There are four doors that have to be opened to God so you can experience direct communication with Him. Without this communication, He can’t tell you what you need to do in order to get His help. Let Jesus take you into a look at HOW to open each door to God so you can be healed.

The first door God wants you to open to Him is your heart. God has named this mysterious part of you that contains all your feelings as being your heart; this is the area where all your emotions reside. This Biblical term, heart, is in reference to this area that represents who you are now; it does not think logical thoughts; it just gives you feelings based on certain past experiences and current belief systems. Jesus will be addressing the issues of your heart in this course and in the next course, Submitting Your Attitudes and Character.

The heart is more powerful and influential than your mind. It can make you do things you really don’t want to do; and, it can keep you from doing things you do want to do. But, before you get into the major aspect of the heart, let Jesus take you into a look at where it fits in with the rest of you. And, let Him help you examine the other parts of you that you have been having to deal with.

Here’s how you need to start looking at yourself:

• A spirit being is WHAT you are; it CAN base its decisions on spiritual concepts.


• Your mind is WHO you are becoming; it bases its decisions on reasoning and logic.


• Your heart is WHO you are now and HOW you live now; it bases its decisions on feelings and emotions.


• Your body is WHERE you live; it bases its decisions on selfish, self-centered, and pleasure oriented experiences.

Here’s the emotional assignment from God for your heart: Mark 12:30 (NIV) Love the Lord your God WITH all your HEART.... Love is the connection between you and God; all your relationships with Him will flow through the connection of love. What if you didn’t have words to use so you could communicate your thoughts and feelings to others; wouldn’t that be terrible? God uses love like you use words; He does things with you and for you so you will be able to feel and understand how much He loves you.

Have you ever had someone say something to you that they didn’t mean? Have you ever had someone try to gain your trust and then abuse it? All their words and all their efforts were just to fool you into believing they were your friend. God doesn’t just SAY He loves you, He ACTS on the basis of love; He DOES things that prove how much He loves you. John 3:16 (NIV) For God so loved the world THAT HE GAVE His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. This is the major way your heavenly Father wants to talk to you. He wants to communicate with you by DEMONSTRATING His love; He wants to bless, heal, deliver, and meet your needs.

What if you only spoke English and your friend only spoke German, that is the kind of problem you will struggle with the most with God. He speaks love and you typically speak and mainly only understand the language of your body, the world, and sometimes you may even speak the language of the devil. God is actually talking to you ALL THE TIME; but, you have a hard time receiving and understanding His message. How are you going to learn this language of love so you can carry on a conversation with your heavenly Father?

Jesus dealt with some people who wouldn’t involve themselves in the language of love; so, let’s go to Him and let Him tell you, in His own words, how your heart works so you can speak and understand the love language with God. Let’s let Jesus show us a group of people who SUBMITTED themselves to evil. They thought they were in a very special relationship with God. But, they had drawn up their own set of rules for how to communicate with God and how to please Him.

Jesus was talking to a group who had developed their own langage and here’s what He said: Mat 12:34-35 (NIV) You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil SAY anything good? For OUT OF THE OVERFLOW OF THE HEART THE MOUTH SPEAKS. The GOOD man brings GOOD things out of the GOOD STORED UP in him, and the EVIL man brings EVIL things out of the EVIL STORED UP in him. This is a vital peace of information Jesus is giving us here. It is a truth that we all MUST understand, if we are going to see our life changed.

Jesus diagnosed these people as BEING a “brood of vipers.” Why?

• Because they lacked the ability to say anything good. Why couldn’t they say anything good?


• Because THEY were evil. Why were they evil?


• Because evil had been STORED UP in their hearts. Why was evil STORED UP in their hearts?


• Because they CHOSE to EXPOSE themselves to evil things.

Do you see it? Your issues with addiction can be fixed by Jesus, if you will allow Him to empower you to EXPOSE yourself to all the right things. That is why these studies are so important, you are now allowing Him to expose you to His wonderful teaching. This exposure is storing wonderful, powerful, and miraculous things inside you. That storage will express itself as it comes out of your heart and through your mouth.

Jesus is going to teach you a new, wonderful, love language. As you learn this new love language, it will change your whole life. The more you expose yourself to these wonderful truths of Jesus, the more you take the steps into LIVING out the language of love. You won’t just say loving things, you will be and do loving things.

• STEP ONE: CHOOSE to EXPOSE yourself to good things such as Jesus and His Word.


• STEP TWO: as you choose to expose yourself to good things such as Jesus and His Word, you STORE them in your heart.


• STEP THREE: As you store good things in your heart, it flows out of your mouth as the language of love.


• STEP FOUR: As the language of love flows out of your mouth, it empowers you to LIVE a good, successful, and victorious life.

Do you see HOW that works? As you expose yourself to these Biblical principles, THEY get stored up in your HEART. As THEY get stored up, they change the way you talk. As they change the way you talk, THEY turn you into the kind of person you need and want to be. PLUS, THEY teach you how to understand and speak the love language that your heavenly Father speaks. That means you have opened the door of your heart to God. BUT, your heart ALREADY HAD wrong, bad, and evil things STORED in it. This submission training from Jesus has to drive all that out.

Your heart is who you are NOW because it MAKES you be, talk, and live out those things you have stored up in it. And, most of the time you have stored up a mixture of good and bad things in your heart through mixed exposure. Because of what you have exposed yourself to and what has been stored in your heart, there are times when you treat yourself and others good, and there are times when you mistreat yourself and others. The big question is, what are you going to do about all those things you are exposing yourself to?

There are times when you do good things to people but you do them with selfish motives in your heart. You say and do nice things in order to get people to do what you want them to do. God doesn’t consider our manipulating people as being a GOOD thing; that is a language that sounds like love but isn’t.

It is important to understand the word “good;” there are people who think they just need to go around doing good deeds, and that would make them a Christian. Jesus isn’t saying that all we have to do is go around being nice to people and we will be a Christian. If a person “acts” like a Christian or “tries” to live out the Bible, it will be fake; they will be trying to be something they aren’t. This too is a language that sounds like love but isn’t.

Rom 12:2 (NIV) Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but BE TRANSFORMED by the RENEWING of your mind. THEN you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is--His good, pleasing and perfect will. Once you were born again, that made SPIRITUAL EXPOSURE work. You are exposing yourself and STORING up things in a heart that can comprehend spiritual things. In order for a tree to produce oranges, it has to BE an orange tree. You can EXPOSE a weed to the same sun, soil, water, and air as an orange tree, but it will NEVER produce oranges.

What does “the renewing of your mind” have to do with opening up your heart to God? Your mind is like a funnel that passes things on to your heart. If your mind learns something and it makes sense to you, you will add it to the belief system of your heart. What happens to your heart, if your mind is conformed “to the pattern of this world?” Better yet, what happens to your heart if you “do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world?” In salvation, for example, you heard the gospel message and it sounded like something you would like to try. The gospel made sense to your mind so you passed it on to the belief system of your heart. Then your heart accepted it as truth and that inspired faith inside your heart so it could believe God raised Jesus from the dead. That is how your mind and your heart work together.

Rom 7:22-23 (NIV) For in MY INNER BEING [spirit] I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of MY BODY, waging war against the law of MY MIND and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within MY MEMBERS. This is the battle you mind is having to fight right now. Your mind reasons, considers facts, listens to logic, weighs opposing concepts, and because it has been born again can appreciate truth. It has accepted God’s truth and is ready to live that truth. But, your body and your heart are resisting your logical, rational, reasonable, and spiritual decisions on the matter.

The reason these studies are so important for you is because Jesus is spending time helping your mind UNDERSTAND how God works. If Jesus can use these studies to explain the reasoning behind Christianity to your mind’s satisfaction, it will pass this information on to the belief system of your heart. Once you heart gets on board with you, you will have a powerful ally; BUT your heart changes very slowly and does not make its decisions based on logic. So, let Jesus go over the experience of salvation with you and help you see how important it is to convince your mind so that He and it can convince your heart.