10 functions of
your relational heartbeat
Do you understand the work God wants us to do in your children’s hearts? I was asked the question recently what I mean by heartbeat and journeying toward Christ’s heartbeat. By way of a brief introduction to my new series about the 10 functions of your relational heartbeat, I want to begin with a couple of clear definitions.
Relational Heartbeat
Relational heartbeat denotes activity that’s in a constant state of motion. It is our interactions with our world that are in a constant state of motion—how we interact with life, ourself, with others, and with God. Our interactions are carried out from the inner recesses of our heart as they are expressed to the outside world.
Heartbeat
The functions of our heartbeat is where we are expressing to the world what we know about interacting with life. Our heartbeat is also the place for us to check and measure how we are growing in all 10 areas of relational interaction. The various functions of our heartbeat are practical toward getting to know ourselves better so we’ll be able to cooperate more with the Lord’s work in us. We can lead our children to know themselves too, and learn to recognize the Lord’s work in their own hearts.
Journey toward Christ’s Heartbeat
Our Heavenly Father wants us on a journey toward Christ’s heartbeat—learning the lessons of LOVE. He wants us to experience being loved by Him, and learn how to live loved and loving in all of our primary relationships. However, the concept of LOVE is so diluted from overuse or misuse that we can completely fail to acknowledge the need to understand it’s true meaning.
We can easily avoid going there in our child training practices and discipling methods. We can live out our entire Christian life in the flesh failing to understand how to experience God’s amazing grace in our lives toward knowing Him, and how practical He is in helping us heal the heartbeat of our family relationships.
I want you to view the heart as a practical place for God’s work in you, because it is very practical! It’s also a practical place for your work in your children’s lives. This is what Empowering the Heartbeat of Your Life ministry is all about. We provide helpful resources to aid you in healing the heartbeat of your family. We want you and your family to know the Lord’s love for you, and live an authentic, empowered life in Christ. You can begin your journey with my book, Empowered—Healing the Heartbeat of Your Family.
The Relational Heartbeat Is a
Challenge to Express
As you begin to cooperate more and more with the Holy Spirit’s work in your heart, like other moms, you’ll begin to wish you could express for yourself all the changes going on inside of you. If you could name the separate functions of your relational heartbeat, giving instruction to your children would be so much simpler, (not to mention trying to share with your husband what you’re going through!).
A general lack of vocabulary concerning inner growth processes can be quite challenging since inner growth is so alive and fluid. Many things factor into inner growth simultaneously, making the processes difficult to define with words.
My husband’s heartbeat has grown more loving toward me and our family over the years…
I remember my early years of groping for vocabulary to express all the truths I was learning to live out as I journeyed toward Christ’s heartbeat. I’d be excited every time I read something in a book that explained exactly what had been “dumbly struggling in me for utterance”. Even if there was only one phrase in the whole book that jumped out at me, it was like gold!
I was able to more effectively approach my children’s training with practical expressions they could understand, and my vocabulary increased for talking to Jim about all God was showing me.
So, since I’ve done this for a few decades, I thought I’d save you some striving for expression.
I know that if you have words to describe to yourself and to your children what you are coming to understand about practical spiritual growth processes, you will be much more effective. It was so fun when I never again had to grope for needed expressions for what I was trying to get across to my family. It boosted my confidence and it will boost yours too!
10 Functions of the Relational Heartbeat
I have identified 10 functions of the relational heartbeat for you. Bear in mind, though, that separating the 10 functions of the relational heartbeat is really just for the purpose of distinguishing, defining, and providing vocabulary, so you can get to know yourself and your children better. But in reality the functions of the heartbeat work together quite seamlessly to express a person’s unique heartbeat.
You’re probably generally familiar with some or all these functions, but have not necessarily put words to them before now. All of them are practical, but you’ll find them getting more and more specific as we go along.
I’ll be sharing with you one function of your relational heartbeat each week, and the podcast conversation Barbie and I have (once it’s launched soon) will coincide with them, but with a bit more to chew on. I hope you remember to tune in when we get our Empowering the Heartbeat of Your Life podcast launched. I know the discussions (in both the blog and the podcast) will offer lots of practical insight for you, and really help you to better sort out all that is going on inside of you and your children.
A Sneak Peek
I want to give you a sneak peek into these topics before I post the blog messages so you can follow along with me and know a bit of what to expect. I’m certain that some of you who have been on this journey longer will begin to make stronger connections for yourselves just seeing the topics we’re going to cover.
So to whet your appetite, I created a downloadable and printable pdf for your notebook that lists the 10 functions of your relational heartbeat.
Moms M.INT. meet and greet at my house ~ 2015
I hope I just saved you a bit of note-taking, and gave you something to look forward to! It’s my gift to you!
Read the next post: “Influence — 1st Function of Your Heartbeat”
