obey him!’  Matthew 8:23-27

“This describes the spirit of a person of the church when they are focused on what is earthly and not yet on what is spiritual. In that state of mind the person’s earthly desires, which are various cravings produced by the loves of self and the world, rise up and produce various commotions of the mind. In this state the Lord appears to be absent. This apparent absence is meant by His being asleep. But when a person comes out of a focus on what is earthly and into a focus on what is spiritual, these commotions cease, and there comes tranquility of mind. The Lord calms the tempestuous commotions of the person’s earthly plane when the spiritual plane is opened, and through it the Lord flows into the earthly plane. The desires that are of the love of self and of the world, and the resulting thoughts and thinking process, are from hell. They are lusts of every kind that come from there into the earthly plane. These are meant by ‘the wind and the waves of the sea,’ and hell itself is meant by the ‘sea,’ in the spiritual sense. This can be seen, too, from its being said that ‘the Lord rebuked the wind.’ This could not have been said to the wind and to the sea unless they meant hell, from which arise the tempestuous emotions of the mind from various cravings.”   Apocalypse Explained §514

“Redemption was something only the Divine could bring about. If you knew what hell is like, and you knew how high it swelled and how it flooded the entire world of spirits at the time of the Lord's coming, and you saw the great power with which the Lord cast hell down and scattered it and then restructured both it and heaven in accordance with the divine design, you could not help being stunned and exclaiming that all of it was something only the Divine could do….In fact, when the Lord controls the sea by saying "Peace, be still" (Mark 4:38, 39; Matthew 8:26; Luke 8:23, 24), it means the Lord's process of gaining control over the hells. There, and in many other passages, the sea means hell.

“The Lord uses the same divine power today to fight against hell in every one of us who is being regenerated. Hell attacks us all with diabolical fury. If the Lord did not counter hell and control it, we could not help succumbing. Hell is like one monstrous human being or a massive lion; in fact, it is compared to a lion in the Word. The Lord has to chain the forelegs and shackle the hind legs of that lion, that monster. Otherwise the only possible outcome would be that once we were rescued from one evil we would spontaneously fall into the next, and in fact into many others.  True Christianity §123

Whenever I feel I have Jesus Christ in my heart, I also feel protected, serene, encouraged, and even powerful. Is this a result of my faith? Is this the result of hope? Is this the result of surrender?

We can talk around and around the nature of faith, hope and surrender. We can argue multiple sides of each of these. Is faith simply an opiate, dulling my rational thought? Is faith a trust in something I can never understand (and simply asking to understand is discarding faith)? Is hope an unhealthy attention to the future, burying the present? Is hope a self generated imagination produced by an unrealistic desire? Is surrender giving up? Is surrender denying my personhood, my individuality?

Many of us have spent many hours thinking about these issues. And some of us have spent many weeks in therapeutic conversations to resolve these questions for ourselves. My experience so far is that we each can come to a conclusion that works for us, which does not have to agree with anyone else’s resolution. There is no “right” answer.

So, in an odd way, people’s experience of resolving these questions is evidence for the manner in which Jesus Christ is actually in our hearts. It is not the kind of faith, hope or surrender that we have that gives us a sense of protection, serenity, encouragement, and power. It is not our resolution of these issues, it is not achieving certain spiritual states, that produce the sensation of the protection, etc. Rather, it is the redemption that Jesus Christ accomplished through the spiritual, divine work He did while on earth; and it is the continuing winning against the attacks of the hells, which provide all these states for us.

While it is necessary for human beings to go through the process of resolving many similar mental and emotional issues, such as how we experience faith, hope and surrender, it is only by actually going through the process myself that I come to experience the reality – that Jesus Christ has redeemed me and is always pushing the hells out of my spirit back into hell.

It is frightening when we feel despair, or desperation, or helplessness. It is typical to say to ourselves “Where are you, Lord?” It can even feel like we are going to fall out of our fragile, leaky boat and drown in the chaos and confusion of our lives. The people in our lives are pressuring us. The circumstances are demanding. There are no clear paths to follow, and past mistakes and wounds are blockages to progress.

Our cries from the trough between the ocean waves are heard by the Lord, and it seems to us that He awakens to our plight (although He has always been in our hearts). We see a faint light, feel a warm current, if only for a moment. There is a faith in, a hope on, and a grateful surrender to, Jesus Christ as He quells the tempest in our heart and mind, and we see a way through the rain squall to His protecting arms.

Every time this happens, and we rediscover the protection, serenity, and power of His love, we are amazed. It is a miracle, again! We remember what it feels like to have Jesus in our hearts.