Welcome to the next installment of “what’s clogging up my wellspring??” I think you’ll find tonight’s topic less than penetrating…which happens to be the problem.
Deflective hearts are everywhere. Think of a location – workplace, church, marketplace, dinner table, in bed next to your dearly beloved, and bingo! My guess (well-founded on the basis of human nature and personal experience) is that it’s a rare person who does not go from open-hearted to rubber-hearted in a nanosecond, given the right circumstance. And believe me, circumstances abound!
Certainly the theme verse of this blog, “Above all else, guard your heart…,” is not the kind of justification for deflective hearts Solomon had in mind when he penned the proverbs for our benefit. So just what does a deflective heart look and act like?
Well…for one thing, it has the outside consistency of tire treads – tough skinned and seemingly impervious. Pock-marked from the many verbal ping-pong games it has played, even if only in one’s mind. It has mastered the art of aversion and can turn away on a dime. And ultimately, it has the uncanny ability to thwart attempts to break through and penetrate one’s heart, especially with truth. Sometimes we humans simply do not want to hear what we do not want to hear. That goes especially for us believers, too.
All this, coupled with enough times of choosing limiting beliefs over the truth of God (oftentimes offered by others who care about and love us), and you have a deflective heart – the by-product of attempting to make it bulletproof.
All we succeed in is keeping out life-giving nurture and truth-telling that invites productive growth.
But then! (I love that segue…) Love shows up in the person of Jesus Christ, and sometimes He’s disguised as our nearest relationship at any given moment.
One way or another, He is determined to penetrate the rubbery façade of our heart with arrows of grace, mercy, truth, and if necessary, tough love. If you have been marked and set apart for Christ, I guarantee you will not escape His advances. However, you may retreat. The choice is yours – it always has been and always will be.
I suggest you fall headlong into His arms and let those nail-pierced hands pierce your tire-treaded heart. Hugging those false beliefs to your chest won’t keep your chilly heart warm. And it surely won’t turn up the thermostat in the atmosphere around you either.
Once again, it calls for Surrender. We can be nothing short of stubborn at times – with each other and frankly, with the Lord Himself. Guess what? He’s not impressed, though He IS patient. Long after our patience with each other has worn out, His is still going strong. What say we make His day and allow Him to do the following surgery on us? He knows we will require it eventually in order to fulfill His plans for us:
“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” Ezekiel 36:26
©2010 Nancy C. Bentz – Author’s permission granted to forward this devotional piece in its entirety, including this copyright line. For more devotionals, to leave a comment, or to subscribe to this blog, visit https://shammahsfield.com
Love it Nanc… 🙂 🙂