Search & Rescue: A Map for a Warrior's OrientationSample

Day 4: The Heart of the Matter

The Heart is central in the battle between the Two Kingdoms (Light and darkness). An individual’s heart is the very source from where a person chooses his or her side, the place will, belief and choices spring from. It is from the heart we choose which kingdom we will align with and be a citizen.

The heart is more than the repository of our feelings. It is the place where desires, intellect, emotion, reason and motives reside. This is why when you capture a person’s heart, you get the whole person. Both kingdoms know this and are therefore engaged in an epic and ruthless battle for our hearts.

Remember, every heart, at its core, longs for and desires Love. The things I’ve done (and all too often still do) to arrange for some attention or affection for myself aren’t pretty, sometimes my attempts are comical and other times they are desperate and dramatic. 

The ingredients of Love are: validation, acceptance, worth, belonging, significance and affirmation. They are powerful experiences and both kingdoms know how they work. One Kingdom is offering unconditional love, the other is offering adulterated, imitation, performance driven conditional love. 

One frees our hearts, the other enslaves. 

The times I feel most alive are the times I am either receiving or offering the love I am made for. When any one of us says and does life giving things for someone else, or someone offers us validation, encouragement or acceptance ,we are fulfilling the very mission for which God made us: To love one another. 

We are participating in the Larger Story as either a casualty or as royalty. As a Beloved Daughter/Son of God or a captive slave to the kingdom of darkness. With a Kingdom orientation, making a difference, delivering special God-packages and helping change lives by partnering with Jesus to love hearts, there is nothing better. It is impossible to offer something you do not possess. Being loved by God is priority one, then we have a love to offer. If we can receive God’s love, experience it then we are free to love.