Open Up Your Heart

“But whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?” (1 John 3:17)

Shuts up his heart. Makes it so that the needy person has no access to the tenderest emotions that are felt there.  

In a world that encourages us to put up walls and shut people out who hurt us, Jesus lifts high a different banner. He shows us a better, more beautiful way. But it is the way of the cross; the way of true, heavenly love. 

You can’t truly lay down your life with your heart shut up –walls up, roof on, windows and doors locked.

If your heart is inaccessible, so are the tenderest emotions that are needed to love another human being. And if compassion and tender love are not an ingredient in laying down your life, you aren’t laying it down. 

But the risk involved in opening your heart to another human being is huge. How many would dare go to that extreme for someone?  

Many have been so hurt by others that they have shut their hearts for good and no longer experience the joy of risking it all to love someone.  

But if love involves no pain, can it be called love at all?

 

Perhaps this was one of the all-knowing God’s greatest reasons for creating a world that He knew would fall into sin and darkness.

Perhaps He knew that unless His love experienced the pain of rejection, no one would see the beauty of it.  

The fullest glory of His love is seen when it is dealt wounds and trampled on in hateful rejection.

 

Why do I say that?  

What if true, sacrificial love hurts for a reason? What if an aching, bleeding love shows a watching world the difference between God’s relentless, unconditional love and the world’s fickle, shallow, choosy love? 

God doesn’t stop loving just because someone rejected Him. He can’t, because His love is as eternal as He is, perpetually pushing outward in one form or another. 

But worldly love gives up the moment someone rejects it.  

I’ve seen it over and over – people who cut someone out of their lives simply because they hurt them with an unkind word. It is the way our world works, because we don’t know how else to handle the pain. 

If you are that person who has shut up your heart due to the pain, there is a place of healing for you... This relentless love of God is something He wants to pour onto you. Pour out your heart to Him and ask Him to lead you in true healing from that pain...

Because, my friend, what if we could be so safe in God that the pain others deal us only causes more of His love to pour out of us onto them? 

What if God could be a shield to the deepest recesses of our soul?

What if every wound dealt to our open heart became another crack through which more of God’s relentless love would flow onto an unsuspecting, hurtful person?

What if, instead of closing our hearts, we opened them up and allowed ourselves to feel God’s tender love and compassion for others even in the deepest pain dealt to us by them? 

And what if that pain that we feel in loving someone is a doorway into the very deepest heart of God? What if it’s through that pain that we experience what it means to truly know the fellowship of His sufferings? 

You see, how else will we know what Jesus felt if we never feel it ourselves? How else will we learn His heart if we never walk in His footsteps and feel the pulse of His love even in the face of pain? 

He kept loving all the way to His dying breath, and after He arose, He still bore those wounds in His hands and feet as He ascended into the very presence of His Father.  

Should we try to escape being wounded while loving others if He did not?