On this episode of The Power of Intimacy with Christ on the Charisma Podcast Network, Dr. Sharon Mancha shares how the heart is the place where we fight to keep ourselves healthy spiritually and emotionally. It is the seat of our passion and emotions. How we manage the care of our hearts spiritually will determine our joy, peace and happiness. The Bible tells us to keep our heart “with all diligence” (Prov. 4:23). It goes on to say it produces an outflow in our lives.
Keeping your heart empowers you to orchestrate the harmony of your life rhythm. When we guide our hearts in the Word to gain core principles for living the God-life, the heartbeat is fine-tuned and empowered to flow efficiently for ultimate joy and life success.
Jesus enters the heart of the believer to form intimacy. As we allow His dominion, we discover what lives inside of our hearts, producing negative outputs and affecting our lives and relationships. The light of His presence reveals the truth of who we really are. It is essential that we own the responsibility to supervise our hearts and to be the boss of what enters or exits it. We have been given power to transform carnal emotions to spiritual fruit that pleases God. This is all possible through an intimate relationship with God. Deciding to lead your heart and not be led of it is necessary to live the abundant life promised in Scripture.
The Word of God shapes the heart as it discovers relationship with God. The heart must be trained to release good things for abundant living. We must, with God’s help, monitor and shape our hearts so they produce good things that bring increase, life and spiritual seed for the future. This is true because the heart incubates the love message of Christ and that love is to flow into the hearts of those we encounter.
Keeping your heart is intentional and requires everyday effort and discipline. The heart is the seat of fellowship with God and is where we take leadership of its outputs. Quality time reading the Bible strengthens it for combat against carnal impulses that may try and capture your heart and take away your power to rule it.
Don’t fear; God partners with you to help you discern the ongoing spiritual condition of your heart as you yield to Him in shared leadership. God reveals and heals our hearts as we accept and embrace the responsibility to use this power for spiritual actualization. Herein is where we experience the transformation available through the power of intimacy with Christ and where we learn to use the power of God given to us to live, thrive and become our best selves. Taking responsibility for your life flow is an intentional discipline that requires honesty, love and pursuit of becoming your best self in God. When we love intentionally, we are more prone to be considerate and deliberate in how we love and how we express our love for God and others.
Understanding this seat of power over our emotions and thoughts is essential to pleasing God and achieving the trust of self and others. Learning to use the power God has given us to share through acts of love and care for others situates us as life-givers to those who lack the God kind of love and who do not know how to give or receive it. Demonstrate the intentional model of God’s love for the world. Our disciplined power is apparent in how we do relationships, forgive, love, trust and become more than a response in an awkward situation in the moments of passion.
With power to change lives through love comes responsibility to develop and maintain it for the good of the kingdom. Our adversary will fight with intense effort to sour your love and fill your heart with bitterness and unforgiveness through negative events in your life. Deciding to remain in control of your heart and its flow must be intentional with a watch over it in the authority of Scripture. Quoting the Word of God to the heart of any foul thing that attempts to invade the love of God in you is to be ruled over.
God has given those who love and live for Him power over the adversary with the ability to tread on serpents and scorpions, but it is a fight of faith to do so. Learning to keep your heart with all diligence by ruling over it in God’s grace and wisdom is the most responsible thing you can do, if you want to be effective and efficient in the things of God.
An authentic passion for loving as God loves, and giving of self, as Jesus did is, governs your seat of power—the heart. No one can take this power from you, but you. You have to surrender it and you have to quit the fight. The adversary has no power to take it from you, you have to surrender it to lose it. Why? Because God has given us power in the spirit realm and when we use that power and authority in Jesus’ name we are undefeatable.
Your seat of power is the place where you do heart work and refine the intentions and attitudes of your heart teaching it to love and obey God and His holy Scriptures. This work can only be done by you and God in partnership. It will not happen without intentionality. It is sought and fought for with a passion for holiness and righteousness in Christ.
When we seek God with this purpose, we are empowered to do the work in us using the Word of God, prayer and obedience to God’s voice. Your heart, the seat of power, is your place for transformation, impartation, deliberation and proclamation. What lives in your heart will determine the effectiveness of your love and ministry. Your heart issues life flow and you and I are called to lead our hearts with diligence.
This intentional work of the heart empowers your intimacy with Christ and will cause the world to see the love of God and the fruits of the Spirit living and thriving in you as you become your best self in God through your partnership with the Holy Spirit.
Listen to the full episode here. {eoa}
Connect with Dr. Sharon Mancha at her website, sharonmancha.com and blog, sharonmancha.com/blog. Share this podcast with your Twitter followers using this link: twitter.com/drsharonmancha.
Curt Landry 
Michael L. Brown 
Rabbi Eric Tokajer