The Gift of An Open Heart

Just before we come to this time in the word, which will be somewhat shortened today for the sake of the communion, let's have a word of prayer. And we're going to make this silent prayer time. And I'm going to ask you to bring your heart before the Lord and also just to bring my heart before the Lord that I would be able to speak his word today. That's all prayer. Follow along with me as I read beginning in chapter six, verse one of 2 Corinthians, working together with him, then we entreat you not to accept the grace of God in vain. For he says, at the acceptable time, I have listened to you and helped you. At the day of salvation. Behold, now is the acceptable time. Behold, now is the day of salvation. We put no obstacle in anyone's way so that no fault may be found with our ministry. But as servants of God, we commend ourselves in every way through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, tumults, labors, watching, hunger by purity, knowledge, forbearance, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God. What a list this is. With the weapons of righteousness, for the right hand and for the left, in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute, we are treated as impostors and yet are true, as unknown and yet well known, as dying. And behold, we live as punished and yet not killed, as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing, as poor, yet making many rich, as having nothing and yet possessing everything. Our mouth is open to you, Corinthians. Our heart is wide. You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections. In return. I speak as children. Widen your hearts also. Of all the churches that Paul had the privilege of fathering, the Corinthian church was by far his most difficult charge. Paul found himself continually confronting difficulty with the Corinthians. First of all, it was the cultural setting. Without getting into it in depth, Corinth was the Sodom and Gomorrah of its end. It was perhaps the New York City of today, if not in size, at least in terms of corruption and degradation. It was the place where immorality was so much the norm that literally, to Corinthianize was a coined phrase that one was named if they were immoral. In other words, instead of if a person was really known to have a terrible reputation, morally, they would say that that person was Corinthianized. Now, that just shows you that the city was so fallen in its moral fiber, that it was a mockery to be a Corinthian in terms of one's moral standard. So Paul had all that and all the paganism and all the rest to deal with there seaport setting with sailors coming in and out and the whole business. On top of that, the church life in Corinth was weeded through with a lot of this failure. As you read through the book of Corinth, how many of you ever read that and said, how can these people really call themselves Christians? The kind of things that they're doing there. And you find factions in chapter one, and you find carnality in chapter three, and you find incest in chapter five of 1 Corinthians and sin and all kinds of immorality is spoken of and addressed. And then there's the whole supernaturalism that comes out in chapter 14 and people who are caught up with miracle manifestations but no character to back it up. And then there's the whole thing of hypocrisy and there's meat offered to idols and people who are saying one thing but not living another. And it's the same kind of things that have resulted in churches in America today, where people basically feel that it's all just a big sham anyhow. To be a Christian and to go to church is simply a cover up to kind of give some credibility to one's own standard of morality and self serving righteousness. And that's the kind of thing that caused many people to put on a mask when they go to church. It's the kind of thing that caused people not to be really honest with one another and come and just sit in a pew and be there and be listening and then walk out again and do the same thing they'd always done. See, the lack of reality that was in the Corinthian assembly to some degree has also permeated the church of the 20th century. And people confront reality by putting on a mask, a lack of reality by putting on a mask. They hold back, there's caution. Nobody will dive into a pond that's so shallow that they can see the bottom. That's the way it is in many churches today. People don't get into it because they can see the bottom and it's shallow on top of the fact of the culture and the church. Paul had the third oppressive thing about the Corinthian church, and that was that the people thought some sort of a charlatan. And he was accused of all kinds of things. He was accused of being less than anyone else. He was charged with being there to take money from them. And other apostles had come in and sought to discredit Paul's ministry and the gospel that he preached. I mean to tell you, he had it rough there. He would write to them and the Bible says he wrote with tears. And I could picture the paper being wrinkled from the fact that he was so torn up inside over this people rejection, put downs. And he ends up the letter by having to defend himself. Remember that in 2 Corinthians he says, I'm a fool to have to defend myself like this. And yet it's so amazing to me that he says these words. Now we're back in 2 Corinthians 6:11, our mouth is open to you. Corinthians, our heart is wide. Now, at Northway we would probably more identify with the first part of that verse. And not necessarily in relationship to talking. Generally when we get together, our mouth is open wide. We're putting something in there to eat. But the Greek phrase literally means I speak freely. I'm speaking freely to you. Corinthians, because out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Right, Matthew. And Paul says, here, our heart is wide open to you. Now the word there has the sense of being enlarged. Paul had an enlarged heart. It literally comes from the word to be broad. It's wide open, it's broad, it's enlarged toward them. He had learned the tremendous quality of the gift of an open heart. I don't know how he did it in the face of what he received from the Corinthians, but he says he has an open heart. What does that mean? What does it mean to have a heart that's not restricted? You see, our hearts. And the Greek word for today, if I would have had the time to do it, was the word heart, kardia, which, from which word do you hear that we use there? Cardiac. Right. And that's the Greek word. But it starts with A K, K, A R, D, I, A. And that word began initially to mean that organ in our body, but soon to the Greeks began to mean everything that has to do with the life flow of man. You see, because the heart was the place where life was flowing from. And so it quickly came to mean everything that had to do with life. It had to do with. With affections and where one poured his self or herself into life. And that's what the word meant when Paul said, here our heart is open, our affections are enlarged towards you. And what are some of the things that restrict our Affections, brothers and sisters, what causes our hearts to be constricted? It's fear, isn't it? It's fear that somehow we'll lose the respect of another brother. If someone really knows me, if I open my heart and I enlarge myself toward them and I let them look inside of me, then they're really going to know that I'm full of sin deep inside. And so we constrict our hearts. It's the insecurities that we feel that I'm not really as spiritual as this sister is. And if I take the risk and if I let my heart open to her, she's going to realize that, boy, she knows Jesus a lot better than I do, and she's going to think less of me. And all kinds of things constrict our hearts. You walk into a high school dining room today and you just put a wall around your heart because people are looking for things to step on, things to criticize. There's so many things in our culture that cause us to constrict our hearts. And in fact, it seemed to be, isn't it, weakness in our culture to have a warm and open heart? The macho, keep the people at a distance. Use this one when you need it and put it back. Use this one when you need it and put her back. In fact, affection has been so distorted in our culture that for a man. And I'll tell you, I struggle with this every time I. If I meet a man, one of the brothers here in the fellowship for breakfast, and we go to Eaton park and we have a lovely time sharing Jesus together. And on the way out in the car, we pause and we give one another a holy hug. I just, you know, there's that thing that's inside of me that the people in the restaurant are looking at and saying, yeah, yeah. It's a sickening thing. Because all along, that's what Jesus intended for us. That's what God the Father intended for there to be love, you see, and we're restricted in our affections. These are things that squeeze the heart. But Paul said, my heart is open. Paul said, my heart is full of affection towards you. And I love that. The vulnerability, the openness in the face of all the rejection that he had. Paul was willing to say, my heart is wide open to you. And I believe, brothers and sisters, that there is a secret here to receiving from God, to receiving from one another, that we might come into a posture of having an open heart. Interestingly, when I was thinking about this morning in My notes, I mentioned what it said in Acts chapter two, that they partook of food with glad and generous hearts. The idea of a giving heart, an open heart. Now, Paul so saw this to be essential, that. Look what he says over in chapter seven and in verse three. You know, I have a quote I want to read. And somewhere around here is my little briefcase that has. I want to. There's a Phillips Bible in there. Jan, would you get it out? Thanks. Praise the Lord. Look at verse three of chapter seven. I do not say this to condemn you, for I said before that you are in our hearts to die together and to live together. You see, when a heart really is open, what God wants to do is to so blend our hearts together in this community that we die together and live together. I love it. Just to me, it says that's what it means to be in relationship with God and with one another, that our hearts are so knitted, they're so open, that we are free to die together as well as to live together. Now, I have to say that I see what Paul says, and I have to say this. I see it coming in our fellowship. I rejoice in what I see at Northway and the opening of hearts. I rejoice in the people that are giving expression of the unconstricting of their heart toward God. People who are learning to realize that their heart is connected to their arms, that they can praise the Lord and be open and let the flow of the Holy Spirit. You know, the Holy Spirit always flows down. And I always like to think that when you raise your hand, you're just a little closer to getting it turned. Praise the Lord. He flows down through you. And some of you are learning how to unconstrict your heart toward God in that way. Some of you are unconstricting your heart. You're widening your heart by reading the Word every day. How many people are working their way through the New Testament with us? All right. Praise the Lord. Just keep doing that every day, enlarging your heart toward God as you read in His Word. And some people are finding that they're opening their heart toward one another. A couple, for the first time, was able to share in a home group of their marriage problem. And God was able to begin to minister life to them. Another family gave the Mossbergs a van for a month to go work on their album. You see, there's things that are happening. There's expression, there's an unrestricting of our affections. And love is being poured out, and it's A blessing to see it. It's a blessing to see people who are actively opening wide their hearts to one another. And I believe that we're just seeing the beginning of it and not the end of it. Hallelujah. There is no greater evidence to me of this openheartedness than what I experienced in the last two days with the brothers on the servants council. As we considered this matter of eldership, there was a sense that we shared of open heartedness there that in my experience, I don't believe I've ever seen anything quite like wasn't, that we were just open with one another, but that we were open toward what heart things were happening in the community through the people that God had brought forth as candidates for this office of an elder. And you know, how many of you ever got the message that you were supposed to read 1st Samuel 16 as part of it that somehow got lost in the prayer chain if you read that. Remember that was the section where the Lord told Samuel to look for the man that he was to anoint as king. And he goes in and he sees all these sons of Jesse, he sees all the fine, mature men, all these things. And God says, don't look at the outward appearance because I don't look at the heart. Well, that's what we tried to do in this matter of eldership. And you know something? There's a sense in which when you begin to talk about the hearts of men, you realize that you're walking in an area that's very difficult to define. The only confidence that we had was that the prayers of the body and the support of the people of God was moving us through this matter and that the Lord was enabling us to discern the hearts of men. What we tried to do was to consider each man that you gave to us. And I can say to you that there was an integrity and a purity about it. And I wanted to read this verse in the Phillips translation right at the end of the where we've been here in 2 Corinthians 7, he translates verse 4 this way. Let me just pick it up at verse three. I don't say this to condemn your attitude, but simply because, as I said before, whether we meet death or life together, you live in our hearts. I talk to you with utter frankness. I think of you with deepest pride. That's the way I'd like to be with people. How about you talk to them with utter frankness? Think of them with deepest pride. Hallelujah. That's the kind of heart I want to have toward People, that's what the Lord was trying to release in our midst. We were delighted in the sense that this body had. As we gathered together and submitted names. You submitted 37 names of men as potential elders. 37 names of men as potential elders. One woman's name appeared. That was Amy Saffold. But then we realized that she'd signed her own. Wasn't any crisis, no problem. But it shocked us in a sense, but blessed us that you felt that there was that number of men that were coming forth with the qualities that we took the time to go through, and eldership and the functioning and all the rest. And it was a blessing to us to see that. And then our mouths, we began to speak freely, to speak freely about each brother, sharing our hearts, about their heart. And the way we did it was that the servants council came up with their list of names. Before we knew what your list of names as a body was. And do you know, this is really amazing to me, we came up with 18 names to consider. And the top 16 people on the body's list of names were in our first 18. In other words, there was only two people that we considered that were not in the top 16 names that you submitted in terms of total number. Now, we didn't know this. No one ever knew the absolute numbers. We decided to stay away from that. And all we listened to was whether or not a person was in a particular quadrant, as it were, section, because we wanted to be free to not, you know, not to consider weightedness before we considered character and those kind of things. So praise the Lord. We began to work and sharing our hearts that way and the hearts of each man as we knew it. And we considered four different things. And I share these with you so you can know how we dealt with the hearts of one another. We dealt with the whole matter of character. Remember the 18 or 21, depending on what list you have. The list of character qualities from First Timothy and from Titus. And then we talked about function. And you may remember that's a very, very important thing. I think many people submitted names of brothers that they knew whose life they felt was just absolutely irreproachable. But in our minds there was some question in their capacity to function in the role of elder. That is outlined pretty heavily on the tape of two weeks ago, this coming Tuesday, the first elders meeting. We talked about the need for an elder to lead and to feed, to stand firm and to defend in these kinds of things. Things. And so we considered that some of the men were not really ready for Appointment at this time because of that functioning area. And some of the men, it was simply a matter of timing, that because of circumstance in their life or because of something else that was happening in their life, that the timing was not really right for them. They may have met all the qualifications, but in terms of the timing of their life right now and other things that were happening, marriage or job situations or whatever, but this was a time to wait and to focus on those things. And in some cases, men disqualified themselves. In some cases, men just believed that this wasn't the time for them either. And so the freedom of expression that we had there to honestly share about one another's heart, to look at the widened hearts of men, enabled us to seek God for his best, for this moment, for his perfect will at this moment. And not in any way to put a judgment on any man for whom the timing wasn't right or for whom there was an area in which they were dealing, but simply to say, lord, we want your word for now. And we know that these brethren are free by your grace to come on, as you say, the time is right. And out of those 37 men, we came up with five names. Five names, you say? Wow, you did a lot of cutting there, didn't you? Let me just throw out a couple factors in my heart about this. First is our body in terms of publicly, corporately, is less than a year old, 10 months. That's not a lot of time. And one of the principal ingredients of eldership is recognition. And it takes time to be recognized as a brother who's moving in love and submission and authority. And we felt that was really a significant thing that we just couldn't. There was a lot of men that we sensed, as you do, tremendous potential. But in terms of timing, there just hadn't been time for that potential to be realized, to be expressed. Then another thing I thought was quite interesting. Turn your bibles to Acts 6, would you? Hang in there. Second Corinthians. Keep your thumb there so you can get back to it real quickly. Look at Acts 6. I'll be done here in a moment. Acts 6. This is where the early apostles and the first church in Jerusalem, it's growing. There's both Greeks and Hebrews are Hellenists. Now let's pick it up. Verse 1. Now, in these days, when the disciples were increasing in number, the Hellenists murmured against the Hebrews because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution. This church is just burgeoning with life. They have Hellenists, which are Greek speaking Hebrews and the twelve summoned the body of the disciples and said, it is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brethren, pick out from among you how many seven men of good repute, full of the Holy Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may appoint to this duty. How many people were in the church when seven deacons were appointed? At least 5,000. You say, wow, they must have been good administrators. Well, the point would be that I'm sure that they took with them then men that they could trust and women that they could trust. And they set that up. And we believed that it was the mind of God toward us to begin with. A small number, and for a third reason. We don't see this eldership as being something that's going to happen every couple of years or even every year. But we believe that we'll continually be open for the opportunity for men to come up as God sets them forth. And it may be just a matter of months. In fact, I believe in the case of a few brothers, it will be. It's a matter of months before it will be clear that God's timing is right in their life to come forth. And so for those reasons, we believe that the number that the Lord gave us in conclusion was the number that he desired. And so I want to say to you today we need to widen our hearts to embrace these brothers. We need to be able in the grace of God, to affirm them, to. To enlarge our hearts toward them, as I believe you were so faithful to do toward the servants council. And before I share the names of these brothers with you and the rest of the procedure because of a word that was given to me this morning, I want to conclude with why I believe it's essential that we set our hearts to be opened and widened in the weeks and months ahead. Turn with me to Isaiah 60. Isaiah 60. I won't be able to really develop this passage at all today. You need to see this, though. This is a prophetic passage of Scripture about Zion's restoration, which means it's about the final consummation of the Lord. But how many of you know, you've heard me say this, and I hope you've received it, that every prophetic scripture has a fulfillment and a consummation. The fulfillment is for today, by faith. The consummation is when Jesus comes. If you don't understand prophetic scripture in that light, then you'll read through a lot of this and say, well, gee, I'm looking forward to when you come back Lord said, and that's not what it's meant to be. Brothers, sisters, it's meant to be for you. Now, by the grace of God and consummated or completed, when Jesus comes back, the Lord put this scripture on my heart for this body. Here we go. Arise, shine, for your light has come and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For, behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples. But the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you. And nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising. Lift up your eyes round about and see. They all gather together. They come to you. Your son shall come from afar, and your daughters shall be carried in the arms. Then you shall see and be radiant. Your heart shall thrill and literally, in the Hebrew, and be enlarged. If you have a, like a Harper study Bible, it says that in the note, your heart shall thrill and rejoice. Your heart shall thrill and be enlarged. And the abundance of the sea shall be turned to you, and the wealth of nations shall come to you. And I see, brothers and sisters, five ways that the Lord is going to enlarge our hearts. Here they are. You might want to write them down. First of all, he's going to enlarge our hearts through the glory of the Lord. The music ministry and the worship ministry, the ministry and power of the Holy Spirit is going to pour out in glorious blessing in this fellowship. And it will be a season when we can enlarge our heart of love toward God. That's number one. The glory of the Lord has risen upon you. What a tremendous word that is. I pray you'll meditate on these scriptures and receive them. The Lord is also going to enlarge your heart through darkness, brothers and sisters. And before it comes, it's good to know that darkness is for the purpose of widening your capacity to love. Tom Megham shared with us on Thursday. I want to urge you, get that tape. On Thursday night, Tom shared how his experience of being arrested at the border on his fourth trip into the Soviet Union so multiplied his love for imprisoned people and for people who aren't free. You see darkness, that terrible experience, terrifying experience of being imprisoned, freed his heart, enlarged his heart toward people. Some of you in relationships are going to go through dark times. God's going to enlarge your heart. Some of you are going to go through job situations and it's going to be dark, but God's enlarging your heart. Some of you are going to sense that God is far off because there's darkness around the throne, but he's enlarging your heart. The third thing that the Lord says he's going to do, nations will come to Your light, verse 3, and kings to the brightness of your rising. And the only thing I could apply here was, I believe that we're going to grow as an intercessory prayer fellowship. We're going to grow in the prayer for nations, brothers and sisters. Not just throw up a prayer for Poland once a week. But God's going to multiply that in us, and we're going to have an authority of prayer. We're going to see nations affected. Fourth, look at this. They all gather together. They come to you. Your son shall come from afar. I believe that if we're faithful to the things God calls us to, if we keep our eyes on Jesus, not on the elders, not on the structure, not on the system, not on anything but on Jesus, people are going to come to us from afar. What we've seen as growth in this less than one year is going to be multiplied. If our hearts will. No people will do that to you. They'll enlarge you or they'll crush you. You can pray for me right now because I feel somewhat crushed by the weight of all the people. You can pray that God teaches me how to release that to others of you who are more qualified than I am. It's just getting us coordinated, getting us free, but multiple. Listen, some of you in home groups, you need to decide if you're going to stay comfortable in that home group until Jesus comes back. If you're going to set yourself out there to double in size and as Alan Lynn said, to reach out to the people who don't know what it means to be loved in your neighborhood, enlarge our hearts. And finally, because of the abundance of the sea that shall be turned to us and the wealth of the nations, we haven't begun. We haven't begun to know the outpouring of abundance that God's going to channel through this community as we grow in that faithfulness. I believe that God wants to send out people in missions. I believe he wants to raise up an outreach. The North Hills is really, really impoverished in terms of outreach. And we need to be reaching our Judea and our Samaria and then the outermost parts of the earth. So God would use these five things to enlarge our hearts, to widen the capacity to love. And as we move to communion today, I'm going to ask you to do this. I'm going to Say, Lord, where do I need to be enlarged? Where does my heart need to be unrestricted? In what affections have I been squeezed tightly? Do I need to be open to new people? Do I need to be open to your hand at work in my dark circumstances, Lord, do I need to be aware of the fact that I'm living in a new glory that I've not known because of the praise life that you've brought me into? And I need to be sharing that life and that love, you know, communion to me, I guess. Bottom line, simple layman's language. It's the heart of God. It's his blood and his body. It's his heart. He's saying to us, I poured out my life for you. I. I've opened wide my heart to you. Christian, non Christian, faithful saint, lowly sinner. And now will you open wide your heart to me? The Lord's table is available to all who will come. The only restriction that the Lord says, the only qualification he puts on it, is that you come and receive him in doing that. I'm going to ask us to pray here in a moment, and I want to ask you a question. Have you received the Lord Jesus? Have you opened wide your heart to the living God? I stand in the privileged position of giving an invitation to the table to which we've all been invited, not by man, but by God. I believe that Jesus Christ is moving right here today, right now. I look in some of your eyes and realize that you're not sure. You don't know that you have a relationship with him. I want to ask you now, would you pray and say, lord, I open wide my heart to you. Forgive my sin and give me new life. Let's pray together. Hallelujah. Lord, you just talk to God. Go ahead. Wherever you are and whoever you are, you tell him what's on your mind and heart right now. Thank you, Jesus. Are there any here today that would say, I know that I want to be right with God. I want my heart to be the dwelling place of the living God. You may not understand what I'm saying in your mind, but you know that my words inside of you are causing something to happen. You want to know the reality of this life in Jesus? You want your heart to be wide open to God. Beloved friend, if that's the desire of your heart, if you want that, if you want to have Jesus in your life while everyone else is praying now and has their head bowed for the sake of your own dealing with God, would you lift your head and let Our eyes meet. If that's the desire of your heart, just let our eyes meet. That'll be your sign. Is that why you're looking at me, ma'? Am? God bless you. Receive life in Jesus today. Is there anyone else? Is that why are you looking at me, sir? Just tap the brother next to you and tell him I'm opening my heart to the Lord. Go ahead. Just tap him right here. Don't understand. Go ahead, tell him. Go ahead. Praise the Lord. Is there anyone else? You just lift your eyes and let her eyes in. If I miss you, slip your hand up because there's a lot of faces on there. Slip your hand up and let our eyes meet for just a moment. Is that why you're looking at me? You want to be sure of that in your own life. Okay. Praise the Lord. Thank you, Jesus. Don't look up at me unless that's the desire of your heart. Just for the sake of those who really need to know, know this day. Anyone else in the back? Just slip your hand up in case I can't see you back there? Yes, sir. Okay. Receive that assurance. Just tap that brother and tell him, I want to be sure today about my life in Jesus. Go ahead. Praise the Lord. I just want to be sure today that my heart is open wide to Jesus, maybe. Amen. Thank you, Lord. Praise the Lord. Are there others today that would say, I have a restriction in my heart toward God and I want to be set free of that bondage Today? That's just before the Lord. You just lift, lift your head to him and tell him, I want to be free of a bondage. You don't have to tell any other man. You just tell the Lord that. Praise God, Lord Jesus, for these several today who have said yes to you, Lord, we pray that the power of the Holy Spirit would come upon them and set free every bondage, Lord, that the Holy Spirit would come and give a beautiful revelation of the life of Jesus who would come in and live in their hearts. Now, Father and Lord, teach us as a congregation, as an assembly, how to care for these young ones, Lord, to raise them to maturity by your grace. Thank you, Lord. Praise the name of you, Lord. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord, everyone. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Lord. Amen. As we come to this time of sharing in the cup and in the loaf, we have the logistical problem of arranging ourselves in circles of maybe 12 or 15, something that size, not any bigger than that. And I'd like to suggest that very quickly and very quietly, we do that right now. 10 we've got enough cups and enough loaves so that there can be 10 in your circle, and we'll have plenty. We can. You know, the chairs can be shifted toward the back into the open space just a little bit. Do that quickly now, and then we'll call you to order in just a minute.