Don't Follow Your Heart

Sometimes people wonder why we should even bother trying if no one is perfect. Christians struggle with questions of why God created laws that He knew full well we would not be able to follow. The short answer is that by knowing these laws, we would be able to see ourselves for what we really are and understand our deep need for a savior.

A very popular motto to live by in today’s world is, “Follow your heart.” Unfortunately, what we often fail to realize is that our “heart” can sometimes deceive us. When we follow our hearts, what we are really doing is following our emotions and making impulsive decisions. For example when my husband and I are arguing and he says something hurtful, my emotions want me to make a comment that would make him hurt as badly as I do. There have been several times that I have fired back some snarky comment to avenge my wounded feelings, and many people wouldn't bat an eye, in fact some people might even encourage giving someone the “taste of their own medicine.” The problem is I know it’s wrong because God commands us to act in love, even if society doesn't see a problem in acting out of anger.

Cultural norms are always changing because we try finding ways to blur the lines between right and wrong so that we can convince ourselves that we aren't doing something that we believe we shouldn't do… but while we bargain with our conscience to try to rationalize our actions, God never changes. He has stayed the same since the beginning of time and He created these laws to stand in juxtaposition with society’s laws so that we would be able to see the stark contrast between the two and to expose the sin that we are trying so desperately to justify.

Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. Luke 5:31-32 

When we forget about God’s laws, we forget why Jesus came in the first place, which was to save us from the darkness in sin; but if we can’t recognize our sin, then the hope of the Gospel is obsolete. If we don’t believe that we are broken, then we have no need to be healed. God gave us the law to expose our brokenness and gave us Jesus to mend it. Following your heart can lead you down roads that you never wanted to go, but following Jesus will always lead you down the path to salvation.

Love Actually

One of the hardest, yet most important things that God commands of us is to love people. This is difficult because He isn’t commanding us to love the people that we like or people that we feel like we can even tolerate. He commands us to love all people, even the people who we normally can’t stand.

Last year, when I was just beginning my walk with the Lord, I noticed that I have a tendency of dehumanizing people that I don’t like. I found myself just being annoyed in general with people if they rubbed me the wrong way. I had no compassion nor was a genuinely happy for anyone else’s joys. I was stuck between indifference and jealousy.

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Matthew 5:43-48 ESV

In the weeks leading up to Easter last year, I decided to read the gospel of Matthew to gain a better appreciation for how Jesus lived and died. As I read The Sermon on the Mount, I was struck by how my actions were going against the commandment of the God I so deeply yearned to follow. I began to pray for God to open my heart and show me how to love people as He loves them. As I prayed, He opened my eyes and made me aware of the struggles that these people that I was writing off as rude, or “just not my type of person” were going through and I began praying for these people. As I continued to pray for them, I felt myself growing fond of them.

It was a phenomenon for me as I felt myself genuinely caring for those who I had never cared for before and realized that God commands this of us to transform us to become more like him. Charles Spurgeon wrote this in his book Morning and Evening about the subject:

“He who dares the most, shall win the most; and if rough be thy path of love, tread it boldly, still loving thy neighbors through thick and thin. Heap coals of fire on their heads, and if they be hard to please, seek not to please them, but to please thy Master; and remember if they spurn thy love, thy Master hath not spurned it, and thy deed is as acceptable to him as if it had been acceptable to them. Love thy neighbor, for in so doing thou art following the footsteps of Christ.”

Loving those who we find it hard to even like, might seem like a struggle; but when I think of my worst moments and deepest secrets and realize that Christ would have still sat at the same table as me for dinner despite my failings, I realize just how deep God’s love is for us and feel compelled to try to show the love that He has for me by loving others.

The Slippery Slope

Fear the LORD your God, serve him only and take your oaths in his name. Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you. Deuteronomy 6:13–14

Often, when I think of idolatry I think of the worldly things that can get in the way of following Christ, but lately I have found that the idols I have struggled with the most are myself, and my relationships. Throughout the past few months I have felt disconnected, and had wondered why. I felt like I was doing the right things by seeking community with other Christians, joining small groups, and bearing witness to friends and family, yet still I felt disconnected, somewhat out of control and without purpose. 

This past weekend, while Brendan was in the field, I decided to go to Columbus, GA and visit my friends from my previous church, and over the course of the weekend I became aware of just how little I was serving God. When I had moved to Fayetteville from Columbus, I had felt a hole in my heart from the community of believers that I had left, and while I got involved with a church here, I constantly felt a twinge of longing to move back to Columbus. 

As I spent time with my friends, I spoke to them about my church in Fayetteville and all the blessings it has given us so far and found myself reflecting on all the miracles God has brought into our life since our move and was amazed at how quickly they had been forgotten. I realized that when I got to Fayetteville, I became self-reliant again and I basically looked to God and said, “Thanks for saving me, but I can handle it from here. I’ll find a church, find community and I’ll be ok.” My quiet time with God plummeted, and though I was talking about Him, I wasn’t really spending a lot of time talking to Him. As one of the ladies reminded me that God had placed us in Fayetteville for a reason and that we are to be lights in the world, I wondered how great of a light I had been lately. The answer was: not a very good one.

I thought about how little I just sit and read the Bible and rest in the Lord, and how often I have conversations about things I need prayer for, yet pray for those things so little. I suddenly realized how slippery the slope of idolatry was. It’s easy to recognize idolatry when you place work over God, or when you prefer to read a tabloid instead of the Bible. It gets a little less obvious when it’s as simple as basing your relationship with God on the church you attend or the relationships you have with other Christians. 

I’m not saying that going to a church and having a community of believers isn’t important. What I am saying is that it’s not important so that you feel connected and special, it’s because having Christians encouraging, loving and supporting each other makes the glory of God shine. God showed me that relationships, even with other Christians are empty unless God is at the center of them, and how impossible it is to have a God glorifying relationship with anyone unless we spend time alone with Him resting in his grace and truth.

Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. Hebrews 10:19-25

Amazing Grace

So, wedding and moving planning are chugging along here with less than 2 weeks to go for both. Life has been pretty busy and stressful. I'm in my last week of work and trying to iron out as many details for our transitions as I can. Brendan is in his last week of Airborne School which means that he is learning to jump out of planes and will jump out of a plane 5 times this week... what a great thing to do 2 weeks before you get married! He leaves at about 3:00am and returns between 6 and 9 pm. On an average day, we are able to spend around 1 hour together because of Brendan's sleep schedule... which means that during that time I am most likely harassing him about the wedding or our move.

Something that's more important that all of those little things we have going on in our lives is that last weekend Brendan and I  got baptized at our church! We were both christened as infants in our childhood churches, but feel that we are called to be baptized as believers in the Gospel, which we weren't capable of being when we were infants. At the church we go to during a Baptism Sunday, a friend will read your testimony of God's grace in your life to the congregation and then you are fully immersed in water. Water baptism illustrates Jesus' death, burial and resurrection as well as the death of  our old sinful lives and of being raised to walk in newness of life in Christ. The submerged body represents death and burial and the body being raised up out of the water provides a picture of resurrection and new life.

While baptism does not "save" you, it is a public proclamation of your faith in Jesus and admission of your need for God's grace in your life.

     What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
    For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
    Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. Romans 6:1-14 ESV

 If God can forgive us, we then are called to forgive others

 I feel like it's important for me to be honest and say that doing life together again has had its challenges, and especially the last few weeks, we have needed to give each other grace. When two people come together, their own selfish wants sometimes get in the way and cause them to butt heads... add in the stress of what my Army friends and I call "reintegration" after periods of separation, wedding planning, and moving? Well you have yourself an equation for stress, and sometimes people's feelings get hurt.

There is a song that we sing in church called "Come Ye Sinners" and one of the lyrics says: "If you tarry until you're better you will never come at all." I've always liked that part of the song, it's encouraging to know that you cannot wait until you've "cleaned yourself up" to come to Christ and that no matter how battered and broken you are if you repent and believe, He will save you. Okay, its much more than encouraging. It's amazing.

I've always had a tough time forgiving people without holding onto some lingering grudge, but as I continue on my journey with the Lord, I realize how badly I need to begin forgiving and asking for forgiveness. God doesn't wait for us to make things right to give us grace, so if the Creator of the universe can forgive us without waiting for us to clean ourselves up, why do we constantly wait for apologies from the people we love? Christ has taught us that He is love and that through His love for us by His work on the cross, all our sins are forgiven... if that is the case for us with God, how can we not make it the case in our own lives with people that we love and forgive them even when they don't ask for it? How can we expect God to forgive us from turning away from Him, when we can't even forgive people for the minor things in life?

Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. James 1:19-20 ESV