Living with open hearts

I posted this several weeks back. "when reality has broken in how can we go back to the unreal?"

When the reality or truth of something is realized, confronted, looked at, or spoken, it can no longer be hidden from. Yes, we can try to pretend it is not so, try to go back to the "unreal", but that does not change the truth of it. 

Once we have begun our journey out of Egypt, there is always the temptation to go back.  

Sometimes it may seem easier to pretend something is other than it really is. To live life on a surface level, going through the motions of pretending all is well.  It may seem less painful to face the truth.  To face the hard truth of where you have been let down. To face the truth that you have been hurt deeply. To look into the face and heart of another and see the pain we have caused them.  To see where we have wounded them.  

This process of being conformed, of being sculpted by the potter, of having the impurities removed is a hard, painful process. Some of you may ask why seek it?  Why go there?  For me I don't really have a choice to not go there.  I do not want to stay where I am.  I want to be healed, to be whole. To be rid of the things that hold me back from moving forward.  To be rid of the selfishness and the un-loveliness that exist in my heart.  

This really began for me in 2007.  I think the moment that I said to God that I did not care if my life worked out the way I expected it to.  That I wanted to know Him, not just what He could give me, not just His blessings, but Him.  Because I truly believed, and still do, that life, real life is in Him alone.  That my good and right and deep desires originate from Him and are fulfilled in Him only. That I have looked, and still do look to things and people to meet my deepest longings even though I know they cannot fulfill them completely or permanently. 

  

“He shook my dozing soul and threw the cold water of 

reality in my face, so that life and God and heaven and hell 

broke into my world with glory and horror. (on CS Lewis)” 

― John Piper, Don't Waste Your Life

This is truth, we were created by God for God.  That we are made for relationship with him, and our deepest desires and longings are met in Him.

I have been damaged much on this earth.  I have damaged much.

We all have.

God gave me a picture at the beginning of my looking deep.  A cauldron filled with stagnant putrid water.  The water began to swirl.  Things began to rise to the surface.  There are times the water becomes still once more.  There are times the water begins to swirl. It is swirling now.  What is rising to the surface now is anger that has been stuffed for decades.  I have pretended it did not exist, some of which I was not even aware of.  But if you invite God to show you your heart he will.  

I was reading Isaiah yesterday.  Isaiah 7:9 says, "if you don't take your stand in faith, you won't have a leg to stand on."

I wrote:

Faith - that God can do what he says

Faith - that God is good; always

Faith - that God has my good in mind, always

Faith - that God wants me healed (but his view of healed and whole)

Faith - that God redeems

Faith - that God can and will do what I can't in me and through me

God is kind and gracious.  He knows for me to stay where I am is not for my good.  He knows there is something good and lovely on the other side of the pain.  

Why am I posting this?  I ask that those of you who know from where I speak to pray I step out of the way and let God do his work. That I do not hinder him in my fear of seeing and facing my sin. That I humble myself where and when necessary.  That I do not place blame in order to get the heat off of myself.  It would be easy to point fingers and say, "well you...."

And it is my heartfelt prayer that if you have been living in the shadows, living only half awake because to be fully awake is too painful, that you would seek the one who can and does make all things new.  

Grace, peace and love to you!