32. The Heart
Excerpted from Pastoring Men, Moody Publishers.

Since "the heart" sounds like a "girly" concept to many guys, you will need to help them understand that tending the heart is also manly. Jesus said, "The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks" (Luke 6:45).

The single greatest contribution you can make to your men is to help them change the core affections of their hearts. How? Here are a few suggestions:

• Teach them how to each day come humbly to the foot of the cross and surrender to the lordship of Jesus.
• Teach your men that Christianity is not behavior modification; it's heart transformation.
• It is a spiritual operation first and foremost. Tell your men that they can cooperate with God's sanctification by consecrating themselves to holiness.
• Teach your men that people do exactly what they want to do in their hearts. Their behavior reflects what's in their hearts.
• Since belief determines behavior, teach them this progression:
  Right reading - Right thinking - Right believing - Right behaving
  Therefore, one of the greatest tasks a man can undertake is to align his heart into a one-to-one correlation of his Bible, his belief, and his behavior.

For you? Attend to the core affections of your own heart. Minister out of the overflow of your own expanding relationship with our Lord and Savior Jesus. If you can't, you must go into a quiet wood and stay there until you hear His voice, see His face, feel the warmth of His embrace, and feel the salty taste of repentant tears running down your face.

#412   © 2011. Patrick Morley. All rights reserved. This article may be reproduced
for non-commercial ministry purposes with proper attribution.