We are fallen; we were designed for Eden, but we got kicked out. In our fallen state, we will never really get back into Eden. However, Scripture talks about a symbolic return to Eden, a foot-in-both-worlds type of existence. It talks about mitigating the Fall and making the most of the situation. There is a way to live in this fallen world with a substantial portion of Eden. It includes a powerful sense of “seeing” things that most of the world does not see.
The foundation of that “seeing” is the heart-led way. This is not some additional goodies added onto our fallen existence; the heart-led way is the very foundation of linking to the divine sphere of existence actually crossing over from this life. Biblical Law means nothing without the heart-mind. If you have not awakened your heart-led awareness, you cannot possibly obey any Law Covenant, much less could you actively participate in the Covenant of Christ. You cannot claim to have faith without that link.
However, that is not the same thing as spiritual birth (AKA “born again”). Spiritual birth is that miracle God does without any input from us. It’s not a question of what we possess, but that He chooses to possess us on the Spiritual plane of existence. A great many people in this world are spirit-born without being heart-led. That’s the real tragedy in this whole thing. By the same token, a lot of people are heart-led without spiritual birth. We would prefer people put this all together in one package, but it doesn’t happen that much.
So on the one hand we have millions of divine brothers and sisters with whom we cannot spend much time because they are unable to fully claim their divine heritage. Without that heart-led awareness, they cannot fulfill the Covenant of Christ; they cannot fully use their divine heritage of Biblical Law. On the other hand, we can easily work with millions of folks who are heart-led without Christ. I think we would be amazed at the number of pagan believers out there who live a heart-led existence. While it may not be expressed in the same terminology I use on this blog, you can discern it in what they do say and how they operate.
You should not be surprised how very uncomfortable it is dealing with mainstream Christians. You should not be troubled by how comfortable it feels to deal with heart-led pagan believers. So, for example, genuine followers of Aleister Crowley (he was pagan, not Satanist) are not a serious problem, but we would struggle with the high tension we experience in a mainstream church meeting. The latter seeks a cerebral-emotional religion, and they mistake a cultural and intellectual climate for the Presence of the Holy Spirit. You may still be called to work and witness within such a church atmosphere, but the tension is there. They might use the terminology of heart-led living, but they eviscerate its power by demanding things pass through a specific intellectual filter first.
Yes, there are variations. Many Christians are heart-led to varying degrees, and a great many professed pagans are fakers with all sorts of motivations not based on the heart. Heart-led folks can recognize each other sooner or later.
That’s on the small scale; on the grand scale the same kind of conflict steers the actions of governments. The Bible asserts quite clearly that God is in full control of the flow of human history. Governments rise and fall at His whim. While it’s quite possible for them to gain access to His counsel and reap a vast harvest of blessings, to include knowing what He intends to do with them, that doesn’t happen. Today not a single government operates by any biblical covenant. There are communities with some significant progress on the heart-led path, and some cultures are much more amenable to it, but there is no truly lawful government in this world in biblical terms.
There’s nothing in Scripture asserting that it has to be this way. On the contrary, the Bible holds out the promise all day, every day, that those who turn to any Law Covenant can have the blessings of that covenant. Among those blessings is a raft of promises that affect the whole nation. And it continues to bless them even when only a small elite group are heart-led, so long as things are generally influenced by the heart-led way. That was pretty much the way it was in Ancient Israel when things went well. While the intellectual climate favored a heart-led existence, at any give time you can bet most of the people didn’t really get it. Yet the blessings were there.
Nor does it require the kind of self-conscious heart-led teaching we offer here for things to work. However, given the intellectual and cultural climate of our world today, dominated by Western Civilization, it’s a good idea to be frank about it. And if you believe anything I say, you might remember I prophesied that God had granted us a very powerful blessing based on our open confession of the heart-led way. He changed the political context so that we would have a greater relative freedom in promoting this brand of faith. So instead of an apocalyptic end to the US, it will simply be a rough time of tribulation.
What I’m saying here is that God shows how He puts much more stock in the heart-led way than just about anything else when it comes to human events. Sure, it would be best if they called on His name, but that won’t mean a thing without the heart-led foundation for it. This is the fundamental prerequisite for everything God does among humans in this world. Whatever we hope to gain in this fallen world starts there.
