Is your heart right? Do you treat people the way you should? Perhaps you need a treatment. Listen in and see what to do.
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Welcome to God's Toolbox, the Bible. Today's topic is heart trouble. Yes, troubles of the heart. That means that we're having problems with love and kindness and empathy, compassion, and perspective. Being able to feel what other people feel if you were walking in their shoes. If you can't do that, if you have trouble loving others, then you are having heart problems. And the Bible says, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. So we've seen as of late how mean-spirited and what ugly things and unkind things people say to one another. Why do they do it? What would make them say something ugly to someone else? Well, the scripture tells us, out of the abundance of the heart, however your heart is, that's what you're going to say from your mouth.
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So if you're having heart problems, problems loving people, instead you're hating, jealous of them, resentful, any of those things, then you're having troubles of the heart, and the things that you say are not going to be kind.
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So how do you fix that? How do you fix envy and jealousy and resentment and hatred, pride, selfishness, self-loathing? How do you fix those things? Because those are some very, very serious issues. Let me just say it's not going to happen overnight. But the first step is to recognize that you're feeling those ways. That you have some kind of feeling towards somebody else that's not like Jesus would treat someone. You think about Jesus when he met the woman at the well, he didn't scold her and talk down to her and criticize her for who she was. He simply told her the facts. He said, Yeah, you've had five husbands, and the one we're with now is not your husband. But he didn't talk down to her. He just simply stated a fact, and then he told her that he had living water, and that if she would choose his living water, she would not thirst again. And he told her to go and sin no more. That was love and compassion. Same as he had for the man that had legions of demons inside of him. He loved him and was willing to heal him. Blind Bartimaeus, the woman with the issue of blood, the man at the pool of Bethesda. They all received a healing because Jesus empathized with them and their condition. And he had sympathy on them. He didn't berate them. He didn't oppress them, push them to the margins of society. He touched lepers. He loved the poor as well as the rich. He didn't discriminate, and neither should we. If we're gonna be like Jesus, then we're gonna have to open our heart. Remember how the Grinch had a small heart? But as his heart began to grow, he saw things in a different way. And he wanted to do for others. He wanted to be a part of the celebration for Christmas. Maybe that's it. Maybe that's the heart trouble that most of us have is that our heart is too small. We need to expand it by being more like Jesus. Trying to see things the way he saw them. Do things the way he did them. Speak to people the way he spoke to them. That's it. You start doing those things, your heart will grow. And as your heart grows, then you're gonna change your behavior. So today, let's set out to fix our heart troubles and to love like God did, like he does now, loving everybody and loving him. God bless you. Join us next week for another edition of God's Toolbox, the Bible.
