As my listening skills have waned, what once was a silent
awe of the Lord has crept into a monotonous rhythm of reading and memorizing
Scripture. I have an ugly way of recognizing
that a Bible passage is powerful and so memorizing it, but never letting it
apply to my life. The past few months
I’ve been more immersed in Scripture than I’ve ever been, but my heart feels
more unfeeling toward Scripture than I ever remember it being.
When I’m not letting my heart truly engage with Scripture, I
shut it out from the nourishment it needs.
But engaging with my heart will require an obscene amount of patience
and grace to handle all the mood swings.
Like a toddler. Like me as a
toddler. Maybe I’ve never really learned
to conquer my moodiness, I’ve just learned to hold my heart underwater when I’m
not sure how to handle the current throbbing emotion.
I see now that where I am is a dangerous place to be. Knowing something has been wrong, the past
year I’ve pushed a band-aid underwater by setting all kinds of crazy and
difficult goals for myself. That’s led
to a life that’s so structured without feeling that right now I seem to be more
machine than human.
Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all
things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”
Preach.
I don’t want to look at my deceitful heart. I don’t like it and I don’t understand
it. But Jesus does. He knows exactly what’s happening in it. I need to take His hand, uncover my eyes and
look at my heart with Him. Then I need
to learn to do that everyday.
Jesus has given me a new self who currently is warring with
my old, sick self inside my heart. At
the end of my life, the new self will win.
This deceitful heart is already mortally wounded. It’s just a matter of time before it’s dead
completely. Then I’ll be the beautiful
bride from Ephesians 5:27, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, holy and
without blemish. That is Jesus’ work in
me.
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