Being a Christian Means Having a Wounded Heart

"Conversion (becoming a Christian and the process of being a Christian) is not the smooth, easy-going process some men (and women) seem to think. It is wounding work, this breaking of the hearts; but without wounding there is no saving ... Where there is grafting there is a cutting, the (thin, young branch) must be let in with a wound; to stick it onto the outside or tie it on with a string would be of no use. Heart must be set to heart and back to back, or there will be no sap from root to branch, and this I say, must be done by a wound." (John Bunyan)
Jesus said, "I am the Vine, you are the branches. ... without Me you can do nothing! (John 15:5)
Has your heart been broken so you can love and serve the great King and others with God's love?

GRACE

I have a very wise son. I'm not sure how he got that way, but he amazes me sometimes. Not long ago he was talking about a "situation" he was trying to work through. It was one of those hard relational things where the other party was totally convinced they were right with a "holy fervor"! It wasn't an easy time for my son and his family, but his response to this difficult, painful relationship was what blessed my heart so much:
"Mom, I just have to think how much Jesus loved me and how much He suffered on the cross for me. If Jesus who never deserved to die could die such a terrible death so I can be forgiven, then who am I to deny grace to someone who has offended me? Forgiveness isn't an option when I consider how much I have been forgiven!"
Wow! I hope I can hold that in my heart so the next time I need those wise words I will remember and respond in kind!

A "Spooky" Love Story

The movie The Time Traveler's Wife is the story of a man who constantly flips back and forth between time travel and his normal life. He never knows where he will find himself next. You might say it's a love story with a sci-fi twist. The time traveler loves his wife. They were childhood sweetheats. His love reached across time and space from his heart to hers. He misses her when he's off on his travels.

There is a time traveler love story in Acts that has a similar twist. (Acts 8:26-40) Philip is a follower of Jesus and a missionary to the half-breed, social outcasts in Samaria. Philip gets a message from an angel to take a walk on a specific road and go a certain direction. He encounters a black man, a eunuch, who is part of the royal court in Ethiopia traveling back from Jerusalem. As this man rode along in his chariot he was reading to pass the time. He chose to read the scroll/book of Isaiah.

Note: This is interesting because it shows God's plan for the continent of Africa. Long before we knew there was a continent or it was named Africa, God knew and was working to bring His Gospel to what has often been called the dark continent. Today the Gospel is growing on steriods in Africa! It is no longer the dark continent to the Gospel.

God's love was reaching across time and space to this man in a chariot to open his eyes and his heart to the good news about Jesus.

In a sense this unnamed man from Ethiopia was reading an ancient love story. Philip climbed up into the man's chariot, rode a ways with him and explained what he was reading to him. The African man believed what he read. When they passed a stream or pond, he asked Philip to baptize him.

Up to this point in the story, God is working outside time and space to change the Ethiopian man's heart. Then the story turns really spooky:

When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away. The eunuch never saw him again ... (vs. 39-40)

It is spooky for us to think someone can just be gone - poof! - and reappear somewhere else far away in the blink of an eye, but this is God's MO (modus operandi - mode of operation). God travels through time and space all the time. In fact, the truth is that God goes even farther than that. God can be more than one place at a time all at the same time which is even more spooky!

God is the True Time Traveler! Like the man in the movie, God is after your heart and mine. He loves each of us enough to travel through time and space to woo and win our hearts and bring us into His forever family! God's love is literally an extraterrestral love affair. AND it's so much more than a nice story. The fact that God is the ultimate Time Traveler means that He is already in the middle of your day today, your day tomorrow and was in the middle of your yesterday! In a word, God is in the middle of your story! Think about it! It's pretty awesome! It's a spooky love story of cosmic proportions!

A New Heart!

Once there was a very pretty little pig named Isabelle. Isabelle belonged to Mrs. Lady. Mrs. Lady bathed Isabelle every day and dressed her in frilly dresses. Mrs. Lady and Isabelle took walks together every day. Lady was very proud of Isabelle, her pet pig.
One day when Lady and Isabelle took their walk, they passed some other pigs who were wallowing in a big mud puddle.
That was when the trouble began!
Isabelle yanked her leash right out of Lady's hand and ran as fast as her chubby little legs would go straight for the other pigs and their mud puddle. Isabelle dived right in the middle of the mud puddle!
Lady was horrified! She scolded Isabelle and promptly drug her out of the mud.
Isabelle squealed all the way home. Then Isabelle squeeled some more when Lady started scrubbing all the mud away. Lady scrubbed and scrubbed. Soon Isabelle was her normal pink pig self!
The next day Lady dressed Isabelle in a pretty dress and hat and took her for a walk. As they were walking, they came to a mud puddle ... What do you guess happened?
Isabelle ran as fast as her chubby little legs would carry her straight into the mud puddle. She rolled and splashed in the mud grunting and squealing with great glee!
Of course Lady was horrified. She was mad, too! She really, really scolded Isabelle all the way home!
Lady took Isabelle home and the scrubbing began all over again. This routine went on day after day. Finally Lady was so sad, mad and disgusted with Isabelle that she decided Isabelle would be better off as bacon rather than Lady's pet.
Lady told Isabelle that if she ever jumped into another mud puddle she was going straight to the butcher to be bacon.
Isabelle was sad and scared. She didn't know what to do. In her heart she was a pig, and pigs naturally like mud puddles! No matter how hard Isabelle tried, she knew she just couldn't stay away from mud puddles. Mud puddles are one thing pigs do best.
That night Isabelle dreamed about a beautiful fairy. The fairy asked Isabelle (in the dream), "Isabelle, would you like to change and never want to jump into another mud puddle?"
"O, yes!" Isabelle said to the fairy.
The fairy said, "Isabelle, I can help you. I can give you a heart transplant. I can cut out your pig heart and give you a lamb heart instead. Lambs don't like mud puddles. Lambs like clean green grass."
Isabelle was really scared, but she told the fairy to "go for it"!
The next day Lady and Isabelle went walking one last time.
Lady didn't know it yet, but Isabelle was a different pig. She ran and rolled on the clean green grass. She followed Lady everywhere she went. When they passed some pigs wallowing in a mud puddle, Isabelle didn't even blink. For the first time ever, she had no interest in mud. In fact she wanted to stay as far away as possible from nasty, yukky mud! Isabelle had a new heart! Isabelle looked like a pig on the outside, but she was really a lamb on the inside!
Isabelle and Lady and the fairy are only part of a made-up story. Fairies can't change pig's hearts. Fairies don't do heart transplants except in made-up stories.
BUT Isabelle helps me understand how God looks at my heart.
I am like Isabelle. I like to wallow in the mud of sin. That's just what sinners do, and I am a sinner. I have a heart that "likes" to sin. Trying harder is not the way out of the "sin cycle"!
Only God can change my heart. Only God does heart transplants - cutting out hearts bent to sin. You and I can't stop being sinners any more than Isabelle can stop being a pig.
It's hard to "be good." We all need new hearts. God comes to us and says, "Give me your heart and I will give you a new heart." (Ezekiel 36:26) When God gives us a new heart, then we want to love and obey God. God changes us on the inside!
Just remember: That change is a process not a point action. The good news is that God isn't finished with me yet no matter how much I goof things up! He's in the process of making my heart new.
In Romans 6:1-14 Paul talks about what God thinks:
So what do we do? Keep on sinning so God can keep on forgiving? I should hope not! If we've left the country where sin is sovereign, how can we still live in our old house there? Or didn't you realize we packed up and left there for good? ... we left the old country of sin behind; ... we entered the new country of grace - a new life in a new land! ...
Could it be any clearer? Our old way was nailed to the cross with Christ, a decisive end to that sin-miserable life - no longer at sin's beck and call! ... When Jesus died, he took sin down with him, but alive he brings God down to us. From now on, think of it this way: Sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you; God speaks your mother tongue, and you hang on every word. You are dead to sin and alive to God. That's what Jesus did.
That means you must not give sin a vote in the way you conduct your lives. Don't give it the time of day. Don't even run little errands that are connected with that old way of life. Throw yourselves wholeheartedly and full-time - remember, you've been raised from the dead! - into God's way of doing things. Sin can't tell you how to live. After all, you're not living under that old tyranny any longer. You're living in the freedom of God. (Romans 6:1-14, The Message)
Jesus said, "I am the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world." (John 1:29)

The Problem with Weeds!

I spent a few days the last week in the hospital. As we drove up the drive on my way home again, I looked at the flower beds around my front door. I was horrified! That "ground cover" I had only a little of for the past six years or so had suddenly exploded. It wasn't a pretty sight!
This morning as soon as it was light I pulled on old clothes and went out to attack those pesky weeds. By my calculation I have at least eight more hours at the task and then some ... There's a BIG problem with weeds: They have lots of little roots! These are particularly nasty in that regard!
I'm sure some of the roots have gone to ground to fight another day, but I'll be there with shovel and trowel in hand - ready and waiting! I'm on the offense with boots on the ground!
As I weeded, I contemplated ... what about those things in my life that seem so okay that really have deep, twisted roots that end up being pretty ugly in the end? I need to work on those, too!

Shepherds Trump Cowboys!

You have seen the movies of the old wild west. The cowboy rides behind waves of cattle as they pass head by head. The dusty trail goes forever into the sunset. The cowboy is hard working, slow talking and his horse is his best friend. The cowboy goes for days without seeing or talking to another human being. He sits around his lonely campfire staring into the night sky and sleeps under the stars.

I am reminded by Max Lucado in A Gentle Thunder that cowboys have nothing on shepherds. While the cowbody is an American hero who rides off into the sunset, the shepherd is the hero of Biblical and heavenly proportions.

Like the cowboy, the shepherd spends lots of lonely time with animals under the sun and the stars. BUT there are huge differences between cowboys and shepherds. Here are some of Max Lucado's observations:

• The shepherd loves his sheep; the cowboy doesn't even want to love his cows.
• The cowboy drives his cows to the slaughter house; the shepherd leads his sheep to green pastures.
• The cowboy likes Black Angus steak and hamburger; the shepherd wants wool from the sheep.
• The herd has many cowboys; the flock has only one shepherd. Remember that Jesus talks about the sheep hear the voice of their shepherd and come at his call.
• The shepherd knows the name of every lamb, ewe and ram; the cowboy knows the other cowboys.

Jesus never called Himself the Good Cowboy. He calls Himself the Good Shepherd. He knows His sheep (that would be you and me) by name and lays down his life for his sheep. The Good Shepherd protects, provides and takes care of His sheep. The shepherd literally sleeps in the door of the sheepfold. Danger had to come across his body to get to the sheep.

We live in a dangerous world where it is easy to walk off the cliff or be under attack by some savage beast. Only the Good Shepherd is there to pull us back from danger and to even put His own body in the path of danger for you and me! The Good Shepherd NEVER leads us to the slaughter house. He leads us home - according to Psalm 23 - where we will live with the Good Shepherd forever. The only catch is He HAS to be our Good Shepherd! My Good Shepherd trumps the cowboy any day of the week! And I'm so glad!

Heart-Deep Faith

Joni Eareckson Tada describes Corrie ten Boom's funeral in a devotional posted on line (Taken from Joni's book More Precious Than Silver). Joni talks about the simplicity of Corrie's faith and walk with Jesus, about how Corrie ten Boom's faith journey resonated from her heart. (Joni and Friends Daily Devotional, 5/02/10 at www.joniandfriends.org)

Reading what Joni wrote caused me to reflect on my own faith journey. I wonder if people will remember me for simple faith straight from the heart. I surely hope so because that's the kind of faith that lasts into eternity. That is also the kind of faith that draws others to want the Jesus they see in me.

People long to see restoration that is heart deep! I want them to see that kind of heart restoration in me!