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My Two Cents
by Rev Chuck Behrens
February, 2016
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Past Articles |
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Fettuccini Alfredo! It's
that great Italian dish that has buttered noodles served in a rich, creamy
cheese sauce. Unfortunately, it's not recommended as health food. It's
more like "heart attack on a plate." Maybe that's a bit of an
overstatement, but the fact is that a lot of foods do contribute to the
slow shutdown of the valves that happen to carry the blood and oxygen into
your heart. I love what one commercial called it - blood sludge. Medical
people refer to the hardening of the arter-ies - the process in which
foods that are high in cholesterol and fat start building up these hard
deposits in your arteries. If this hardening in your heart is allowed to
continue long enough, it's no laughing matter. It can threaten your life.
Hearts can harden physically and hearts can harden spiritually. It can
become really dangerous in the heart of any man or woman who is trying to
make a difference for Jesus Christ. It was Je-sus' heart that motivated
all He did - a heart that the Bible says was "moved with compassion when
He saw the multitudes." He was deeply moved. He saw them the Bible says,
as "threatened and helpless sheep without a shepherd." He wept over His
city Jerusalem because they wouldn't come to Him and the life He wanted to
give them. Paul was a model for all of us who want to serve Christ when he
revealed what drove him to suffer incredible pain and to sacri-fice so
much to tell people about Jesus. It's our word for today from the Word of
God in 2 Corin-thians 5:14. "Christ's love compels us."
I remember being told the story about a pastor in one of America's major
cities. Often, he would-n't come into the service until a few minutes
before his message. But this one particular Sunday, it came time for the
sermon and the pastor wasn't on the platform. A couple of church leaders
went to check his office, and there he was looking out over the endless
rows of apartments and houses that jammed their depressed neighborhood.
And he was weeping. One of the men who had come looking for him said
gently, "Pastor, I understand, you're weeping because of the great needs
all around us, aren't you?" "No," the pastor told him, "I'm weeping
because it doesn't move me like it used to."
That is cause for weeping. This servant of God realized that something had
happened to his heart. Like a person with hardening of the arteries, his
heart had started to close up - to harden. Maybe yours is, too. Like that
physical hardening, it happens slowly and imperceptibly, but the longer it
goes unchecked, the more dangerous it becomes.
Most of us start serving the Lord with a healthy heart. We're moved by the
lostness of people who don't have a Savior. We realize the life-or-death
importance of getting to them with the message about Jesus. Heaven and
hell are at stake. And we come into the Lord's work with a heart that's
soft toward the pain and suffering and the dysfunction that sin is causing
in lives all around us. We ask the Lord to use us to make a difference
whatever it takes.
But for some of us, that healthy heart started to harden somewhere along
the way with all the pressures, the politics, the disillusionments, the
programs, the conflicts. We can no longer say that it is this burning love
of Christ for the lost and the hurting that drives us. What once was a
passion has become profession. What once was a deep affair of the heart
has become an exercise of our head and our busy hands. And the joy, the
fire is going out...or gone.
But the One who gave you that original piece of His heart wants to give it
to you again; Jesus shows us that in a most powerful, magnificent way as
we begin yet another Lenten journey. It's yet another time to recognize
the crisis of your closing heart and tell your Master that you want His
life-changing heart surgery - to open up what the deposits of the years
have closed, and to give you a new heart, throbbing with His love, with
His passion and with His tears for the lost. Without that, there
ultimately is no life.
Go to the Master Heart Surgeon today and tell Him you want a heart like
His.
See you in Church,
Rev. Chuck
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