Heart Matters

“Remember this, and show yourselves men; Recall to mind, O you transgressors.  Remember the former things of old, For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me,..” Isaiah 46:8-9

Happy New Year everyone!  2018 here we are! New beginnings, new resolutions, new seasons, new blessings, new goals…lots of new things to look forward to!  Let the change begin!  Right?  Right! We’re always excited about the new things.  One of my favorite OT passages is in my favorite OT book, the book of Isaiah.  It says, “Behold, I will do a new thing, Now it shall spring forth; Shall you not know it?  I will even make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” Isaiah 43 19.  Awesome!  Oh the things our God can do!  I also love this one (don’t get me started lol) in Jeremiah: “Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know.”  Jeremiah 33:3  Have Mercy!  I just get so excited when I think about the goodness of God!  Truly HE has lots of good things in store for His children.  Don’t we just love that about Jesus!  We always welcome the good…don’t we?  We always welcome the chance for a new start.  But who said good always means new?  And who said old always means bad? Did I trip you up yet?  I hope not!  Stay with me here.  As we enter into a whole new year, I want to challenge you to consider the old.  I want you to think about those things in the past that God has been prodding your heart to deal with but for whatever reason (I’m sure there are many), you’ve decided to ignore His call to face it with HIM, and instead have allowed yet another year to pass, naively thinking it’s also a thing of the past.  I’m speaking of that issue of which you had the very strong feeling that the Lord was urging you to deal with but you still decided to ignore it and turn the blind eye.

There’s nothing like trying to moving forward when we’re unknowingly seriously tethered down.  We can so easily set our sights on what lies ahead reaching and striving to attain the same, not realizing we must first turn around and look that weight right in the face and deal with it entirely in order to get released from its oppression and pressure.  I’m suggesting sometimes when there’s an issue the LORD is calling us to deal with, there’s really no freedom to move forward until we do.

The old things we thought we could just sweep under the rug will cause that rug to buckle and trip us up every time.  The old things-the things we’re simply tired of, the things we purposely ignore and neglect, the things which we’ve tried to deny its very existence and have somewhat successfully obliterated from our daily thinking.  What of those things? Are not some of those things in the past things which we really should leave behind altogether?”  Are not some of these, things which the Lord Himself would want us to apply what the apostle Paul said in Philippians: “but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:13   Of course! I believe so! Some of them, yeah, perhaps even most of them. Yes I’d say there are many negative experiences, perceptions, even people, that God would have us leave in our dust (when it comes to people, please make sure He’s the One commanding that and not your feelings and emotions).  However, there are some things-God knows- which unless completely and correctly dealt with, will corrupt our very character and keep us from entering into the “new things” the LORD has specifically for us.  It is these things which we must agree with God about and ask Him for the grace to face it.

God is the God who makes all things new but that doesn’t mean He ignores the old things that have never been properly dealt with. We have a choice to make. If we choose to, we can keep on doing an about-face and pretending that it never happened, had no significance, or that we haven’t been affected….but it’ll only delay our blessing.  In fact, I truly believe it is because of His Grace that He doesn’t just allow us to move on and leave those deceitfully crippling and destructive issues to remain.  You see our biggest problem is not the wrongs we’ve endured.  Our biggest problem is how we’ve allowed our hearts to respond to those wrongs. Now get this and this is the aim of this entire blog.  I believe that in HIS GRACE the LORD is constantly calling us to face and deal with those things which if left unaddressed HE will have to judge us for at the Bema Seat Judgement.  GRACE!

As painful as it may be, The LORD deliberately and continuously causes us to come face to face with our issues, time and time again if necessary, until we are ready and willing to face them with Him. HE is willing to give us the grace we need to overcome the things of the past which have held us back and caused us to stall in our spiritual growth.  The LORD knows all He has in store for us and all HE’s created us to be. He also knows every single sinful issue (unforgiveness, unloving heart attitudes, dismissiveness, self-righteousness, narcissism, prejudice, hatred-just to name a few) that can hold us back and keep us from our future blessings. We need to understand that HE is totally committed to our sanctification-our spiritual growth.  Sometimes we’ve buried that issue so deep we don’t even have a clue as to why we keep bumping into certain opportunities.  Somethings we’ve lived in denial of for so long we’ve become oblivious to our real heart condition.  Somethings we embrace so tightly so as to justify ourselves, we simply aren’t willing to acknowledge the truth.  But God.  He patiently waits for us to deal and then as it becomes necessary He begins insisting that we deal….all because of His Grace.

(Two stories come to mind as I write this). One of my favorite aunts was left with a trachea in her throat because of a mistake her surgeon made.  She displayed an enormous amount of strength and faith in the throes of it all.  In fact, I suspect that great trial in her life led her to a saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.  I witnessed her transformation and growth.  She already was one of the most loving people I knew but the way she handled her day to day struggle showed me that she was also one of the strongest people I knew.  As her voice faded, her faith grew.  One day she was in the hospital for yet another procedure when a doctor came in with a group of medical students, when he pulled back the curtain and she saw it was him, the doctor who messed her up, she told me she totally freaked out.  She said screamed at the top of her lungs and ordered him to leave.  It seemed that all of the anger, resentment and disgust for him rose to the surface and she couldn’t bear not even a second of seeing his face.  My heart broke as I listened to her recall her horror on the phone to me.  But I loved her too much not to share what I felt the Lord leading me to share with her.  I said “Auntie, I believe the LORD was giving you a chance to tell him you forgave him.”  I knew it hurt, I knew it would sting and insult her but I shared so that she could truly understand the forgiveness of God and how He will both call and equip us to forgive.  What I said shocked her.  She had never thought of that.  I’m sure she was even more than a little peeved with me for saying it but her love for me wouldn’t let her hold it against me. After that conversation, we never talked about it again and the Lord took my sweet auntie home to Heaven that same year I believe.  I know she’s with Jesus and I hope she was able to sincerely forgive that doctor -completely-before she left this earth.

By the way, it brings up another point I have to address.  I believe forgiveness can have layers. The deeper the hurt the more times we probably have to forgive.  When Peter asked the Lord how many time must I forgive and the Lord said 70×7, I’m thinking it could also be for just one single offense.  I’m sure my aunt had decided to forgive that doctor long before she ran into him.  I saw the fruit of that decision.  However her response to seeing him indicated that there was something there which still needed to be dealt with.  You see, God can really surprise us sometimes-especially when He reveals the recesses of our hearts to us.

Corrie Ten Boom (“The Hiding Place”) recalled coming face to face with a very harsh oppressor after a speaking engagement.  She along with her precious family had been thrown into the concentration camp for hiding Jewish people when the Nazi’s occupied Holland.  Corrie survived it, but her dad, sister, and nephew did not.  She began speaking and sharing her testimony all over the world.  On one occassion after speaking Corrie said a man can running up to her screaming something like “Corrie, Corrie, I’m a Christian too now!” She said he put out his hand to her and said “will you forgive me Corrie?”  Her mind went back to that concentration camp where he had been one of the guards and had treated both she and her sister cruelly.  Corrie said she immediately knew she couldn’t forgive him.  So in her wisdom she prayed.  She said she quickly asked God to give her the love and forgiveness He had for him.  She said no sooner had she prayed that, that her hand went out and she offered forgiveness to that former Nazi guard. The LORD did it, He equipped her to do it!  I’m sure if you would have asked Corrie before that encounter had she forgiven all her German oppressors, she would have said “yes.”  She was a woman of God who was serious about the things of God.  I believe she agreed with God early on that she should forgive them-perhaps while she was even still in the concentration camp.  But God knew her heart and He knew there was something there which had prevented her from forgiving completely.  God knew there was an old thing, and former issue that Corrie needed to face and He would give her the grace to do so.  If you’re thinking “well she probably just went through the motions and still felt the same when she left him”, let me tell you what she did when she went home.  Corrie said she threw all the evidence she’d been compiling to help convict him and other Nazi’s right into the fire.  Corrie forgave him and in return the LORD freed Corrie.

As you anticipate all that 2018 will have to offer, I’m asking you to consider and ask God about the things the Lord kept calling you to your attention in 2017 but you refused to deal with and face. Just because you’ve chosen to deny it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. It may hurt to go there. You may feel like it’s just too painful and will be too exhausting to address, but remember if the LORD is saying you must-you MUST. I know you’re ready to keep the journey moving forward and it feels as though stopping to face it will only slow you down, but if God is graciously leading you to pause, He knows it’s exactly what you need to do to be in order to walk the path He has for you…. at the pace He’s determined for you.

Believers, God is our FATHER and HE wants the best for us.  HE wants us to be spiritually healthy and whole.  He has work for us to do and we need strength and stamina to do it! He desires for us to deal with the things we’d rather suppress, bury, and lie to ourselves about, because He knows that until we do so, those very things are stunting our spiritual growth.  Just as the surgeon has to cut open the patient in order to remove the tumor, we too may have some pain to endure in order to get to and attain our healing.  God would rather we flat line so we can then be revived than continue living as though we are dead men walking. “For if we would judge ourselves we would not be judged.” 1st Corinth 11:31  Deal with the old so you can enter into the new!

HEART TO HEART: THE LORD REVEALS OUR HEARTS SO HE CAN REVIVE OUR HEARTS!