Being Heart-Deaf

So we are reading "Waking the Dead" by John Eldredge this summer.  What a book!  I'm only up to chapter 3, but he has a powerful premise about a person's heart.  I've found it challenging yet sensical.  We are often told to not "think" with our heart.  That decisions made from an emotional bend often turn out wrong.  We tell our kids to think before they act.  It's not how you feel but how you think.  Feelings from the heart are often judged less seriously than thoughts from the mind.  Eldredge makes a point about Satan's desire to wreck our hearts.  The Bible mentions the word "heart" or it's plural 876 times as opposed to the word "mind" which is mentioned less than 100.  So, which is more important to God?  Your heart or your mind?  Think about these two points Eldredge makes in his book:
"Without this burning in our hearts, we lose the meaning of our days.  it all withers down to fast food and bills and voice mail and who really cares anyway?  do you see what has happened?  the essence of our faith has been stripped away.  the very thing that was to give our lives meaning and protect us--this way of seeing (from the heart)--has been lost.  or stolen from us.  notice that those who have tried to wake us up to this reality were usually killed for it:  the prophets, Jesus, Stephen, Paul, and most of the disciples, in fact.  has it ever occurred to you that someone was trying to shut them up?"

"This is the last thing the Enemy wants you to know.  His plan from the beginning was to assault the heart, just as the Wicked Witch did to the Tinman.  Make them busy, they ignore the heart.  Wound them deeply, they don't want a heart.  Twist their theology, so they despise the heart.  Take away their courage.  Destroy their creativity.  Make intimacy with God impossible for them." 

So true.  the hustle and bustle of the world today and the emphasis on the factual have little by little eroded the landscapes of our hearts and driven a deep and viscious chasm between us and God.  A chasm of our own doing, mind you.  We need to wittle away the distractions that have made our hearts deaf to the calling of God.