Guard Your Heart

I stood in worship, looking around at everyone else. I don’t even remember the song, that’s how much I wasn’t paying attention. Thoughts flooded my mind as I looked around at different people, judging how she was dressed, how she was worshipping, who does she even think she is? Judgement, comparison, insecurity.

“And when He had looked around at them with anger, being grieved by the hardness of their hearts…” (Mark 3:5 NKJV)

Let me put this into context – Jesus was going around and doing ministry. This particular day was the Sabbath, which in Jewish custom was to be revered and no work was to be done. It was a day of rest. Yet Jesus, came across a man with a withered hand and of course He healed him. This was much to the Pharisees (the religious leaders of the day) disgust. They stood there, watching compassion in action with hard, ugly, stubborn hearts. The Bible says that this state of their heart GRIEVED Jesus.

Grieved = caused sorrow // Sorrow = a feeling of deep distress, disappointment

When I read this account I want to walk up to them and shake them and yell, “He has a withered hand people, A WITHERED HAND!” Like, hello, who are you to judge what Jesus is doing? What if you had a withered hand?

And that’s when I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach.

There I was, standing among family in God’s house, supposedly honoring Him with my praise and my worship, and instead I stood with judgement, viewing the compassion of Jesus around me with a hard, ugly and stubborn heart. Somebody needed to shake me.

But you know what, it happens. Thankfully, we serve a Lord that loves us and is quick to forgive. I may have grieved His heart in that moment but I know that my realization and desire to change is what makes Him proud. We always have a choice. Many times our thoughts of judgement come from the roots of insecurity. We look at others and compare ourselves. When what they have going for them seems better than what we have, we are quick to judge because that seems to justify and empower our low self-image.

Had the Pharisees made the decision to focus on Jesus and His compassion, maybe one of them too would have been healed of a lifetime of struggle. We don’t have to be like them. We don’t need to compare and contrast. He made us great and His focus is on us just as much as it is on our Christian sister. In the midst of incredible worship, maybe Jesus is healing her, touching her, speaking to her.

May we not harden our hearts. A soft heart is what we can see grabs Jesus’ attention and miracle working power. 

[Thank you for reading today’s post! If you have not yet, please submit your email in order to receive notifications of new posts right into your inbox.]

Finishing > Starting

After watching numerous shows of “Fixer Upper” and scrolling through endless pins in the DIY house section of Pinterest, I had the best couple team building activity: we were going to redo our dining room table & chairs. I mean, it can’t be hard right?

Wrong.

I don’t know what I thought. I guess I assumed that it would take us a day and boom – our romantic DIY project would be displayed proudly and look just like what I was seeing in my head. Well that hasn’t happened. In actual fact, it’s been 2 weeks and we still have an empty dining room where the only option if having company over, would be to sit cross-legged on the floor.

But this “adventure” got me thinking. How often is this true of our lives and the situations we put ourselves in? So often we get to a place of not seeing the worth in things anymore. We find ourselves tired, bored, uninspired or even just “over it.”

And then that’s when we quit.

Throwing in the towel in the society that we live in has not just become popular, but it’s become acceptable. Our millennial generation genuinely believes that we don’t have to finish what we start if what we start steps on our toes in any way.

Hence why life around us looks the way it does. We go to college, but only show up sometimes. We don’t like our job so we call in sick more often than not. Marriage requires more work than we would like to commit so it must not “be of God.” And so the cycle continues and we find ourselves like our DIY project in the garage – sitting gathering dust, half sanded and half stained.

I love what Jesus teaches in Luke 14:28-33 about first counting the cost. To paraphrase, Jesus is basically saying that before we begin something – we need to sit and make sure we have what it takes to complete it. This ensures success for us and does not allow room for us to become a joke, quitter, failure etc. to those around us.

Of course in this particular passage of scripture Jesus is referring to us becoming one of His disciples, however in Colossians 3:23, we are encouraged to do everything we do as if we are doing it for God and not for the people around us. This changes our perspective doesn’t it?

Things do get hard – sometimes my area of work makes me want to cry, sometimes marriage seems too hard to continue and quite honestly, sometimes sitting on the couch binging Netflix for hours gets me as close to a male’s “nothing box” as possible. But the truth still remains, God has called us to finish that which we start. Whatever it may be.

How proud will I be when we are able to invite company over and they sit and enjoy a meal at the DIY project we spent hours on? The joy that that will bring outweighs the difficulty of getting the job done!

… and so is it with life 🙂

“But don’t begin until you count the cost” (Luke 14:28a NLT)

[Thank you for reading today’s post! If you have not yet, please submit your email in order to receive notifications of new posts right into your inbox.]