"The heart is hopelessly dark and deceitful,
a puzzle that no one can figure out.
But, I, God, search the heart
and examine the mind.
I get to the heart of the human.
I get to the root of things.
I treat them as they really are,
not as they pretend to be."
Jeremiah 17:9-10 (The Message)
God...searching our heart. Our hopelessly dark and deceitful heart. Our Lord and Father...examining our mind. The One who created everything thing we see and everything we don't see...not allowing us to pretend any longer, but calling things what they are. Treating them for what they are.
It's painful.
Left to our own devices, we are all dark. Without hope. We are all deceitful.
When I started my journey to truly understanding this, to seeking Truth, not truth, I thought that the decision to start that journey would be the hardest part. Subconsciously, somewhere I believed that once I stepped out into faith to make that decision God would just be there to cradle me through the process, changing my heart quickly and painlessly. It seems crazy, but it must be what I believed, because it's how I responded. If you ever wonder what you truly believe, look at your response when something defies your expectations.
But God gave me this picture...
A closet. A big, messy closet.
And it helped me to understand.
Because here's the thing, if our heart is like our closet, just big and messy and full of stuff, most of us all go through the same process to clean it out. We pull almost everything out. And when you pull all that junk out and it's laying on the floor outside the door, you realize you've got a far bigger mess than you even thought. Sometimes, in the beginning, you're still feeling on top of the world and ready to take on the mess. But as you start putting little things away, back where they belong, you realize that there are things you never knew were there in the first place and things you had put there so long ago and then just forgot about. The longer you stare at it, it seems that somehow things are getting messier rather than cleaner. At least before it was contained, but now it's all out in the open...and something has to be done with it.
There are 3 options:
Toss it all back in. It won't go back in the same place it was before, but it will be a mess just the same. And you'll be a little more aware of all the things that are in there that you need to get rid of, but decide to just deal with that later. Hiding it...a dangerous place to find yourself.
Or, you could leave it all out, exactly where it is. A mess, for anyone and everyone to see. A mess for you to constantly be reminded of. A mess that if not attended to will get pushed and shoved around because it's in the way of everything else in your space.
Or...you can just keep going through the process. Piece by piece until everything is cleaned back up and back where it belongs.
It's what God does with our hearts when we allow Him into that mess. He helps us sort through, decide what to keep and what needs to be thrown out. What needs to be given away. What needs a little TLC before being put back in its place. Where we need to put things when we put them back in so that everything can be seen, and everything has its place.
He will not bail out on the process. And we shouldn't either. It's going to feel a lot messier before it feels cleaner, but the polishing will happen and your heart will shine again.
"...work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure."
Philipians 2:12-13 (NASB)
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