Head, Heart, Hands

Matthew 9:35

Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching their synagogues, preaching the good news, and healing every disease and sickness.

This is a great passage that summarizes my passion for ministry:

Head/Teaching
In the synagogues Jesus engaged the minds of the people, reasoning and dialoging with them through the scriptures. It is a passion of mine to likewise empower Christians and outsiders to critically consider their worldviews. Without reason our emotions will lead, a dangerous proposition as the "heart is deceitful above all things" (Jer 17:9). Without reason how can we trust the works of our hands? Let us not forget that we are to "Love the Lord [our] God with all [our] minds" (Mt 22:37).

Heart/Preaching
Preaching stirs our passions. The following verses in Matthew describe Jesus' compassion for the people he ministers to. Without engaging our emotions we run the risk of beoming mechanical in our service, leading from cold reason alone. Reason alone leads us to think in terms of "numbers" and not "human beings". Reason alone might lead us to count the financial cost, but not the human cost. Reason alone does not readily empathize nor does it produce vision. For from the depths of shared emotion lies the beginnings of dreams for what could be.

Hands/Healing
What good is head knowledge if it remains cerebrally bound? What good is emotion that does not find its way to our hands? I confess that too often we miss this as the church. The social Gospel IS the Gospel, or rather it is part of the full Gospel. If we are just dealing with souls we are no more than modern gnostics. And if it was Jesus' intention to deal with only souls, why did he heal the sick and command us to do the same? "Faith without works is dead" (James 2:26).

Synthesis
We receive knowledge in our heads...as we synthesize it stirs our hearts...we are filled with passion that cannot help but express itself through our hands. Or we are moved to compassion be what we see. We reason this critically and decide that it would be right to tangibly approach this issue. These three aspect of faith act like the legs of a stool...remove one and the whole thing falls. None is sufficient on their own but must exist in a beautifully balanced tension with the others. Each one of us will favor one leg of the stool. We must be aware of where we trend to remain spiritually healthy.

I trend "Head". Lord stir my passions! I pray for a heart of flesh to replace a heart of stone (Ezek 36:26). Allow my reason to to inform my emotion and vice versa. And grant opportunity and drive to act this out!

Where do you trend?