LIFE: A SERIES OF HEART CHECKS

So, a couple of months ago I stumbled on a word that really marked me. I had just gotten out of what felt like a very long season of questioning my identity, value and purpose on this earth. I had never envisioned a point in my life, previously where this would ever be a reality or a struggle for me. Well, I think it was partly because I had way too much time on my hands and not enough responsibilities to fill it up. But as fate would have it, my mind decided to run me wild with thoughts and there was such a battle within me. Stuck in a state of anxiety about what the future held for me. Aware of the truth but still held hostage in a prison of lies. So much knowledge of who God is, yet such little faith. Reluctant to trust that He knew what He was doing with my life. Afraid of what it meant to let go of what shoulda, coulda, woulda… Questioning when he was going to finally get me out of this rut, so that this whole nightmare would finally be over.

Then He finally came through. But get this, I was still hang up on the previous season and was trying to do everything in my power not to go back there. I had finally made it out of the proverbial tunnel and seen the light. Going back, was not an option. That, that was when I read this:

“But don’t rejoice because the evil spirits obey you; rejoice because your names are registered in heaven.” LUKE 10:20

Now, on a normal day this would not be a word that would capture my attention. In fact, this was not the first time I was interacting with this word. But on this particular day, I just couldn’t seem to shake it off. Well, lets just say that the Person of the Holy Spirit is very deliberate. The curious thing in all this is that I was not even trying that hard to be intentional in seeking God. It was so random, if you ask me. But get this, He was intentional! I believe He led me to the devotional on purpose and made sure that I was not just reading it to pass time. He had a word for me. He had an agenda, and unbeknownst to me, it was so specific to what I was going through at the time. I was about to get checked.

You see, our hearts are one of the most crucial organs in our bodies if not the most. One of their key functions is pumping blood to the rest of our bodies. Blood is life, and once the heart stops beating, we cease to exist. Hence the reason our hearts need to get checked from time to time…lest they grow tired of performing their functions. Thereby, honoring this heart-check appointments becomes crucial to the improvement of not just the quantity, but more so, quality of our lives. Whereby, the more appointments you miss the closer and closer you near your death.

In the same way God checks us. He checks the condition of our hearts. By this I mean our Spirit. The Spirit he put in us to communicate and connect with us, while we’re on Earth. He makes appointments with us. In fact, his word says that, he stands at the door and knocks and If anyone hears his voice and opens the door, He will come in, and the two shall share a meal… REVELATION 3:20

It is when we honor these appointments, that we give Him a chance to really assess us through our hearts. The perception with which we see Him, Ourselves and others. The subtle sins we’ve grown accustomed to hiding away from everyone. Our motives and intentions… what makes us tick or excited. Then He weighs that against His Perfect Word. He fills us up where we have run out. He aligns us, where we have stepped out. He corrects us, where we have missed the mark. He embraces us. He counsels us. He treats all our wounds. He affirms us. He rebukes us and the list could go on, and on. Why does He do this, you ask… because the abundant life that we so much crave for, is connected to Him, our Great Physician. The very tree of life.

And that my friends is what happened to me on that morning when I came across this verse. Thank God, I honored the appointment! Thank God I wasn’t cynical! That I was humble enough to just sit and allow Him to disrupt my schedule. Because, believe it or not, our God is not limited by time. What you think is a random appointment out of the blues, is very well in his timeline. See, He declares the beginning from the end, therefore before you were even born, He knew you would find yourself right where you are. He planned out every single second, minute of your life. He has a plan. He is the plan. You are on His mind right now, this is not a coincidence!

So let’s get right into it, shall we?

Jesus had 12 disciples whom we all know by name. However, he had 72 more whom we find in our scripture today. Let’s sit here for a while… You see, I don’t know about you, but if I had to pick whether to be among the 12 or the 72.. I would undoubtedly prefer to be among the 12. For rather obvious reasons. I mean 2000 plus years later and we still talk about them. If that is not legacy, I don’t know what is.

But here’s the thing, the reason they made it to the circle was because they made a choice. A rather random one, but a choice nonetheless. They chose to abandon their livelihoods and sign up to follow Jesus. No, no, no, no, don’t just bypass that like it’s nothing. I mean that in the most literal sense. As in, from then on, that was their new Job Description. Imagine this conversation, “Hey Ben what do you do for a living?”…. “Dude, I follow this guy called Jesus!” Hmmmm, how do you even follow that up? Crazy, right…

No, it gets crazier, they signed up to follow someone whom they believed to be the Messiah. Yes, you read that right… someone whom they believed/ suspected/ supposed/ assumed to be… They had no evidence, at all. They didn’t quit their jobs for greener pastures, because if you really think about it…they don’t get to see what we see right now when we open our Bibles and read the Story of Jesus. They did that out of a hunch. And to make things even riskier, Jesus was not a popular politician at the time who had the approval of the leadership of the day. No, quite the opposite actually.

Now, I don’t know what you do for a living, but for a minute here try and put yourselves in their shoes…. would you make the same choice they made? I know, I would probably not. Haha, who I’m I kidding, I’d definitely not even consider it in my small mind. Yet, given the chance, I would rather be among the 12 with more than two millennia’s worth of legacy. Wow, the disconnect is appalling! And if you are like me, then I am persuaded that this word is for you.

Now, back to our scripture. So in Luke 10, it is recorded that the 72 disciples had just come back from a very successful mission. I mean, could you just picture them telling Jesus about their triumph in vs. 17. “…. Lord even the demons are subject to us in your name”. Wow, what a report to give to Jesus. What’s the harm in that right… Lets even bring it closer home, envision yourself as a mere intern who finally cracks the code on some huge project that had been assigned to your boss. The buoyant look on your face going to tell your boss the great news. But more importantly, the huge anticipation to finally have them see you as more than just a clueless intern… get their approval, and perhaps a promotion. I like to imagine that this ought to have been the same state of mind the disciples were in at the time and granted! They had done well in HIS NAME, right… So a “well done my beloved,” from Jesus wouldn’t have been stretching it. Haha, but who is like Jesus? He hits them up with an, “mmhhhh!”. My oh my! (I just pictured Marlon doing his best impression of an angry black woman…) the disciples must have been mortified. Anyway, I digress.

Sure, He was proud of them, but more than that, He was after their hearts, their perspective/ approach about Ministry. And that, that for me was the kicker. You see, Jesus could have just chosen to applaud them and let them leave feeling like they were winning… And they were, only that their hearts were not set on the right things and HE SAW RIGHT THROUGH THEM. He knew that they probably had some Identity issues. That they probably weren’t affirmed as much as kids. That maybe, all their lives all they needed was to be celebrated for the little milestones they had achieved, you know… That probably some of them struggled with envy and jealousy, only that it was to subtle for any human being to decipher. It could have been a lot of things or just that one little thing. Point is, He saw it. He says that:-

His word is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart... Hebrews 4:12

He searches the heart and tests the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds… Jeremiah 17:10

Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but He weighs the heart… Proverbs 21:2

The pure in heart are blessed, for they shall see God… MATTHEW 5:8

The Heart, I could go on and on about it… That was exactly why Jesus answered the way He did in VS. 20. I’ll tell you this though, I wasn’t ready. I didn’t see it coming, He has a habit of sneaking up on us and going into the messy rooms. The ones we don’t let other people into. He thus, very firmly, yet graciously corrected the disciples’ skewed view of what really mattered. And it hit me so hard, as if He was telling it to me in person. I cannot even begin to count the number of times I HAVE GLORIFIED the things I do for Him or in Obedience to Him, over the very gift that is salvation. Even if I do it in His Name. Neither can I, almost in equal measure, account for the times I HAVE TRADED HIS GIFT FOR CHEAP THRILLS. Run for cover elsewhere. Refused to give myself fully to something he had assigned me to, for fear of WHATEVER… Consistently doubted what he has already placed inside of me, because I valued someone else’s opinion about it over His. Literally, leveraged all I had done in His name to try and get Him to answer my prayers quicker… As if HE OWED ME! The heart…

This is where I was that morning. Sick and tired of being sick and tired. Done with going round the same mountain over and over again. But God! The Intentional Pursuit of God, chasing me down… Relentlessly affirming and reassuring me with a voice so gentle. The Patience of God. The inexplicable and undeserved Mercy of God. Led me to the Truth that morning. Rebuked my self-righteous filthy rags so sternly, But AFFIRMED ME so distinctly. If you ask me, this was the last scripture I would have landed on if I was to choose an encouraging verse to read on any given day. Yet, the timeliness and weight of it all… The simple reminder that I had not attained salvation on my own account. That if I never had anything else to be grateful for, from a human standpoint, MY NAME BEING WRITTEN IN THE LAMBS BOOK OF LIFE, was more than enough reason to always rejoice. Incase you have forgotten, let this be a reminder, that THE GRETEST ACHIEVEMENT YOU’LL EVER HAVE IN THIS LIFE AND ETERNALLY, is that YOUR SINS ARE FORGIVEN! All of them. Past, Present and Future.

This doesn’t happen everyday, friends… and If you are tempted to want to trivialize this TRUTH, please resist it. God wants us to remember what He did for us daily. On good days and bad days. To keep us humble on both days. Yes, I said it… Looking down upon yourself and deciding to have a pity-party, and labelling it a bad day, is Pride.

Yes, I’m still swallowing this bitter truth myself. Truth be told, there’s a false comfort that this position affords us. It feeds something in us that says, I don’t deserve to be here, I am not as gifted like so and so, I don’t have enough… to… I don’t deserve to be on that platform… and so on and so forth. It disguises itself so well as humility and a low sense of worth, but what it is, is just pride. The pride that allows us to play victim and never take responsibility for our actions. The kind that, affords us the right to whine about our current state of affairs long enough to forget what we already have in our hands. The kind of pride that cultivates an entitlement to things always working out our way and never submit to any kind of authority. The kind that attacks as anxiety and terror and hinders us from stepping into our calling. And if we are not careful, we wind up wasting a whole season’s worth of lessons and growth. Blocking any sight and opportunity to behold the GIFT WE ALREADY HAVE.

Now, because of cynicism, we FAIL to see value in this dear Truth. I mean, one might ask, so will this Truth pay your bills, will it cure your thirst, will it put food on the table, will it land you that job, will it fix any of your actual problems… well, no. At least not directly, but here’s what it does, it shifts your perspective. It renews your mindset. It changes your heart posture from entitlement and self-seeking agendas, to A HEART FULL OF GRATITUDE. I should know… I am a true testament to this. And because it is out of the abundance of the Heart, that the mouth speaks… And it is out of the heart where all issues of life flow… Then beat by beat, things start taking a turn for the better. Not because of a change in circumstance, but a revelation that Godliness with contentment is great gain.

Don’t be fooled though, I still fall on my face more times than I can count. Yet, since the focus is not on what I can do, But what CHRIST ALREADY DID on that cross more than two thousand years ago. I can then afford a smile even when I make a complete fool out of myself, as He gives me the Grace to be HUMBLE.

How liberating it is to know that there’s nothing I can do to change God’s opinion of me and to finally see what truly matters. Forget the dos and don’ts. Is your heart at the right place? Will you honor the next appointment? Are you willing to part with the pride that blocks you from appreciating what you already have?