82 - Keeping Heart: Love's Demand
The "Living with Heart" Podcast is brought to you by Chip Dodd Resources (www.chipdodd.com) and The Voice of the Heart Center (vothcenter.com). You can connect with Dr. Chip Dodd at chip@chipdodd.com. Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at bryan@vothcenter.com.
Keeping Heart, by Dr Chip Dodd is written in short sections; each section focuses on some dimension of living fully, loving deeply, and leading well a life that leaves a legacy of goodness. It can be used as a daily form of orienting yourself for the day ahead of you or a book to read cover to cover.
Visit chipdodd.com to download a free resource that describes The Spiritual Root System. This resource identifies each “root” of how we are created as feeling, needing, desiring, longing, hoping people who seek to live fully in relationship with ourselves, with others, and with God.
A path not a pill
So often, people offer a “pill” (metaphorically or literally) to a person who is struggling with life’s difficulties. The struggle could be anxiety, depression, or addiction. Most people, however, need a path instead of a “pill.”
This podcast is part of the path we are created to walk in life’s struggles.
The Voice of the Heart, Needs of the Heart, and Keeping Heart, also, are part of the path.
This podcast and the books speak to the need for relationship and its power to help and heal us through relational connection.
Communion connects to community
We quickly think of communion as a religious experience only. It also means to share; it is where we get the word community and communication.
We are created to be in communion with each other—a group of people who share the truth of their hearts.
In Genesis 2:18, God declared for the first time that something was “not good.” This declaration clearly made reference to a man and a woman. It also speaks to how we are created for fellowship; the fellowship of truth telling about our struggles and celebrations that connect us to each other.
Then the LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone.
I will make him a helper suitable for him.”
Genesis 2:18 (NIV)
When Adam & Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, they not only hid their physical bodies, they also hid their hearts from God. In the cool of the day, God comes to His creation and asks them, “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9) This phrase in Hebrew is “ayeka” which is a lament and a question.
“Ayeka” is a request to know what a person is feeling and needing. It is a request for a person to come back into communion with another. God calls us into communion with that word. He calls us to face, feel, and deal with our hearts.
We are created to live fully and love deeply by living in relationship with:
our own hearts
the hearts of others
the heart of God
This process is the courageous path.
“Love’s Demand” in Keeping Heart
To love requires that we be willing to experience pain, whether we love our spouses, our children, our friends, or God.
“With love comes the paradoxical struggle of perseverance and powerlessness . . . . To live this paradox requires great courage—giving one’s heart away that may not be received or may entail great loss.” (Keeping Heart, page 23)
Love:
demands that we risk our hearts
does not compromise
demands full investment to have its full benefits—even in loss.
“What love costs is always less than the price of not facing its demand.” (Keeping Heart, page 23)
Love’s perseverance and primacy
In the Song of Songs, written by Solomon, there is a passage that testifies to the importance, power and need of love for all of us.
Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm;
for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave.
It burns like a blazing fire, like a mighty flame.
Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot sweep it away.
If one were to give all the wealth of one’s house for love,
it would be utterly scorned.
Song of Songs, 8:6-7 (NIV)
Pathos/Feeling is a gift that can increase our ability to love:
When a person runs from emotional and spiritual pain, they are at risk of becoming pathological, the psychological term for sick in mind and heart.
When a person learns that feelings, which entail pain, are for our benefit the result is that we develop the capacity to persevere.
Two more words that also come from the root word pathos are passion and patience, two hallmarks of good character.
Passion is the willingness to be in pain for something that matters more than the pain.
Patience is the willingness to carry “the burden of hope” even though we must be long suffering in our wish for the outcomes we seek.
Passion moves us to continue a pursuit. Patience allows us to be tolerant in waiting for our hopes to be realized.
Passion and patience are essential in living “Love’s Demand”
Whether one is referring to parenting, marriage, or friendship love requires the development of passion and patience. We have to face, feel, and deal with feelings/pain in order to love well. Children grow up and move away. Marriages of the longest duration still face death. Friendships go through many phases of difficulty as life occurs.
Dr. Chip Dodd
Voice of the Heart Center