THE WHOLE-HEARTED LEADER
PILLAR 3: WHOLENESS OF HEART
The Three Parts of My Heart
What does it mean to have wholeness of heart? It means synchronizing the various aspects of our heart and bringing them into full connection with God. To do that, we first need to understand what the different parts of our heart are. We also need to recognize what can cause us to have a divided heart. As we discuss wholeness of heart, I will be using the language and principles taught in HeartSync Ministries.
What is HeartSync?
HeartSync is an inner healing prayer ministry model created by Father Andrew Miller, a licensed clinical social worker and also an Anglican priest. For years, he was seeing clients with severe trauma, dissociative identity disorder, satanic ritual abuse, and other severe cases. He cried out to God as he was trying to help these broken ones heal. The Lord showed him a process of healing, particularly where there’s such severe trauma that the heart divides and creates alter personalities.
Father Miller realized God was giving him strategies to bring healing to them faster than what was available in the psychology world. The psychology world will tell a dissociative identity disorder (DID) client that it’s almost impossible to get whole. If you did, it would be through synchronizing all those alter personalities to the core personality, and that could take a decade or more.
I have borrowed the language from HeartSync Ministries to describe the parts of the heart and how we receive healing to our heart because it is so accurate to how we can divide and become whole. HeartSync is a biblical approach and also has foundations in science, such as the brain research that we discussed earlier – our joy capacity and the wiring in our brain. I believe that God is a God of science. Let’s look at the way He has designed us and how He wants our hearts to be whole.
What does wholeness of heart mean?
Father Andrew discovered that the same model of inner healing, which was so effective with very wounded and traumatized people, can be used with “apparently normal people,” as well. The Lord told Father Andrew that our focus should be on connecting the parts of our heart with the Lord first, and then He would connect and reconcile all the parts together.
Having a whole heart means our heart is in tune with the Lord and with all the other parts of us. For that to happen, we need to acknowledge all the parts of us. And we need to recognize when there’s a part of us fighting with another part of us or one part that is disconnected with another part.
What are the three Primary Parts of my heart?
Our heart has three primary identities: our Function Identity, our Emotion Identity, and then our Guardian Identity.
-
Function
Most of the time we move in the functional part of our identity. This Function part of us is the “doer,” the task person, the part that has the checklist, the part that is engaged in the daily functioning of life. And, you know, function is what we’re applauded for in this world. The way the world operates, we get applauded for what we do and what we accomplish.
And yes, we need to do some things. Obviously, God gave us that part of our heart for a reason. But sometimes the function part of our heart will overdo. It will over-work. It is the striving part of us – trying to make something happen. It’s the part of us that gets overwhelmed with the long “to-do” list.
But remember, Jesus only did what He saw the Father do. He only said what He heard the Father say. And our Function needs to connect with Jesus to find rest. “Come to Me all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28 NASB) “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives.” (John 14:27 NIV) We need to connect with Jesus to have a position of rest, even when we’re busy accomplishing a lot of things.
We want to do the great things that God’s called us to, not just a lot of good things for God because we’re trying to earn approval. We become performance-oriented when our heart is divided, and we’re primarily in function mode. When we’re operating mainly in high-task mode, we’re disconnected from the other parts of us. We shut down our emotions and put them on the back burner so we can function.
-
Emotion
And then there’s the part of our heart that processes our emotions and feels all the feelings. What we often don’t recognize is that we need to feel and release the emotion in a healthy and appropriate way.
Instead, we tend to put those emotions and those feelings in a box and stuff it in a closet somewhere. Out of sight, out of mind. “I don’t have time to deal with that right now. I’ve got things I’ve got to do.” How many of us have said that? “Oh, there’s some drama and trauma stuff I’ve got to put in the back of the closet, so I can move forward. I don’t have time to mess with those emotions right now. I’ve got things I’ve got to do.”
A whole heart is emotionally healed. Scripture highlights how God is an emotional God, an expressive God. Jesus showed righteous anger when He overthrew the tables and cleansed the temple, but He also wept from compassion for Mary when Lazarus died. He had joy when the children came – “Let the little children come to Me.” Kids are only going to run to a happy, loving person. Kids don’t usually follow grumpy people. We want to be able to be like Christ in every situation and in every way.
-
Guardian
Now, our Guardian part of our heart is the protector part of us. Proverbs 4:23 says, “Guard your heart, for out of it flows the wellspring of life itself.” The guardian part of our heart is our defense mechanism. A healthy Guardian is like a screen on a window: it lets the air in, but it keeps the bugs out. We need a filtering process around our heart. We need Guardian to filter lies from the truth – let the truth in and keep the lies out.
Guardian needs to be able to partner with Jesus to be able to know truth. Our truth filter is Jesus Himself. Our guardian part of our heart needs to partner with Jesus to filter the truth. Oftentimes, Guardian doesn’t. Instead, Guardian becomes a wall – our defense mechanism to protect the emotions so that Function can do all the things I need to do.
Guardian was meant to have relationship with Jesus also. But the motive of Guardian is often, “Oh, I need to keep emotion at bay, so this person can live and survive.” Our Guardian means well, in trying to protect us, but what is it doing? It’s keeping our heart separated. The guardian part of us keeps these two parts (emotion and function) away from one another, instead of us all coming together and being a whole person, a whole heart.
We need connection and balance.
We need each part of our heart to work in unity and in balance. And the only way that is going to happen is to connect with Jesus first. When we’re connected with Jesus, then He connects the parts of our heart together in a healthy way, so that we are wholehearted and operating in the best version of us!
Was this Article Helpful?
If this article was helpful to you, please consider linking this article to your own blog or sharing this through the social buttons below. You will also find other great articles at “Blog“.
