Readings for today: Genesis 23-24:51, Matthew 8:1-17, Psalms 9:13-20, Proverbs 3:1-6
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart...” (Proverbs 3:5) This may be one of the hardest things for me to do. Trust in the Lord with all of my mind? Check. I love the life of the mind. I love to learn. Love to read. Love to reflect on the Word of God. Trust in the Lord with all of my strength? Check. I work hard to align my outward life with God’s laws. I believe His ways are the best ways to live. I have no doubt a life lived according to His Word is a truly blessed life. Now please understand I am not perfect in either of these areas. I am as much a sinner as the next person. But where I really struggle is to love God with all my heart. To desire God from the depths of my being.
We are all creatures of desire. Driven more by emotion than we care to admit. We may think we are primarily rational creatures. Products of a Cartesian worldview whose foundation was built on the axiom, “I think therefore I am” but this is a lie. We mainly live in the back of the brainstem. We react. We respond. Love. Hate. Fear. Lust. Primal emotions seated in the most reptilian section of our brains. We meet someone for the first time and feel attraction. We see an image on television and experience hate. We scroll through our Twitter feed and our blood pressure rises. The world encourages us to get in touch with our emotions. To embrace them. To let them define who we are. The problems with this approach are legion. Rates of depression, self-harm, and suicide are now at historic levels and rising. The amount of vitriol on cable television and social media is overwhelming. The casual way we treat our relationships is tearing the social fabric of our lives apart. People feel more isolated than ever which leads to more pain. As they experience more pain, they isolate further. It’s a vicious cycle with no end in sight.
For most of my life I have believed the answer lies in the transformation of the mind. Behavioral change flowing from new thought processes we begin in our brains and are held accountable to through relationship. What I am learning is that this approach often fails because it doesn’t touch the heart. One cannot change one’s desires simply by thinking/wishing them away. One cannot change one’s desires through self-discipline. No matter how much we may white-knuckle our sobriety, we simply are not strong enough to resist so we succumb. We give in. And the shame we experience only reinforces and compounds our sin.
So what’s the answer? Are we left at the mercy of our desires? Are we doomed to ride the roller coaster of our emotions forever? No. The answer is to “trust God with all your heart.” To fan the flames of your affections for God. To invest in your relationship with Him through prayer, meditation on Scripture, worship, and mission. Like any relationship, love must be cultivated. Love must be intentionally nurtured. It doesn’t grow in healthy ways on its own and you will not fall more deeply in love with God unless you spend time with Him. As your love for God grows, you will find the other loves of your life reordered. The attractions of your life will begin to change. They will be shaped more and more by God’s desires than your own. In short, you will experience transformation.
Readings for tomorrow: Genesis 24:52-26:16, Matthew 8:18-34, Psalms 10, Proverbs 3:7-8