When I drove our boys to Fayetteville for the 2003 Pilgrimage, my car broke down. Upon the mechanic’s examination, we learned the timing chain broke. He was not sure, it would nor how it would run if I wanted him to fix it.

When I picked the repaired car up on Friday, I talked with the mechanic about various problems the car went through earlier. He said it was possible that a weakening timing chain would lead to the EGR Valve code calling for its replacement; the alternator going out; the motor mounts being replaced; too many service codes at one time to know what the real problem was; and the deterioration of the car’s internal computer. I don’t think the fuel pump breaking down could be tied back to the downfall of the timing chain.

Truly, this small but very important part of a car’s engine is its heart. For a good while, I had been so busy dealing with symptoms that I did not even wonder if there was a deeper problem. I was considering putting a new computer in the car at some point thinking that would get to the heart of the multiple engine codes. Well, I now know even that would have only been treating another symptom.

Our hearts are very similar to an engine’s timing chain. We can loose our perspective in treating symptoms instead of seeing how our heart is doing. As we begin a new year, we probably desire God’s grace to help in some area(s) of our life. Are we asking for the correction of a symptom? Have we asked God to show us the condition of our hearts?

The Early Church Father, Irenaeus, said that “The Glory of God is man fully alive.” The Son of God was not incarnate to demonstrate who God is, to die on the cross and to raise from the dead to make bad people good and good people better. No, he came to wake up the dead! Jesus’ mission was to give us a new heart! Christ offers us a new life now! 

Since the Glory of God and our being fully alive in Jesus are bound together, do you see why the enemy of our souls terrorizes our hearts so fiercely! Despite what some may preach, teach or write neither the Christian life nor full time Christian ministry is The Wizard of Oz, Mayberry RFD, Seinfeld’s world nor Survivor. It is much more like The Lord of the Rings.

We live on a battlefield of the longest lasting world war in history. (For a vivid presentation of how the early church struggled with this, check out the VHS or DVD version of The Apocalypse with Richard Harris.) The focus of this world war is for people’s hearts. The enemy of our souls does not want your heart to be fully alive in Christ for Satan abhors God’s glory and fears what you could be or once were with a vital heart.

Jesus said for every one of us to guard our hearts. Biblically speaking, you are not your mind. You have a mind that processes information. Nor are you your emotions for they are the voice of the real you, your heart. Your heart, the real you, lives very much in touch with the horrors and awesome realities of birth, life and death.

People who live only out of their minds put forth a false self and come across to others as detached and unavailable. As someone once said “those who cease to feel, cease to learn because the numb become dumb. “You are never a great man when you have more mind than heart.” Beauchene

Others who live out of their emotions often experience their minds filling them with condemnation over the past or anxious worry about the future. Neither Star Trek’s “Mr. Spock,” the television detective “Monk,” Martin Luther before his conversion, nor John Wesley before his heart warming experience were fully alive in their hearts.

Prayerfully consider the condition of your timing chain, your heart, with these modified questions from John Eldredge’s A Guidebook for Waking the Dead.

1. Are you living only to be efficient?

2. Are you mainly concerned about productivity?

3. Is your primary motivation personal safety?

4. Do you lust for others will notice and remember you for your busyness?

5. Are you consumed with niceness so everyone will love you?

6. Is most of your Christian activity done under pressure?

7. Has your life become exclusively routine, mundane… living in a malaise or fog bank?

8. Is your work or calling mostly a drudgery?

9. Do you have little passion for beauty and adventure?

10. Do you rarely laugh deeply or weap?

11. Have you become preoccupied with you,   your needs, desires, wounds.

12. Men has boredom led you to have socially accepted or hidden compulsive addictions, behaviors, etc?

13. Women have you lost yourself in business and thus have socially accepted or hidden compulsive addictions, excessive behaviors in shopping or in volunteering, memberships in clubs, etc?

Do you remember the theme song, The Eye of the Tiger, from Rocky III? One line in this song stands out the most and fits the theme of the movie “traded his passion for glory.” Rocky worried about loosing all of the things his career had brought to him. Thus, he lost heart as a boxer. His wife, Adrian, confronts him on the beach about his lack of heart and why? She answers his emotional reasoning about the future with “So, we will still have each other.” Sometimes I think Jesus is saying the same thing to individual clergy, laity, congregations, districts, conferences, and other Christian organizations. Have you traded in your passion and true glory in Christ and brought disrespect to the Glory of God by contentment with the world’s glory?

As a new pastor in the early 1980’s, I remember a brother sharing a very telling story. He told of hearing about an older but not yet retired preacher speaking about his call to ministry. He said that when the man spoke of his calling and early ministry, he became quit alive. However, hardly any trace of such heartiness was present in the man’s ministry now. The man concluded saying, “I don’t want to become a crusty, hardened, embittered preacher like him. I’m at the point in my life and ministry where I see what it takes to be a good pastor and what it takes to climb the latter. I must chose which way to go.” What have you chosen and where has that choice led you?

Some of us knew Wade Goldston, others have heard of him and yet others never have. Either way, what is important about Rev. Goldston was his genuine enthusiasm for Christ, for the Church, for ministry and for life. Years after his retirement, people much younger than him would comment about his enthusiasm. They were amazed! Are those who are younger than us saying the same thing.

Prayerfully reflect upon this closing poem.

  Seminarians

Many are full of joy and live with expectancy,

Some come to hide or to find a new identity.

Some come for knowledge, and others come to grow,

Some are here for one purpose, and others just don't know

Some have just been born again and have some sense of calling.

Many are interested in just content, and others in the grading.

And of the graduating masses that reach this noble plane,

only a handful will bring glory and honor to Jesus’ Name.

Will people find us one day as those in the retired connection as inspiring examples of hearts fully alive?

In Christ,

John M. Crowe, D.Min., APC

Editor, Goldsboro District Newsletter

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