Change My Heart Lord



 Heart......the organ that pumps blood throughout our bodies entirety; supplying oxygen and nutrients to our tissues and removing carbon dioxide and other wastes. Our physical life line; if unable to supply blood to our organs and tissues, they die..... We die.

 We all know the physical purpose of our heart. We are taught what eating habits and physical activity are best to keep our hearts functioning properly. However do we ever really seek how to keep the emotional and spiritual health of our heart at its best as well?   What do we do to guard our hearts  from emotional deaths; a death that causes our once soft, fleshy heart that held compassion, empathy, grace and love to become a cracked jagged and jaded stone? A stone that buries deep within the cracks the brokenness of our self worth and harbors the anger of our hurt others have pierced with their arrow of disdain.

 

Questions I find myself asking more often.

 

It's easy to become hard in a world filled with much hate and harmful banter; a defense created, justified and continues to be built upon.  It's difficult to extend grace, to be the one who bears the olive branch of peace, to those who cause  knee bending grief and uncontrollable tears. And yet is is through grace the stoney cracks of  hearts can be filled and healed. I do my best to forgive quickly however after searching my own heart, I too, have cracks that need filling. 

Childhood cracks, teenage ones, and adult cracks that have splintered portions of my heart and turned to stone.

 

"Defense mechanism? "  I softly whisper.  " But Lord, I have forgiven all who have hurt me."  I speak a little louder this time with a silent question mark on the end of my statement.

 The answer I hear deep within.............

Your heart has areas in need of change.

 

What changes? I am now talking to myself, literally, in awe of disbelief as I re-evaluate my heart.

 

He takes me back in time and shows me where I forgave out of obedience but allowed the cracks of stone to remain. I , once again, explain with a passionate tone,  I am guarding my heart ; I am protecting it from further damage. My argument has no solid ground with my daddy God. He has me look at what is flowing from the cracks of my  heart. ( His word does instruct me to guard my heart for everything I do flows from it.)  Proverbs 4:23

 

 In His infinite wisdom, He knows the fashion in which I am guarding my heart causes it to remain unchanged and it becomes a dying organ that can no longer receive love and grace.

I find myself in a place of spiritual grief and disappoinment. How could I not see this? Did I become so oblivious to the state of my own heart I ignored the cracks?

 

As I continue to have a one person argument with myself while spouting off what seems like a million and one questions................

 He speaks a promise to me.

 

Ezekiel 36:26

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you ; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

 

I am humbled.

 

The struggle to "protect" is real when guarding my heart. I know to become more of Him and less of me, my heart must remain of flesh and not of stone. To recieve grace in my own life, I must be able to extend it as well. To be loved within my own failures and faults, I must be able to love those in the midst of theirs. And I must forgive with sincerity and compassion not just from obedience.

 

I am forever grateful he never leaves me as I am.

 

His work in me continues..............

 

Change my heart Lord~

 

His Daughter,

Stacey