Convictions of the Heart

Dave Brisbin 10.6.19 Some twenty-five plus years ago, I walk into the office of a Franciscan priest, bible in hand, to debate a specific doctrinal issue, and before I can get more than a sentence out, he puts his big hand up in the universal stop sign and says: All I can tell you is what I’m convinced of. You go become convinced of what you’re convinced of. At the time, it seemed a supreme evasion, but as years went on, I realized it’s the only thing one person can say to another about the deep things that really matter and can only be proven to ourselves by ourselves. And now as a pastor these past seventeen years, how many times have I said the same to someone with bible in hand as an opening to a very different conversation? The genius of Jesus is to recognize that the truth that really sets us free can’t be transferred to our heads as second hand knowledge, but only applied directly to our hearts as first person experience. The Way of Jesus is an active partnership, a way of living with God, not a passive learning exercise. And he’s calling us to engage at every turn, to find out what we’re convinced of by living the effects of what we say we believe. To speak with the authority of Jesus or a brown-robed Franciscan priest means to have traveled the path ourselves to find the convictions of our own hearts—not someone else’s.