Your Heart

I have to say, I feel like a completely different person these past several weeks. So many things have gone on and I really can see a change occurring in my life. A good change...no, an amazing change. I have been quite stubborn and resistant in wanting to allow this change to happen in my life because I did know it would mean giving things up and changing how I live my life. But God broke down my walls of pride and selfishness and revealed Himself to me. I have a song on my iPhone playlist and my shuffle kept coming back to it and I started to realize God may have been doing that to help get my attention and to actually listen to the words...and so I did and it brings tears to my eyes when I hear the song because it really is my new desire and should be everyone's desire in their life. The song is called, "Your Heart" by Chris Tomlin.

It never was about the oil dripping from my head
I never did dream beyond the pastures I could tend
It never was about the praise, not about the street parade
I didn’t really need a crowd when Goliath fell down
I never meant to woo a king with simple shepherd songs
Or hide away inside a cave, safe from danger’s arms
I never meant to wear a crown, or try to bring armies down
It never was about me and who I hoped to be
At the end of the day, I wanna hear people say
My heart looks like Your heart, my heart looks like Your heart
When the world looks at me, let them agree
That my heart looks like Your heart, my heart looks like Your heart
I never thought I would be much more than Jesse’s kin
Who would ever dream a king would come from Bethlehem?
I know that I’ve crashed and burned, lives have been overturned
But You redeem everything, yeah, even me
At the end of the day, I want to hear people say
That my heart looks like Your heart, my heart looks like Your heart
When the world looks at me, I pray all they see
Is my heart looks like Your heart, my heart looks like Your heart
Five little stones, or a royal robe
Shepherd or king doesn’t mean a thing
At the end of the day
At the end of the day, I wanna hear people say
That my heart looks like Your heart, my heart looks like Your heart
Unashamed I will dance, In Your name, lift my hands
‘Til my heart looks like Your heart, my heart looks like Your heart 

I think the chorus of that song is so convicting! How many of us can really say that at the end of the day? But that really should be our goal and desire...that our heart would reflect the heart of Christ. We are commanded in Scripture to live as Christ did. 

"The one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked."

1 John 2:6

This song has really challenged my heart and mind to strive to live in a manner pleasing to Christ. I want Him to be proud of me when I finally see Him face to face. I don't want Him to be disappointed when He looks at the life I'm living. One of the things I really struggled with, unfortunately, was my purity. I had no regard for what Christ taught us on the subject through Scriptures. I just did what I wanted thinking that it was my life, my body and so why couldn't I do what made me feel good? Wow...even just writing that now makes me shake my head at how selfish that was of me to think that way! My pastor recently preached a sermon on sex and it really blew me away and challenged me. I had no right to be living in such a way. Can I change the mistakes I've made? No. But I can change how I live from here on out and that is what I am striving to do now. I want to make my Heavenly Father proud of me. I want to have His heart. I want others to look at my life and see Christ reflected in me.

 

A Journey Worth Taking

       Ok, so I had to really think about how to talk about my testimony. And the first thing that came to my mind was like a person going on a journey. My life has taken many windy roads with a lot of bumps on the way. And I am far from arriving at my destination, but I'm setting my spiritual GPS and letting God take the wheel. We can go back to the beginning....way back to when I was five years old. That is really when everything began for me. My dad had passed away suddenly and unexpectedly right after my grandmother had passed away. The only thing I could think of was wanting to see my dad again and I knew that meant I had to be saved to get into heaven. So, in kids church one Sunday when an invitation was given, I went forward with half the other kids just so I knew I'd see daddy again.

      Well, that basically held me over for most of life growing up. I was convinced I was saved and good to go. Had no need to worry. Not to mention I was living in a Christian home, going to a Christian school and went to church three times a week. How couldn't I be saved? And really I was a good kid. So there was no need to question anything. Then I got into high school--still a christian school, but yet things started changing for me. By tenth grade, I was finding myself to be very depressed. If anyone looked at the life I had, they'd ask why? How could I have any reason to be depressed? But yet I was even to the point of cutting myself. I sometimes scared myself that I had let myself get to that point. This continued on as my high school years went on. By my senior year, I was depressed and making decisions in my life that were probably considered insane. It is like I had gone off the deep end. My friends tried talking me out of a very bad online relationship I had developed but I just blocked them out and did what I wanted.

       Then we hit my college years and things kind of smoothed out. I wasn't completely happy but the depression had seemed to go away for me and my focus changed to getting through my time at college and trying to have fun doing so. I knew how to live a good life and I even tricked my own mind into thinking I was a good person. I had some ups and downs along the way, but overall it was a good four years until my last semester. I felt like I hit a wall and couldn't get around it. My health was not good and had to deal with surgery and that put me behind in my work. Nothing went right with school or relationships or even things as little as my car always breaking down. I just sunk back into a deep depression and everything seemed to go wrong...and when something went right I would not even recognize it in my life because I was so depressed again. Fortunately, I made it through and graduated. But then I went from being surrounded by Bible teaching and church and being in a Christian bubble to having none of that at home really. Church was once a week but just because I was expected to go.

        That summer following graduation was not good at all. I made some of the worst decisions in my life. Ones that I can never take back and have to live with. But I didn't care then and just wanted to live life to the fullest. I was still feeling depressed in life but now I just covered that with drinking and guys. At the end of the summer, I was tired of life. I was chatting on Facebook with a friend from college and she was hearing how I was living my life. She began to ask me questions...deep questions and ones that I really didn't want to answer because I knew my answers weren't good ones. I kind of brushed off the questions at the times because I didn't want to face the truth. The very obvious truth that I had spent so many years ignoring. But after a couple days of having those questions go over in my mind, I broke down. So I faced the truth and knew I was not happy in life and wanted to fill the very large void that I had been filling with all the wrong things. I talked to Emily, my friend from college again, and told her how right she was and that I was not truly saved. I never had really asked Christ into my heart. What I had done at five was meaningless merely to "see my dad again". I didn't care about a relationship with God, which was very evident in my life.

         So I accepted Christ into my life. And things started getting better. I had a reason to live now and keep moving forward, however I let circumstances get in the way of what really mattered. Months going by without a job. A dying car. Bad health. Not being able to pay bills. Failed relationships. Why was God letting all this happen? Depression had kicked back in and it hit me full force. Cutting and everything. To points I didn't even want to live anymore. I knew for a fact I was saved now, so why was feeling this way? Why was I having such a hard time in life? Then it dawned on me---I never took the steps I needed after getting saved to make my new found life grow. I didn't change anything in my life except that one day I asked Christ into my heart. So I talked to my pastor and got help for what my doctor rules as "irritable depression". Things have certainly changed for me. I'm finally on the right road again. Still hitting a few speed bumps now and then, but have one focus in my life now--and that is growing and serving God with my life. Living a God-honoring life and being a true woman after God's own heart...a Proverbs 31 woman. I see things differently and have never been happier in life. So I am going to let God take control of my life and I know I'll be on track in this journey I've been on....and while it's been rough it has definitely been worth taking!

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

Jeremiah 29:11