What's on the inside?
I always like to take a moment when I wake up on my birthday to ask God what this year is going to be about, what He’d like to teach me or would like me to focus on. This year when I woke up on my birthday and began to pray I quickly sensed God speak to my heart, “Be as concerned about the inside as the outside. Pay as much attention to the state of your heart as you do what you are doing or accomplishing on the outside. Is your heart full of anxiety, stress, unrest? Is it full of nervous energy? Do you even know why when it is?” Through this time of prayer I realized God cares as much about the environment of my heart as He does about my outside actions and work. Do I have peace, trust, faith and rest in His righteousness or do I have internal strife? If I’m living in a toxic environment inside then the toxicities will leak out into the other parts of my life.
Knowing that God “looks deep within the mind and heart” used to kind of scare me (PS 7:9). I knew it wasn’t all neat and tidy and pretty in there. I knew there was often a storm of emotion instead of tranquility. I would try to hide the state of my heart with pretty words and declarations of trust in prayer. Recently, I’ve found great comfort in God’s deep knowledge of what’s hidden in my heart, because when I get caught in the trap of repetitive feelings, thoughts or emotions and I’m not sure how to untangle my thoughts God has the insight to do so. He can drill down a layer deeper bringing me true freedom and deliverance. Two passages in Jeremiah speak to this ability. “You examine the deepest thoughts and secrets.” (Jer 10:20) and “But I the Lord search all hearts and examine secret motives.” (Jer 17:10). I might realize a thought is off but God can reveal the motive behind the thought. He can address the heart issue of the problem where true freedom is found. I love the Message version of this verse, “I, God search the heart and examine the mind. I get to the heart of the human. I get to the root of things.” Getting to the root of things is how we dig up the ugly, misguided beliefs and replace them with God’s healing truth. When I weed my garden if I don’t get the root then next week I’ll have another dandelion right back where it was last week, but if I’ll pull out the entire root it’s gone; I don’t have to worry about the same weed showing up again in the same place.
In the past if I have a speaking engagement coming up that will be before a large group then I turn all focus and attention on the study and application of what I’ve been called to teach while often allowing my heart to stay in a place of nervous energy over the anticipated stage fright. If I let my mind stay there long, then I get a stomach ache and a mind that can’t concentrate or hold a steady thought. This year preparing for Pure Joy, which is usually a large crowd of women gathering from all denominations to worship God, I felt strongly that God wanted me paying as much attention to what I was allowing in my heart and mind as I was to what I was preparing to say. The promise God gave me was, “We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing great treasure.” (2 Cor. 4:7) I am an earthly vessel of clay, but His spirit can fill me up, tip me over and pour out what's needed. My part is making sure I stay low, repentant, aware, not allowing my clay jar to get contaminated with fear, anxiety, doubt, dread or any lie of the enemy. The crowd might only hear the words, but the Lord will know if it was delivered from a place of faith or fear.
2018/05/04 at 10:12 pm