Who Sits on the Throne of Your Heart?

Who Sits on the Throne of Your Heart? In his book, the Pursuit of God, A. W. Tozer, diagnosed the major problem of modern Christianity. He said, “When religion has said its last word, there is little that we need other than God Himself. The evil habit of seeking God-and effectively prevents us from finding God in full revelation. In the ‘and’ lies our great woe. If we omit the ‘and’we shall soon find God, and in Him we shall find that for which we have all our lives been longing for.”      

 So, who sits on the throne of your heart? Is God sharing it with the ‘ands’ of your life – family, careers, social networks, human ideas/opinions, your pastor, denomination etc.? When a lawyer asked Jesus which of the 10 Commandments was the greatest, the Lord said to him, “Thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all your heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:36-40).

 I checked the meaning of the word “all” in three online dictionaries. Merriam-Webster says it refers to the “whole, entire, total, everything without exception.” Cambridge Dictionary defines ‘all’ as “the complete number or amount, or the whole.” Dictionary.com says ‘all’ denotes “wholly, entirely, completely, fully, utterly, totally, only, exclusively.”

 If we love the LORD with all our hearts, what is left for us to love our neighbours, children and parents with? The story of Ian McCormack, the man who died after he was attacked by five box jellyfish off the island of Mauritius gives us an idea about how we can love God exclusively and still love others. McCormack who met Jesus Christ in his Near Death Experience (NDE) has documented his experiences extensively online. A Movie, The Perfect Wave released in 2014, was based on his encounter with the jellyfish and with Christ.

  After McCormack got married, he had another encounter with Jesus. This time, the Lord addressed the Scriptural demands that we should love God with ‘all’ our hearts. He explained to McCormack that the reason he was not able to meet this demand was that he (McCormack) had partitioned his heart to accommodate God and his wife.

The Lord told him that the demand for believers to love God with all their hearts was not negotiable. He then explained to him that when he (McCormack) yields his entire heart to God, he will be so filled with God’s love to overflowing, and that the overflow will touch everyone that encounters him, including his wife.   

 It was after listening to this aspect of his testimony in a  video he posted on YouTube that I understood the import of Romans 5:5, “Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” Someone once observed that God never asked us to do something that we can do in our own strength.

This captures the essence of the Gospel. We are only able to please God through the instrumentality of the Holy Spirit; otherwise, Jesus Christ died in vain. We must remember that the New Covenant God spoke about in Jeremiah 31:31-34 was in response to the children of Israel not being able to keep the Old initiated under the Mosaic Law.

          Romans 8 verses 3 and 4 explain the Gospel succinctly: “For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful man, as an offering for sin. He thus condemned sin in the flesh, so that the righteous standard of the law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” It is clear from the explanation contained in this Scripture that we cannot love God with all our hearts in our own strength.

 Verse 8 of the cited chapter declares that those who live in the realm of flesh cannot please God. Who then can please God or love Him with the whole heart? The answer is found in Romans 8 verse 9, “But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.” Verse 14 shuts the door against any argument on this matter, “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.”

 If you are finding it difficult to surrender your heart and your life to God, search yourself to ensure that you have received the Holy Spirit at conversion. John 1:12 declares “But as many as received Him (Christ), to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name.” If Jesus has given you power to become a son of God, He would have also given you the Holy Spirit, because this is the seal of God’s ownership of every believer (Ephesians 1:13).

It is however, possible for you to receive the Holy Spirit at conversion and still be your own lord. God created us with a free will; hence, it is your prerogative to yield or not to yield to the leading of the Spirit. Otherwise, Paul would not have charged Galatian believers to “walk in the Spirit, and you will not gratify the cravings of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16).

 Anyone who truly wants to love God with the totality of his or her being will yield to the leading of the Holy Spirit. There is no short cut to living in God’s presence and letting Him sit on the throne of our hearts.