DECEITFUL HEARTS

You are reading this probably because you are a reader.  You enjoy being reminded of spiritual things.  Maybe, like me, you derive great comfort making your nest of spiritual material—surrounding yourself with spiritual truths—it just feels comfortable and secure.  Snuggling in can create problems, though.  Gathering spiritual material to fluff your nest is addicting and may foster a resting place that becomes very harmful to you.  Actually always living in your nest surrounded with spiritual facts will kill you.

Nest-living means you depend on the Truth you have gathered to keep you instead of being kept by the Truth-Creator.  It’s hard, I know, to fly out of the nest and put the Truth into practice.  Nest-living—independency.  Nest-fleeing—dependency.  Big difference.

Our hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked (Jer 17:9).  Our hearts will tell us we are good Christians because we know much Truth.  Our hearts cause us to rationalize:  “There are others GOD has appointed to jump the nest and mingle with the maddening crowd.”  Someone has to do nest-fleeing to do Truth-informing but certainly I’m exempt for I am called to write.

Indeed, but words minus practical experience are, well, just words.  And the writer who only writes will begin to wax eloquent.  It’s inevitable; people get more flowery in their Truth-expression as they fall away from Truth-practice.

I can easily lapse into a “wordsmith” as I write day after day holed up in my nest.  Actually I have experienced becoming a wordsmith waxing eloquent.  Through journaling I have identified the subtle slipping into it.  It usually comes after a GOD-commanded, especially difficult venture off the nest.  I fly back home shell-shocked, convinced I’ve done my duty, and merit a break.  I close my ears to GOD, pick up the pen again, and end up waxing eloquent.  I follow my deceitful heart and ignore my heavenly FATHER who seeks to engage me.

Don’t do that reader; your heart is deviously deceitful; that heart of yours is watching your backside; it’s not a bit interested in being in relationship with GOD.

It’s okay to read and write truthful words but do it in the presence of GOD, ready always to fly when GOD says, “fly.”  Truthful words should not puff up and make us spiritual prigs who won’t move off the nest.  GOD will ask us to “fly”—to tell others face to face sometimes.  It’s not all about constant nest-living.