Oh beautiful heart
I've realized in the past few days that maybe coming to Christianity later in life would really have a huge impact on your mind and heart. So many of us, including me, grow up with a belief in God and a somewhat christian upbringing. Also, for many of us, we grow up in complacency; we're rarely taught what it means to have Jesus in our heart- really in our heart- and the great things that God has done and is in the world. We don't know how to walk with him, or why it's important (explanation later). If we knew the impact of what Jesus actually did and the fullness of life that He came to bring- there's no way we'd live the way we do- never asking for much, never expecting much and settling for a heart that's half alive, less than what Jesus actually said he came to bring. (John 10:10)
I've been searching for my heart and I think I'm finally starting to find it. Somewhere in the bible it says that if you seek you will find- and I know that it's true because I stopped talking to God because I was so frustrated and upset, but I wanted answers. A couple weeks ago He started sending them to me through a combination of bible study, people and reading. I'm reading a book that speaks right to my heart- and it uses verses in our bible study- and random people say things that are relevant to me.
But enough about how it's happening. This is what's happening.
God has been showing me that my heart is good. The implications of that are huge because we all live from the basic belief of what we've been told about our heart. If you believe your heart is good, the way you live is completely different. Do you believe your heart is good?
God has been showing me how to walk with Him. I made a startling discovery about my bible the other day. We treat it like a manual for life, which it is, but we fill our lives with principles and guidelines and we ignore what it's supposed to be. We read 1 Cor 13 and we say- 'well if i love this person, then i should be doing these things.' We read Gal 5:22-23 and we say- 'well if i'm a good christian, then i should be patient, kind and gentle.' Do you know that few parts of the bible actually give instructions on principles and specific things we're supposed to be? The discovery I made is that my bible is where God will speak to me, where He will tell me about situations I will encounter, where He shares stories about others like me, and where He tells me what I mean to Him. My first desire is to teach myself how to walk closely with God so I can learn from Him. My second desire is to have His influence in my life so evident that everything the bible talks about is displayed in my life, not because I'm a good christian, but because I walk so closely with God that He changes me.
We need to stop hindering each other by expecting things by principle- and we need to start teaching each other how to walk with God and to find a heart fully alive.
What does that mean for my worth? I used to flippantly say that my worth comes from God and that I should only care about what He thinks of me, and then I go out and hurt people, beat myself up and feel like a failure because sin just keeps taking over. In reality, God knows about my sin and I come back to Him and He knows what I went through, and He knows that I struggle with it sometimes and He still sent Jesus for me. So there goes the condemnation. I found Romans 7:14- 8:17. Paul wrote exactly what I'm thinking. I never do what I want to do. There's something about the Spirit that's going to manifest itself in my good heart and bring me out of constant sin.
This is what we don't understand about walking with God: it's important because He undoes all the hurt that we've survived, and He shows our heart how to be fully alive. We live in a world that is full of things we can't see... battles and challenges. Sin is invisible. We are constantly being attacked and we are constantly fighting for our hearts in a vindictive world that applauds distance, ignorance, callousness and indifference. We don't walk with God because it makes us a better christian- we walk with God because if we don't, our heart will never survive and we will never be fully alive. Isn't that the best thing you've ever heard? You can have the absolute best thing you'll ever encounter in life just by walking with God. You will have a heart fully alive.
2 Comments:
Well, that's cool. It's interesting to think of the Bible, as you do in this post, as a whole, rather than the fractured verses we often focus on. The Bible verses are all important individually, but the context in which they're said can be really important when we're applying it to our own life. The letters of Paul are full of bold statements, and are often quoted, which is great, but without the context, they can seem a little like platitudes sometimes. Many times he was writing a letter to encourage the early Chuch of a certain area, who, quite frankly, were messing up, like we often do.
It's interesting, to me, to see the figures in the Bible not as characters in a moving story, or old dead saints, but as real, living people, who walked around on the earth, and ate stuff, and messed up and hoped and feared and fell in love and ate stuff, same as us.
That's why I like this post, because you've pointed out that the feelings we have, and the struggles we endure are nothing new; nearly every experience we can have in the human condition has some parallel in the lives of the folks in the Bible. And from their human stories, we can see things to look out for, things toward which we can strive. Reasons for hope.
I guess that's why it's so cool God chose to show Himself to us as a person, in the form of Jesus Christ. The God who made the universe walking around and eating stuff...
I'm gonna go get a slurpee.
It IS the most wonderful thing I've ever heard. And I thank you for giving me the privilege of learning about these things alongside you over the past week. I know firsthand what a beautiful heart you have, and whenever you or I have messed up, sinned - I've known deep down that it was something external, it's not the "real" us. But you're right, the closer we get to God in walking with Him, the more like Him we will become - not by simply trying harder, but because we slowly, naturally become like our closest friends. Here's to pushing each other closer to Him.
"May you experience the love of Christ, though it is so great you will never fully understand it. Then you will be filled with the fullness of life and power that comes from God. Now glory be to God! By his mighty power at work within us, he is able to accomplish infinitely more than we would ever dare to ask or hope."
(Eph. 3:19-20)
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