Our heart needs help

Just last evening I was talking to some friends about how I never seem to feel any of the emotions they were talking about. Be it for God or for man. Love. Passion. Overflowing joy. What do all these things feel like? What do they even mean?

Then this morning, coincidentally, I happened to come across an article on passion and how people sacrificed their lives for the cause of their passion. I can never imagine doing that. 

But do I want to feel this love, this passion, this craziness?

Yes, very much. 

But what is the process? 

One thing I have realized is that it is our own experiences that have hardened our hearts, killed our passions, and made us immune to joys. How can I say this with conviction? Well, all I had to do was go back in time and think about my childhood days or even me teenage years. 

Those were days when you readily believed anything that people around you told you. Your trusted people around you without a second thought. At least I did. But more often than not this trust was violated. When you experience this breach of trust and when you are fed lies time and again then at some point you stop trusting. You also realise most people around you don’t have the same values you believe in or cherish the relationship as much as you do. So now you need to protect yourself. And the first step is a hardening of the heart. 

Unfortunately, this tends to impact your relationships with those who are genuinely invested in you. You tend to apply the same lens of mistrust to all your relationships. And now you have a whole set of people around you who tend to be constantly hurt with your reactions. Probably, they didn’t  have as many similar experiences or they continued to believe in humanity in spite of the harsh experiences life dealt them or their nature is such that it’s impossible for them to harden their heart. 

What is the solution?

What is impossible for man is possible for your creator.  At least that’s what the Bible says. Check out the verses below:

Ezekiel 36:25-27 New International Version (NIV)

25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

Another translations below:

Contemporary English Version (CEV)

25 I will sprinkle you with clean water, and you will be clean and acceptable to me. I will wash away everything that makes you unclean, and I will remove your disgusting idols. 26 I will take away your stubborn heart and give you a new heart and a desire to be faithful. You will have only pure thoughts, 27 because I will put my Spirit in you and make you eager to obey my laws and teachings.

Love is a commandment. So you may not feel love immediately. But you may feel the need to obey God’s commandments one of which happens to be to love God and to love all those around you. Tough but it’s a choice we have to consciously make or be damned not just in the next life but in this life as well. A hellish life filled with fears, loneliness, mistrust, and general unhappiness.