The active heart

Private, pulsating battles are ones that must be won | Andrée Seu

I asked Lisa, a graduate of our local Christian counseling program, what was the most important thing she learned in three years. She didn't miss a beat: "The heart is active, not passive." That changes everything.

I was accustomed to thinking of discouragement as something that happens to a person. But on closer examination of discouragement in my existential experience, I have been taken aback by how -volitional or "active" it is. To go around saying, "I am -discouraged," as if it's a saddle someone strapped to your back while you kicked and screamed against it, is akin to Aaron's version of how he made the golden calf: "So they gave me [the gold], and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf" (Exodus 32:24). Um, no.