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Let's Get to the Heart
by Mary Hake, OCW President
 I have been thinking about the heart quite often lately, since I’ve been experiencing problems with my own heart. I do want to thank everyone who has prayed for my health and ask you to please continue to do so.
My thoughts have also moved beyond the physical organ to the use of the word “heart” to capture the vital essence of something. The Bible often uses “heart” to express the innermost part of a person. “Heart” is also interchanged with “soul” in Scripture to indicate the center of spiritual activity and direction for one’s life. The heart is also the seat of our conscience.
God tells us the heart must be changed for a person to be transformed spiritually. Praise God—He is in the business of healing hearts, both spiritually and physically. While He may not give a new heart in the natural sense, we know He will always perform a “heart transplant” for the sinner who comes to Him in repentance. Our hearts mark us as righteous, pure, kind and good, or the opposite.
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Let's Listen
Listening is the work of the Christian being led by the Holy Spirit.
 Mary Hake, OCW President
Listening is one area where I am weak. I’m much more adept at talking and writing. Listening comes hard—it takes more concentrated effort. I find it especially difficult to quiet my overactive mind before the Lord, to be still and experience Him as God. Psalm 46:10 in the Amplified Version says, “Let be and be still, and know (recognize and understand) that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations! I will be exalted in the earth!”
The Lord wants us to know Him and to honor Him. As we immerse ourselves in His Word and commune with Him in prayer (this involves listening!), we get to know Him better and better. We are to bring Him glory in every area of our lives, including our writing, which goes out to all the earth.
Following are some guidelines for listening to the Lord during the writing process.
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A lmost daily I step out my patio door to look past my arborvitae, strain to see over the fence, stare across the busy street and study what I have always thought were two large trees. The one tree is definitely a pine and the other a deciduous tree.
Today as I studied the trees I noticed bright golden tips of growth on the branches of the pine tree. The deciduous tree seemed to divide the pine tree. The golden tips on the ends of the pine branches on both sides of the leaves clued me in. In this moment of new awareness, I studied to understand what was really happening.
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 DJ Young, OCW President As I sat across the desk from her, my banker took all the steps to help keep this from doing any more harm, and then she helped me get back on track. Because I’m a writer, I couldn’t help thinking how wonderful it is when God uses a Christian writer to help someone get back on track. In God’s plan, people are to find their identity in Him, but the enemy of souls sets out to steal their identity. At first, like me, they don’t know it is happening. They live their lives as if everything is OK, and only when they come upon a problem do they realize what has happened. If they are fortunate, a Christian writer has labored through the same issue and has spent hours exploring the depths of the false identity and worked through the steps toward recovery. |
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OCW President DJ Young |
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