We continue this week in our journey through the book, Enemies of the Heart by Andy Stanley.  This week we learn a bit about our behaviors, our motivations and a bit of insight about the hand we have been dealt. For most of us, we are expected to play well with others and to get along. This week in review of chapters 3 and 4, we discuss some practical insights and some real challenges we most likely have developed over time.

Darn Rules

Andy talks about not being able to say certain words, like “darn”, “gosh”, or “gee”. Here is a little clip from Andy going into some detail…

Rules for Keeping Rules

500 rules to maintain the original commandments. It was the guidelines that the Jews put in place for safety purposes. It was called the “Tradition of the Elders”, and it was enforced diligently. In fact most of the contention between Jesus and the pharisees was over such traditions. An example used was the tradition of washing your hands before you ate, from your fingertips to your elbow. Now there is law from Moses time about washing your hands, what do you recall was the intention and purpose of washing your hands in such a fashion? To ensure that one would not become “ceremonially unclean”.

After that, Pharisees and religion scholars came to Jesus all the way from Jerusalem, criticizing, “Why do your disciples play fast and loose with the rules?” But Jesus put it right back on them. “Why do you use your rules to play fast and loose with God’s commands? God clearly says, ‘Respect your father and mother,’ and, ‘Anyone denouncing father or mother should be killed.’ But you weasel around that by saying, ‘Whoever wants to, can say to father and mother, What I owed to you I’ve given to God.’ That can hardly be called respecting a parent. You cancel God’s command by your rules. Frauds! Isaiah’s prophecy of you hit the bull’s-eye:

These people make a big show of saying the right thing,
but their heart isn’t in it.
They act like they’re worshiping me,
but they don’t mean it.
They just use me as a cover
for teaching whatever suits their fancy.”

Matthew 15:1-9 MSG

Traditions, guidelines and rules. They seem to trickle in and then become the standard for how we live. This is prominent in marriages and families in general. How about some of these:

• all silverware in the dishwasher needs to be handles up
• toilet paper needs to roll off the top
• toilet lids need to be down after use
• only blow your nose in the bathroom

What were some crazy rules you had growing up?

Jesus uses the dialog with the pharisees to teach the disciples a core principle:

¹⁹what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. ¹⁹For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. ²⁰These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone. – Matthew 15:18-20 ESV

Things that come out of the mouth come from the heart.
How does that concept settle with you? What are your thoughts on the idea?

It is not just words, but it is also actions. They seemed to be telling us that our thoughts come from our heart, not the mind.  There are actions that come from the heart. Our motivations go deep.

Heart Monitors

If we needed to make sure our heart was pure and clean, we probably need to put some guidelines around how we manage our heart exposure.  But we might be quick to say we don’t want to make up rules to be good by. We should just automatically be good if we are Christians. But what about Proverbs 4:23?

Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life. – Proverbs 4:23 NLT

Many times in life we deal with the condition of our heart. We either get emotionally impacted by an event or as men, we are not upset about something that others feel we should be. We may even be called “heartless” if we don’t say something about certain things. How about being referenced as a person with a “hard hearted” or a “heart of stone”.  So how do we deal with these challenges? We monitor our heart. When things “should” upset us and they don’t, we make sure it is obvious that they do. When things should not upset us, and they do; we suppress and ignore those emotions. We work to ensure that we behave. All these little subliminal rules to make sure we fit in.

How do we cope with and manage our heart? There are so many risks and challenges, but this is where we will lean into.

Heart Damage

Andy shared about “spaghetti junction” in north Atlanta and described the metaphor about how many different things come all different directions and go through a hub, and that is the same with our heart. We are exposed and impacted by a monstrosity of influences as well.

The experiences we go through in life develop rules we put in place to influence, prevent or control our actions. We develop coping mechanisms. This is for emotional as well as physical. We get cornered sometimes when something catches us off-guard. We have not had the experience, we don’t know what to do.  We don’t get born into this world with a set of rules, but we evolve through live with experiences. We get taught how to handle things, how to avoid certain things and how to respond.  When we are not equipped, we develop our own rules and then we can even be resentful of those that did not warn us, as well as those who hurt us. We don’t ignore those moments, we keep an internal record.  There are inevitably a list of events that you experienced growing up that hurt your feelings or disappointed you.  They are foundational bricks that define many of our own standards.

When shame becomes lodged in our hearts, it eventually impacts our words and behaviors.

No one arrives to adulthood without some heart damage. Dents and dings.  There is a Christian song with lyrics that share this struggle:

“Cause I got a couple dents in my fender. Got a couple rips in my jeans. Try to fit the pieces together, but perfection is my enemy.” – My Paper Heart by Francesca Battistelli

Heart issues always take the toll on relationships. One of the common sayings in Celebrate Recovery that refers to this is:

Hurt people, hurt people

Our inner desires to be accepted and be loved, we don’t want to hurt people, so we hide our heart wounds. We pretend that we don’t have the damage, we are not vulnerable.  Now we get to a point of understanding why we do what we do. When we catch ourselves doing or saying something we don’t like, we pause and try to identify what caused us to do that.

Faith Erosions

In many situations, when people get hurt enough, they begin to lose hope. People get hurt and wounded and develop coping skills. Not only that, they limit the potential change that can be made in their life. They feel that their past experiences justify not engaging in the unknown. If they ever had a relationship with God, or if they did not know of him, they don’t trust change can happen. This is common when people of abuse attempt to “do church”, but then get exhausted from trying to pretend their feelings don’t matter or they are bad people because of what has been done to them.

If this is a challenge you have, Andy referred to another book you might find beneficial: Disappointment with God by Phillip Yancey.  You can get it online, electronically or even in audio format.

Assignment: Read chapters 5 and 6 and we will meet back again for discussions on “DEEPER DEBTS”