To Encourage You

Luke 24:32 “They said to each other, ‘Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?’”

The account of Jesus speaking to the disciples on the road to Emmaus after his resurrection is one of my favorites stories in all of Scripture.  Here we see the disciples talk about “heartburn,” but it’s not the heartburn we typically think about in connection with eating something that doesn’t agree with us.  Here the heartburn is that burning in the heart that comes when the truth of the Scripture dawns on our hearts. There is nothing quite like that “eureka” moment, when we see God’s truth in ways we never have before.  It’s that work of God’s Spirit on our inner man that occurs as God reveals Himself to us in His holy Word.  It’s that sudden joy, that awakening of our minds to Truth, as the lies we’ve been living with for so long are replaced with an understanding that we’ve never had to that point in time.  It’s the thrill of knowing that God has truly spoken directly to us about some issue and knowing that that new understanding has just changed the way we think about things and will likewise change the way we live.  It’s that burning in the heart that moves us to share the wonderful works of God with others around us, just as the believers did when the Holy Spirit descended upon them in Acts 2.  And it’s the fire in the heart that causes others around us to wonder, and to question, and that then gives us the means to be ready to “make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15). 

So do you know this heartburn?  Have you experienced it?  Are you spending time in God’s word so that He can explain Himself to you and bless you with His truth?  Are you asking Him with the psalmist to “open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law” (Psalm 119:18)?   God wants this for us more than we can ever know.  And He promises us that “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13).