2 Cor 4:16a "So we do not lose heart…."
The ancient enemy of human souls is a real being and he is working, mostly under-cover and behind the scenes, in a malevolent and unrelenting way, in an all out attempt to get us to “lose heart”. However, this is a life-transforming point of spiritual warfare: the devil cannot actually achieve this end without getting us to cooperate—he hands us the poison arrows, but our heart can only be “killed” (closed, hardened, shut down, frozen, anesthetized, embittered, divided…can you add to the list?) if we plunge the arrows in ourselves. His main strategies involve lying, luring and deceiving us into cooperating with him to commit some kind of “suicide of the heart” And this…of course…happens every day to people living in this fallen world.
Have you ever “lost heart” in various seasons of your journey? I am sad to confess that I certainly have. Fortunately, there is healing and recovery available for our broken hearts through the in-breaking of the grace of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit. It’s certainly better to not lose heart, but if we have, it’s not automatically the end of our story. The losses and victories of our heart-battles actually become a part of the divine drama of our pilgrimage—and a source of instruction and encouragement to others.
Jesus came to give us a relationship with our Creator and Father that centers in a genuine restoration and renovation of the human heart—a true religion of the deep heart. With His great and mighty help, we can arise with courage and break our past agreements with our ancient foe that have plugged up the well-spring of our being—our heart.
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