A LETTER TO DAVE OHLERKING FROM HIS OWN HEART

No, I don’t mean that muscle that keeps the blood circulating; I mean that part of Dave that is so deep it’s mostly unknowable.

I’m the part of him that hears words from eternity, past and future—that part that has access to direct communication with God through His indwelling Spirit.

Man’s heart has been called “desperately wicked and who can know it?” and it’s also been called the source of the “issues of life.”

Can a heart know itself?

Can I be sure my advice to you is pure?

Dave, I have watched you struggle to know me. I have done my best to guide you. Sometimes you have listened, sometimes you didn’t. Sometimes I had little to offer you.

Your fault or mine?

I know this. The times when my advice is purest are the times when your mind allows me to be totally open to the infilling of the Holy Spirit of God.

To make our cohabitation work I must be totally open to the Spirit. You must surrender to that Spirit in your actions. I cannot act—only you have that capacity.

You have the power to willfully ignore my counsel. That’s when things go wrong.

Sometimes I want to shout at you but at most I am but a whispered voice in your mind. You can look back and quickly see that the times when you are most productive and at peace in your mind are those times when you act within the counsels of the Spirit in me.

As your heart I wonder how it is possible that I can sometimes give you incomplete or even incorrect guidance. The Spirit can only saturate me to the extent you are willing.

I am not your will.

You must choose to let me be continually filled with that Spirit and then you must trust His counsel relayed by my voice in your inner being. I’ve heard the word “symbiosis” used to describe our kind of relationship.

I think there is a key to this. There is a means to override enemy input and human limitations. It is the precious gift of praying in the Spirit.

It must be an uninterrupted connection so usual and patterned that when your conscious mind must focus on other matters, the inner dialogue in the Spirit stays connected—rather like keeping the telephone to your ear when you must turn your attention to another matter.

And there must be an immediate return to that connection when you mind is free to come back. “Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit” is what I am describing.

In the Spirit we are not limited by human understanding and boundaries—it is our access to the very mind of Christ. So sad that the connection can be severed or garbled so easily.

That connection so deep within and between us can only be enabled by the conscious commitment of your mind to pray and commune with the Holy One within me.

We must open the channel and keep it open.

Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit,

Your Heart