The heart is the place where we experience the full width and depth of life. We dream our wildest dreams, protect our most private secrets, and root our deepest loves. Holding such treasures, your heart is not only valuable and purposeful, but it is also vulnerable. It is here that you experience the most intense joy and absorb the most horrific pain.

All of the issues of life flow out of the heart. If it matters to you, know that it has flowed through your heart. Your heart processes every significant  event in your life, both positive and negative: tender first love, great accomplishment, destructive words, damaging abuse. The heart can be wounded, seemingly beyond repair, be driven by conviction, or become as hard as stone.

Why would God create our heart to be so tender and yet allow it to be exposed to such and intense variety of life experiences? A fully-lived life requires a fully-experienced life. Without both joy and sorrow, we cannot fully appreciate any one experience.

For life to be fully lived, it must be experienced in every extreme. The extent to which we are capable of experiencing great disappointment and pain is also the extent to which we have the capacity to know the greatest joy. God wired us for fullness and our hearts require full exposure in order for authentic life to flow.

While we would never choose the extreme moments, they are a part of the plan of God. God designed you to live from your heart. Created to manifest His glory on the earth, you were uniquely made for this moment in time. Hard-wired from the factory of heaven, you were meant to shine. Only when you live life from your heart, embracing all of life's experiences, will you experience the width, the depth, and the height of this great adventure with God.

As children, we were born with a spiritual compass that pointed to a personal and divine destiny. We knew there was a purpose. And we knew it in our hearts. Back then life was an adventure. We looked around every corner for the next exciting thing. We lived in wide-eyed wonder of what was next.

As adults, life usually turns into a series  of calculated risks. The adventure is removed and the expectation dies. We rein in our expectations, hopes, and dreams. We settle for, well...less.

We weren't meant to live this way. We weren't meant to live our lives with God as adults. Remember, we are children of God. We were created for adventure. We were intended to be daring, bold, fabulous...remarkable! We were meant to reflect the explosive life and dynamic creativity of our God, our Maker.

Sadly, most of us have grown up and given up. The life we were created for has died because somewhere along the way, we quit living--we stopped being kids. For some, it happened instantaneously in a traumatic event: abuse, molestation, or abandonment. For others, it happened over time. It was slow, almost painless. It wasn't a physical death, but something much more severe--spiritual death. However it happened, whenever it happened, whoever, or whatever caused it; we died.

How did it happen to you? When did you change? How old were you when your heart began to die? When did you decide it just wasn't worth the risk? Who or what wounded your heart? 



"Okay ladies. See what I mean? All heart. Please visit www.elevatehim.com today and order your copy of The Original Sanctuary. You'll find space in the book to journal. You can also view their interview on The Life Today show."