Loving Hearts Build More loving brains

​There are days I'll read my bible and something completely unexpected will grab my attention. It's like God jumps out of the page, holds his giant God hand up and says, stop right there.

Today that occurred just ten words into my reading.

I will give thanks to the Lord with my WHOLE heart.

Today I was reminded there are some parts of the bible we are more prone to take literally than others. I wondered why David would say WHOLE heart here. Did he literally mean give thanks to God with our WHOLE heart.

I've been reading lately about how intelligent our heart is. Did you know our heart sends 9 times more information to our brain than our brain sends to our heart? Our heart has a mini brain of its own. It has 40,000 neurons that can sense, feel, learn and remember.

Are you old enough to remember the "When E.F. Hutton talks people listen" commercials. Well, you could say, when our hearts talk, our brains listen.

Here's the thing about the heart, though. The heart gets intelligent through relationship. It senses and feels and remembers by being around another person, not reading about them. The heart is relationship driven, not knowledge informed.

That's why it was so important to David to always be crying out to God. To always be spending time in prayer with God. To always be found quietly away from the noise of the world to give his heart - his whole heart - space to be with God.

I got to thinking about Jesus' words in Mark: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength."

Again, what if these words are literal. Not just the words, but the order.

What if Jesus knew our bodies were designed to be driven by our hearts. Hearts first. What if he knew that if our whole hearts were filled with love for God, then we'd be in a position to love him with our souls and with our minds. And then - on the foundation of all that love - that's where we'd find our strength in life.

David is saying in this Psalm, my whole heart is thankful for God - that's why my mind can count my blessings. It's why I can feel joy for God. It's why I can tell my brain to sing out the words of praise to God.

I think it's a meaningful practice to read our bibles. To read anything about the true character of God is valuable. But our relationship with God is driven much stronger by our hearts than it is by our minds.

It's driven by spending time in prayer and meditation with God. It's driven by serving and being served by hearts pointed to God. It's driven by crying out to God instead of lashing out at people.

It's driven by asking ourselves the question: do I want to take these words into the world today and settle for being smarter, or do I want to take them with me as a challenge to be more loving?

When we are loving one another, we are loving God. When we are loving God, our brains listen. And they will likely - with more consistency - make loving choices.