Thomas started attending Little Learners classes with his mom at the zoo when he turned three. January’s first class was rescheduled due to ice and snow, but he made it up this week. He learned that an octopus has eight arms, nine brains, and three hearts. Scientists believe that three hearts are necessary to circulate blood throughout the entire body for octopuses to survive at great depths. The pressure exerted on their bodies by the water requires their central heart serving their core and their adjacent hearts servicing their arms. Additionally, each arm is covered with suction cups capable of carrying up to twenty pounds each.
As I listened while my daughter reviewed these facts with her son, a mental image began forming in my own mind. Are you surviving in a hostile environment under constant pressure while carrying excessive baggage? How is your one heart fairing?
“The Lord is close to those whose hearts have been broken.
He saves those whose spirits have been crushed.”
Psalm 34:18 NIRV
https://bible.com/bible/110/psa.34.18.NIRV
“If your heart is broken, you’ll find God right there; if you’re kicked in the gut, he’ll help you catch your breath.”
Psalms 34:18 MSG
https://bible.com/bible/97/psa.34.18.MSG
“The Lord is close to all whose hearts are crushed by pain, and he is always ready to restore the repentant one.”
Psalms 34:18 TPT
https://bible.com/bible/1849/psa.34.18.TPT
“The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit.
You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God.”
Psalms 51:17 NLT
https://bible.com/bible/116/psa.51.17.NLT
We are much more than physical beings. Possessing intellect and emotion is part of what it means to be created in the image of God, but our eternal nature is our most godlike quality. As the heart has become the seat of the emotions and the brain houses intellect, soul best expresses our being. The psalmist, David, under the inspiration of the Spirit of God, composed a song celebrating God’s presence throughout all of life. Hear his pondering as the answer you’re needing to the questions of existence and purpose in your life’s most difficult situations.
“O Lord, you have examined my heart and know everything about me.
You know when I sit down or stand up.
You know my thoughts even when I’m far away.
You see me when I travel and when I rest at home.
You know everything I do.
You know what I am going to say even before I say it, Lord.
You go before me and follow me.
You place your hand of blessing on my head.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too great for me to understand!
I can never escape from your Spirit!
I can never get away from your presence!
If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the grave, you are there.
If I ride the wings of the morning, if I dwell by the farthest oceans, even there your hand will guide me, and your strength will support me.
I could ask the darkness to hide me and the light around me to become night— but even in darkness I cannot hide from you.
To you the night shines as bright as day.
Darkness and light are the same to you.
You created the deepest parts of my being.
You put me together inside my mother’s body.
How you made me is amazing and wonderful.
I praise you for that.
What you have done is wonderful.
I know that very well.
None of my bones was hidden from you when you made me inside my mother’s body.
That place was as dark as the deepest parts of the earth.
When you were putting me together there, your eyes saw my body even before it was formed.
You planned how many days I would live.
You wrote down the number of them in your book before I had lived through even one of them.
How precious are your thoughts about me, O God.
They cannot be numbered!
I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand!
And when I wake up, you are still with me!”
Psalms 139:1-18 NLT
https://bible.com/bible/116/psa.139.1-18.NLT
“For in Him we live and move and exist [that is, in Him we actually have our being], as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.’”
Acts 17:28 AMP
https://bible.com/bible/1588/act.17.28.AMP
“Even there,” David asserts, “even there your hand will guide me, and your strength will support me.”
Psalms 139:10 NLT
https://bible.com/bible/116/psa.139.10.NLT
Even where? We are surviving day to day in a hostile environment under constant pressure while carrying excessive baggage. No question about it. Jesus promised His first followers that in this world we will have many troubles. If they hated Him, they will hate us because of Him. Families will be divided, we will face mocking and persecution in His name. The writer of Hebrews, attempting to give a realistic account of the suffering of God’s faithful followers, pointed to a hope we share by unwavering faith in our Lord Jesus.
“By faith these people overthrew kingdoms, ruled with justice, and received what God had promised them.
They shut the mouths of lions, quenched the flames of fire, and escaped death by the edge of the sword.
Their weakness was turned to strength.
They became strong in battle and put whole armies to flight.
Women received their loved ones back again from death.
But others were tortured, refusing to turn from God in order to be set free.
They placed their hope in a better life after the resurrection.
Some were jeered at, and their backs were cut open with whips.
Others were chained in prisons.
Some died by stoning, some were sawed in half, and others were killed with the sword.
Some went about wearing skins of sheep and goats, destitute and oppressed and mistreated.
They were too good for this world, wandering over deserts and mountains, hiding in caves and holes in the ground.
All these people earned a good reputation because of their faith, yet none of them received all that God had promised.
For God had something better in mind for us, so that they would not reach perfection without us.”
Hebrews 11:33-40 NLT
https://bible.com/bible/116/heb.11.33-40.NLT
By faith, recognizing the limitations of our own bodies and minds, accepting our own mortality, we begin to invest in our spiritual well-being in equal measures.
“Physical training is good, but training for godliness is much better, promising benefits in this life and in the life to come.”
1 Timothy 4:8 NLT
https://bible.com/bible/116/1ti.4.8.NLT
We must also acknowledge by faith the image of God in each of His children.
“Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’
This is the first and greatest commandment.
A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.””
Matthew 22:37-40 NLT
https://bible.com/bible/116/mat.22.40.NLT
We’re all surviving in the same hostile environment. Being formed in the image of our Creator means that we belong with Him in His perfect home. What the apostle Paul refers to as groaning is that unsettled yearning we all sense, perhaps more intensely in times of difficulty. It’s that undeniable human uncertainty and discontent that has plagued our race ever since the Fall. We cannot put a finger on it so we seek to diagnose and cure it, to drown it out, to outrun it or hide from it, but the psalmist is right. There is nowhere I can go from the presence of the One who created me and knows me intimately. I am destined for Him and apart from Him, I am nothing. Only in Him am I whole.
“For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are.
Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse.
But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay.
For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering.
We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us.
We were given this hope when we were saved.
(If we already have something, we don’t need to hope for it.
But if we look forward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently.)
And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness.
For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words.
And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will.
And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.
For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.
And having chosen them, he called them to come to him.
And having called them, he gave them right standing with himself.
And having given them right standing, he gave them his glory.
What shall we say about such wonderful things as these?
If God is for us, who can ever be against us?
Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else?
Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own?
No one—for God himself has given us right standing with himself.
Who then will condemn us?
No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us.
Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love?
Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death?
No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.
And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love.
Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love.
No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Romans 8:19-35, 37-39 NLT
https://bible.com/bible/116/rom.8.19-29.NLT
Coupled with Peter’s assertion that it is not God’s will that any should perish apart from Him but that all should come to repentance and faith in His one and only Son, Jesus, we are assured that the abundant life God intends is possible, even in a world hostile to the gospel of Jesus Christ and those who follow Him. Scripture should encourage us.
“But all that is recorded here is so that you will fully believe that Jesus is the Anointed One, the Son of God, and that through your faith in him you will experience eternal life by the power of his name!”
John 20:31 TPT
https://bible.com/bible/1849/jhn.20.31.TPT
“Christ’s resurrection is your resurrection too.
This is why we are to yearn for all that is above, for that’s where Christ sits enthroned at the place of all power, honor, and authority!
Yes, feast on all the treasures of the heavenly realm and fill your thoughts with heavenly realities, and not with the distractions of the natural realm.
Your crucifixion with Christ has severed the tie to this life, and now your true life is hidden away in God in Christ.
And as Christ himself is seen for who he really is, who you really are will also be revealed, for you are now one with him in his glory!”
Colossians 3:1-4 TPT
https://bible.com/bible/1849/col.3.1-4.TPT
So I ask again, how is your one one heart fairing? When my focus is on eternals, I take Jesus’s final command to heart.
“we — we love him, because He — He first loved us;”
1 John 4:19 YLT98
https://bible.com/bible/821/1jn.4.19.YLT98
“Our love for others is our grateful response to the love God first demonstrated to us.”
1 John 4:19 TPT
https://bible.com/bible/1849/1jn.4.19.TPT
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