I've recently discovered some treasures in the scriptures, which when we make them active principles in our life they become very potent. When the Word reaches past the pixels infront of you, through your eyes, in through your optic nerve, through your electrical systems, past your cloudy heart and meditations of the mind, when it moves past understanding itself and into your very being, it has quite a power.
[BIBLE]Jeremiah 17:9[/BIBLE]
What a thing; our hearts, above everything else, is deceptive. Above affectionate, above patient, above slanderous or crafty, above understanding or caring, above true, it is deceptive. Desperately wicked.
This verse gives a painful insight into our little home. Some won't understand the value of this verse, peering at it with craned neck, and unable to explore it's hurtful truth. Some will give assent to its principle according to theoretical frameworking, but never realize that the verse is talking about the very heart which is making that framework.
Most of all, we don't really think it's true.
But it is true. And what a terrible truth it is. Your very own heart which is reading these words might be lying to you, deceiving you with clever unseen suggestions and subtle colourings.
When in a moment of piercing clarity we know it is true, when we see how much our heart has outright lied to us, how it has not only deceived us but taken us into a kingdom and country very far from home indeed, the pain is unbearable. My own heart did this. Mine.
That is when the Lord is able to look at us with patient love and gentleness, pointing to the empty cross. But it's not only His cross. It's mine too. And with laboured steps, but hope in God, we climb the hill toward the cross.
Self death is a terribly difficult thing to accept until you've actually seen your own heart. Once you've seen it, though, you'll know how foully it has lied to you personally. "It's natural meditations must be severed if I am to advance another step;" and so I begin the process.
[BIBLE]Isaiah 55:7[/BIBLE]
We have to repudiate our own thoughts, deny our own affections completely, cut every diseased limb from our spiritual body. But the curse has crept into every part, even into the bones. The very constitution of our thoughts and affections are amiss; the foundation is cracked, and the roof leaky. The substructures of our ideas, thoughts, and impulses are broken, and someone is tampering with them.
[BIBLE]Proverbs 28:26[/BIBLE]
The very thing which tells me that I'm broken is broken. I am forced to walk in one direction alone, the only direction that has even a little light; toward the Lord, rejecting my own thoughts and way, and I will be pardoned, loved, clothed, and fed, says the Lord. I will guarded as a wife, protected as a son, encouraged as a friend, and given Life Everlasting with a Crown of Life, cradled inside my God as an unborn child, eternally separated from the heart that hated me, mislead me, hurt me. I will be born into another heart, which is not my own, yet it envelopes me, flows into me and through me. I am in the Life of God.
And this process has taken place today. I am reminded that this is nothing to pat myself on the back for, because I have only done my duty, and nothing special. It is what I was commanded to do. and I have no self-appreciation for it. How could I not have done this? Look at my old heart, passing away there, as it throbs on the floor of death. My old heart would have said to itself "Good job, you have done well. Take rest, eat, drink, be ye merry." But my new heart says "Walk on, precious son. Walk away from the old heart and you will be delivered. And they that follow the Lamb die daily."
[BIBLE]Jeremiah 17:9[/BIBLE]
What a thing; our hearts, above everything else, is deceptive. Above affectionate, above patient, above slanderous or crafty, above understanding or caring, above true, it is deceptive. Desperately wicked.
This verse gives a painful insight into our little home. Some won't understand the value of this verse, peering at it with craned neck, and unable to explore it's hurtful truth. Some will give assent to its principle according to theoretical frameworking, but never realize that the verse is talking about the very heart which is making that framework.
Most of all, we don't really think it's true.
But it is true. And what a terrible truth it is. Your very own heart which is reading these words might be lying to you, deceiving you with clever unseen suggestions and subtle colourings.
When in a moment of piercing clarity we know it is true, when we see how much our heart has outright lied to us, how it has not only deceived us but taken us into a kingdom and country very far from home indeed, the pain is unbearable. My own heart did this. Mine.
That is when the Lord is able to look at us with patient love and gentleness, pointing to the empty cross. But it's not only His cross. It's mine too. And with laboured steps, but hope in God, we climb the hill toward the cross.
Self death is a terribly difficult thing to accept until you've actually seen your own heart. Once you've seen it, though, you'll know how foully it has lied to you personally. "It's natural meditations must be severed if I am to advance another step;" and so I begin the process.
[BIBLE]Isaiah 55:7[/BIBLE]
We have to repudiate our own thoughts, deny our own affections completely, cut every diseased limb from our spiritual body. But the curse has crept into every part, even into the bones. The very constitution of our thoughts and affections are amiss; the foundation is cracked, and the roof leaky. The substructures of our ideas, thoughts, and impulses are broken, and someone is tampering with them.
[BIBLE]Proverbs 28:26[/BIBLE]
The very thing which tells me that I'm broken is broken. I am forced to walk in one direction alone, the only direction that has even a little light; toward the Lord, rejecting my own thoughts and way, and I will be pardoned, loved, clothed, and fed, says the Lord. I will guarded as a wife, protected as a son, encouraged as a friend, and given Life Everlasting with a Crown of Life, cradled inside my God as an unborn child, eternally separated from the heart that hated me, mislead me, hurt me. I will be born into another heart, which is not my own, yet it envelopes me, flows into me and through me. I am in the Life of God.
And this process has taken place today. I am reminded that this is nothing to pat myself on the back for, because I have only done my duty, and nothing special. It is what I was commanded to do. and I have no self-appreciation for it. How could I not have done this? Look at my old heart, passing away there, as it throbs on the floor of death. My old heart would have said to itself "Good job, you have done well. Take rest, eat, drink, be ye merry." But my new heart says "Walk on, precious son. Walk away from the old heart and you will be delivered. And they that follow the Lamb die daily."
