HOW TO KEEP OUR HEARTS OPEN TO LOVE

We will be discussing how to learn to stop allowing our past hurts and betrayals cause us to close up our hearts and minds to love. Often we feel that we have experienced too much pain in our relations with others, and instead of risking being hurt again we would rather choose to isolate ourselves and close our hearts to love. We harden our hearts to protect ourselves from feeling what we believe to be too painful to bear. What we fail to understand is that being hurt is a part of life and oftentimes unavoidable in our dealings with others. We also need to learn that because of hurt we are more persistent in our seeking God, asking Him to reveal Himself to us and to relieve us of our pains. We begin to trust God and rely on Him to be our strength. Most people would never even consider a relationship with God if they had not been hurt or betrayed by someone. But oftentimes we also forget the hurts and betrayals we ourselves have caused in the lives of others. We must come to know that hurt is not always a bad thing, because it can bring about a relationship with God and much needed corrections and change for us. In our relations with others we be hurt and we will cause hurt, but we mustn't close our hearts to love. We must learn how to be delivered from the principalities that cause hurt and recognize that we are made to love, to operate in love, and to endure through the pains of living with and loving each other. 

Ezekiel 36:26-28-- KJV--A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes, and ye shall keep My judgments, and do them. And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye shall be My people, and I will be your God.