The Heart's Void

Verse: You, God, are my God earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water. - Psalms 63:11

Topic: What does it mean to "Guard Your Heart?

Personal Piece:  A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to speak in the two Campus Life clubs that I help out with.  For those who don't know, Campus Life is a club that takes place in high schools around the country.  It is an opportunity for students to connect with other Christian students in their schools, grow in their faith and most importantly introduce their non-Christian friends to the love of Christ.  This particular week I was asked to speak on what it meant to "Guard your Heart".  Over these last few weeks I've discovered that guarding and longing go hand in hand.  So let's take a closer look.

Thought of the Week:  "Guarding Your Heart" is a popular part of Christian lingo but very few people really talk about what it means or why it's important.  I grew up my whole life "Guarding M

y Heart" but to me it meant following a bunch of rules that eventually led to me building really thick walls around my heart in an effort to "Guard".  No one ever taught me that keeping my heart safe didn't necessarily mean closing out the pain.  Let's just get one thing straight before moving on, pain happens, you CANNOT escape it.  But what happens to your heart when you encounter that pain, makes all the difference.

At the end of last year, I took a six week vacation.  One of those weeks I spent at the International House of Prayer (IHOP) doing one of their week-long intensives studying the Song of Solomon among many other things.  I think I learned more about God in that one week then I did in my entire 4-years of Bible College.  I ended my vacation by returning to Kansas City for IHOP's annual One Thing Conference.  As amazing as the conference was, I felt like I had hit a wall.  I didn't feel possible for me to learn anything else about God after all the revelation I had received just three weeks before and was still processing.

Toward the end of the week I was sitting during worship and conversing with God.  I told him that I didn't feel like crying.  I wanted to encounter him and receive new revelations of him but I didn't want to feel the pain.  Shouldn't being with him be pleasurable?  I could feel his presence in the room but the walls around my heart were keeping him at a distance.  His presence is overwhelming and I didn't feel like being overwhelmed.  I'm glad I didn't hold up against it because what followed was one of the most amazing experiences I have ever had.

I could feel the presence of God moving around me, could see him touching others while I sat there, refusing to be moved.  My friends were engaging and I wanted to engage too, I just didn't want to cry. I had resigned myself to not having that kind of experience.  It was fine, I thought, I don't have to have an emotional reaction every time.  I could still sing his praises and experience his presence next time.  Then he simply whispered to my heart "I am about to birth something in you beyond your imagining. But you have to stop fighting the labor pains."  I don't think I could ever quite express the effect that those words had on me.  I can only say that I've never felt closer to my Jesus as I did in that moment.

It was in that moment that I realized (though I couldn't put it into words at the time) that I had been guarding my heart so closely that I had even been guarding it from Jesus.  I have since learned that guarding my heart doesn't mean to keep it closed off and protected from those who might want to harm me, though I do need to be wise in my interactions.  Rather guarding my heart means to fill the longing in my heart with the only one who can truly fill it.

We all have that longing deep within us that cannot be fully explained.  Most young people want to fill it with relationships of any kind that they can get their hands on.  When I was in high school I stayed in far too many relationships that were not healthy in an attempt to fill that longing in my heart.  I stayed with friends who were fake and a boyfriend who was immature but none of them could fill me.  When adults tell their children to guard their hearts, they are generally telling their children to be careful when they're dating, to not expose too much to quickly or to stay pure in their thoughts and emotions.  But it goes so much farther than that.

I still fight to guard my heart and yes, I do still want to remain pure in my thoughts and emotions, I still want to be careful in my relationships with both friends and any guy I might date.  Not everyone has our best interests in mind and not every person we might be attracted to is going to encourage your purity.  We have to be careful to guard our hearts.  And how do we do that?  By filling the longings of our heart with Jesus.  Only he can heal our hearts when we've been hurt.  Only he can protect our hearts when we take a chance at love.  Only he soften our hearts when we've been betrayed.  Only he can truly understand the longings of our hearts because he is the one who put them there.  When we stop expecting others to fill that void only then can we experience true freedom and healing.


Digging Deeper:  For more information on the International House of Prayer and it's various programs click here.

If you want to know about Campus Life or would like to get involved in your area click here

Challenge:  Take some time to meditate on what it means to guard your heart and evaluate how well you have been guarding your own heart.  Are you letting betrayals and the circumstances of life harden you or are you allowing God to keep you soft?

Under the Curse

Verse: In him was life and that life was the light of all mankind.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. - John 1:4-5

Topic: What does it mean to be zealous?

Personal Piece: This week has been pretty busy.  We had a two-day snowstorm and got about a foot of snow on Monday and Tuesday.  So I ended up taking Tuesday off and picked up a shift on Thursday.  Needless to say, I was unable to write my post for on Thursday.  But that's given me 3 extra days to really meditate on this word of zeal and really wrestle with it.  This word has really been turning around in my head with the new release of my childhood favorites and an unfortunate "scandal" that goes with it.  I'm talking of course about Beauty and the Beast and Le Fou's "Sexual Orientation".  I haven't said a lot about the subject because I know it a sensitive one but God and I really had to have some serious conversations about whether I should see it.  That may sound really judgmental but...well just keep reading.

Thought of the Week: This week I want to share with you a story about a man named Phinehas.  This is a story from the Bible that very few talk about and even fewer preach on but in the last year or so Phinehas's story has become one of my favorites (ok yeah, so pretty much every story in the Bible is my favorite).  Now before we get to Phinehas we have to set the background with a story that many people do know.  The Israelites had been released from slavery in Egypt and they had departed from the mountain of the Lord after receiving the law and building the Tabernacle.  After nearly 40 years of wandering around in the desert they were finally nearing the promised land.  They had seen miracles and word of Yahweh's power had spread to the people who lived in the land and they were struck with fear.  One king in particular, King Balak of Moab, decided to do something about these imposters.  He summoned a man named Balaam who had a reputation for witchcraft.

Now I just need to pause here for a moment and explain something.  Many people tend to get confused by Old Testament references to God causing something bad to happen or in this case communicating with a man who could be nothing more than an ancient witch.  The Old Testament makes very few references to Satan and his cohorts.  Off the top of my head I can only think of  two occasions (in the garden of Eden and in the book of Job) where Satan is clearly referenced.  I do not believe this is because Satan was not as active or because God suddenly changed from judgmental to loving somewhere between the testaments.  Rather I believe it is because God accepted the blame for many of Satan's actions.  This may seem strange but at that time people were known for worshiping any god they could find, even the bad ones were worshiped out of fear of punishment.  Yahwah in his goodness and love...and jealousy wanted all the worship for himself.  Even if it was out of fear.

This said we can read the story of Balaam with the understanding that he usually had the power to curse the enemies of his king and that he usually did it for evil.  We can probably even assume that it was a demon that told him not to go to the king because it knew that the true God was with the Israelites and Balaam would be powerless.  You can read the rest of the story for yourself but the important thing is that Balaam knew and made it very clear to the king that he was unable to curse these people who were under God's covenant.

So Balak decided to change that.  He came up with a plan to pull the Israelites out from under God's protection.  He sent women into their camp to pull at the lusts of their heart and bring them into their temples.  "So Israel yoked themselves to the Baal of Peor.  And the Lord's anger burned against them." (Numbers 25:3).  In that moment a plague broke out in Israel that would kill 24,000 people.  The curse that Balak had requested was coming to fruition.  Not because Balaam's words were stronger than Yahweh's but because the Israelites has removed themselves from the covenant.  They had received the law, they had heard the 1st and 2nd commandment recited and yet they chose to remove themselves from the covering that following that law put over them.

This is when Phinehas comes in.  Phinehas was the grandson of Aaron and great-nephew of Moses. Like his father and grandfather before him he served as a priest in the tabernacle.  But that day he would make a name for himself that even King David would praise decades later (Psalms 106:30).  A man came into the camp with his Midianite lover, flaunting his sin for all to see.  Phinehas was filled with zeal and followed them into their tent and killed them...and God's anger was abated.  In fact, God praised Phinehas for being as zealous as he was.

Zeal means to have great enthusiasm in pursuit of a cause.  In other words to be passionate about something.  Phinehas definitely had that ground covered.  Now I'm not saying that we should go out and kill all the people who aren't obeying God's laws, that would NEVER be acceptable in this day in age like it was back then.  But it does bring forth a strong image of what God wants from us.  I have heard numerous stories of modern day witches who could curse some Christians but couldn't curse others and that it all came down to whether they were living under God's anointing.  Today sin is the only covering many live under.  Hollywood is like the Moabite woman who have come into the camp and pulled the once dedicated men into their pagan temples.  That is a strong and convicting picture and one that I am still struggling with.

Growing up I never wanted to be seen as a judgmental bigot.  I have taken  many strives to keep my mouth shut when it comes to other people's lives.  I have tried to just live my life in a way that keeps the fingers pointed away from me.  It's not safe to stir the waters, not safe to create waves.  After all if there are waves there's more likelihood of drowning.  But if you're a frog sitting in a pot of water that is over a fire, then some waves might be exactly what you need to bring you to your senses.  Despite all this strife surrounding Beauty and the Beast being blown way out of proportion it really caused me to think what other stuff I fill my life with or have on my shelves that may be pulling me back under the curse of depression and anxiety.  I want to be under God's covenant, I want to live under his protection but the more time I spend following the lusts of my flesh the less I can expect his protection.  And that is just unacceptable to me.

Digging Deeper:  The story of Balaam can be found in Numbers 22-24 and Phinehas's story can be found in Number 25.

For more about being under the Lord's covering check out John Bevere's book Under Cover.

For more about the Old Testament reference to God check out "The Cosmic Conflict of God's Character" by Brad and Dorthee Cole

Challenge: Take an evaluation of your life and the ways that you may have removed yourself from God's covering.  Evaluate your media intake, your relationships, your daily/weekly activities, even your food intake and present it all to God.  Ask him what he might be purifying you of.  What is hindering you from getting the fullest blessing you can get from him.  Determine what he is asking for and then make a decision to let those things go so that you can come back under his covenant of blessing.

Faith so Small

Verse:  You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt
offerings.  My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise - Psalms 51:16-17

Topic: How can I be truly set free?

Personal Piece:  This week I came to the end of a seven year journey.  I officially put the finishing touches on a novel I have been working on since my freshman year of college.  What started off as a fun writing exercise between me a few other authors turned into a personal journey of healing and a series of very powerful and emotional encounters with God.  Sometimes we have to dive into the deepest, darkest parts of ourselves in order to truly appreciate the light of his love.  I hope it never takes me so long to write another book but I know that the journey was the whole point.  I went on the same journey as my characters did and I wasn't able to write the final words until I found the same freedom that they did.  Now I am moving on to new revelations and new understandings but that doesn't mean that this lesson should be forgotten.  This story will forever be a reminder of my quest for freedom just as I hope it will help many others find that same freedom.  Today I want to share a little of what I learned during this journey...

Thought of the Week:  If I were to choose a theme verse for my novel it would be Matthew 17:20 which is a rather popular verse about faith to move mountains. This week I ready Luke 17:6 which is very similar but with one major difference.  Check it out: "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it will obey you". So what's the significance of a mulberry tree.  Many of Jesus' listeners had probably heard the popular Greek legend of how the blood of two lovers had stained the mulberry fruit when they died beneath a mulberry tree.  And in those days the mulberry tree was a popular tree used for making caskets.  So for Jesus listeners at that time the mulberry tree would have brought forth images of death.  Which would have brought a heavy perspective to the importance of forgiveness and the power of faith.

Mulberry trees have very deep roots.  It would not be an easy feat to uproot a mulberry tree, even with today's equipment.  The writer of Hebrews warns his readers not to allow a "root of bitterness" to grow up within their hearts.  In Micah 7:19 it says that God will throw our sins into the depth of the sea.  Jesus was teaching his disciples about forgiveness and then made this statement about the mulberry tree.  He was telling his listeners that no matter how small their faith, no weight of death and no bondage of bitterness could keep them from his love and forgiveness.  That in essence is the theme of my novel.  He was telling them that with the smallest of trust in him, the enemy would HAVE to obey.

I guess you could say that the above revelation is the conclusion of my journey.  For 22 years I dealt with a deep root of bitterness.  They say that depression is anger turned inward and for me anger was not something that was allowed to be expressed.  As a child I was taught that anger was unacceptable and so I internalized my frustrations and turned my anger toward myself.  The harshness of anger didn't stay with me forever but anger that is not released and dealt with eventually turns to bitterness and bitterness has a root as deep as the mulberry tree.

When we refuse to forgive and hold onto our anger it grows into a tree that is worthy of the dead.  For me God had to expose the other deep roots in my life, roots of not only anger but pride, addiction, guilt, fear, doubt, jealousy and confusion.  I had to separate myself from those roots and because I'm a writer they developed names and personalities and took on a life of their own.  These characters fought the darkness in the same way that I was fighting in my mind and they had revelations of God that brought them to freedom.

For seven years I fought to dig out those roots but found it impossible, then I had the revelation of this verse and it's true meaning.  Faith so small!  We can't do it alone, we can never do it alone.  One of my favorite revelations is shown in a scene where one of the main characters has a vision of Jesus. He sees Jesus stretching his hand out to him but he is being pulled back by the enemy and he can't get away.  Jesus asks him if he wants to be free and he tells him that of course he does.  But after Jesus asks him again he realizes that he is the one holding onto the demon, he's the one keeping himself in darkness.

Such a powerful reminder to me.  I go back and read it on a regular basis just to remind myself that no matter how powerful God is he still limits himself to my consent.  My freewill gets in the way far too often and if I'm not careful my own quest for freedom and my pursuit of rights will put me right back in the cage.  I don't want to ever go back to that.  I want to stay in Christ's presence forever.  I want to follow his rules but I don't want to be a slave to them either.  I want to be a slave to him and him only and follow his rules out of an expression of my heart for him not out of duty to human expectations.

You too can find this freedom.  God extends it to all who are willing to reach out and take his hand. He doesn't withhold it but he doesn't force it on us either.  Far too often we enjoy our slavery far more than we would ever admit, even to ourselves.  We pretend we are free because we do not want to admit that we are wandering around in desperation.  Lost and confused, holding onto guilt and fear, unwilling to let go of our addictions and anger, consumed by pride and jealousy.  Meanwhile Jesus is standing in the light stretching his hand into the darkness and asking "Do you want to be free?"

Digging Deeper: Below are some links that I used in my research on the Mulberry tree.  The connection between this passage and Hebrews was initially heard in a Mike Bickle sermon while I was at the International House of Prayer.

Symbolism in other Cultures

The Legend of Pyramus and Thesbe (The inspiration behind Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream)

Jesus and the Casket Tree

Mulberry Roots in relation to the Bible

Scientific Examination of Roots

COMING SOON: OPERATION RAINBOW - A novel about freedom from the heaviest chains through the smallest of faith.

Challenge:  Name the negative roots in your heart and start the process of letting them go.  Talk to someone about what you're dealing with, don't go through it alone but most importantly know that God loves you and is there to help you.  Meditate on Luke 17:6 and Psalms 51:16-17 (both presented above).  The number one thing God wants above all else is you to come before him with a broken heart.  He wants you to reach the end of yourself so that you have no other choice but to take his hand.  My challenge for you this week is for you to reach out and take his hand and let him do the rest.

The Roots of Love

Verse: For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open.  Therefore consider carefully how you listen. - Luke 8:17-18

Topic: Why is holiness important?

Personal Piece: So I heard something really convicting this week: God is love and therefore everything he does is love.  This means every rule, punishment and judgment, every time I lose my keys or the internet doesn't work, every time I don't get home from work until one AM, or people at work don't do their job or my manager does something that makes everyone else's job easier...except for mine.  Yeah that's still love because God is incapable of anything but.  I was especially challenged with this right before posting this entry.  Anyone who knows me, knows I have a unique ability to break the internet.  By this I mean at random times it just decides to work for everyone but me.  I was having one of those moments trying to respond to a comment on the last post (I never did get it to work and eventually had to post the reply in the post itself).  I was so angry by the end I couldn't even think about writing this post.  I just can't understand how that could be an act of love.  And yet it must be because God is incapable of anything other.

Thought of the Week:  So God is love we all know that, we've all recited that about a million times but have we ever taken the time to really understand what that means?  One look at the cross and we think we've got it all figured out.  I don't say that to demean the cross in anyway.  There is no greater demonstration of love in all of creation or all of time that can come anywhere close to comparing. And yet it goes so far beyond that moment.  It doesn't start there and it doesn't end there.  What love could lead our God to that point of death and what love could continue to love us even after experiencing the abandonment of his own father.  We could never fully grasp it.

His love goes so far beyond that moment and yet that is often the moment that we remain on.  Often for the entirety of our Christian lives.  As American Christians we can really get caught up on that romantic and sacrificial love that Jesus displayed in that moment.  It is a horrifically beautiful moment.  It is a moment we should remind ourselves frequently but so many other beautiful qualities sprout from that moment.  It is as if we are spending our entire lives focusing on just the trunk of the tree but never going beyond it.  Below there is an entire root system of life and above are branches filled with beauty.

If the trunk is the cross, then the branches are grace and the roots are the law.  You need all three for a thriving tree.  The branches are what always draws the eye first.  The flowers and leaves and the way the branches wrap around the sky can even be distracting.  In the same way grace draws the eye, we all love grace, we love the idea of getting the reward without the work, we love the idea of love and grace is a rather lovey dovey expression of it.  We all want to experience grace, we all want to climb up in its branches and experience it's freedom.  We want to view the cross from the height of grace but we rarely want to view the cross from the depths of the law.

As beautiful as grace is law is the roots.  Anyone who knows anything about trees knows that the roots are the most important part of the tree.  Even though it is mostly unseen the average root system is often just as big as the tree itself.  I was challenged this week by a friend who reminded me that we can't entirely focus just on what can be seen above ground.  Holiness is just as much a part of God as love is.  Holiness is another expression of his love but it is one that we don't like to give much credence to.  We must be careful not to write off the Old Testament just because we don't like what it says.

When I was a teenager I had a difficult time reconciling the God of the old testament with the God of the new because to me they seemed like two different God's.  One seemed judgmental and the other full of love.  I wanted the God of the New Testament but it seemed I only encountered the God of the Old.  I really struggled with verses that talk about God's consistency.  How could I be sure God would be the same tomorrow if I wasn't even sure he was the same as yesterday.  Then I learned what true love is and it's nothing like what the world tells us it is.

True love requires sacrifice, it requires purity and sometimes it causes heartache.  Love can bring us to the end of ourselves and push us to our absolute limits.  Love can bring us to tears and it is not always pleasant, true love is overwhelming but also very much worth it.  Because when you are truly living in love, when you know that there is someone who thinks the world of you and believes in you then it truly feels like you're flying.  Now replace the word love with holiness and you will see that there is not much difference.  Love and holiness are synonymous.  You cannot have one without the other.

Since making this connection, since learning that everything that God does is an act of love, I have had an even deeper understanding of his love.  Sometimes it might seem like all I talk about is love but because I love God I follow his lawes and because he loves me, he calls me deeper into a life of holiness.  His laws are protective and though they may seem confining they are freeing in a profound way.  Only those who dedicate themselves to his love and his laws can truly understand what that freedom is like.

Digging Deeper: For more on God's law see the book of Leviticus.  For more on God's love see the Gospel of John as well as his letters (1st, 2nd and 3rd John)

The inspiration for this entry can be found in the comments of the last entry as well as my response which can be found in the Digging Deeper section of the last entry.

Challenge: Do a word study on the word Holy.  Learn what it means and how it's used in the Bible.  Ask God for a revelation of his love as you study his holiness.  As you read and study look for how his holiness is an expression of his love.