My heart is prone to wander, Lord I feel it. Wandering across plains and fields and rocky shores. Weaved with thoughts and feelings and emotions that hardly measure up to a Kingdom standard. And my feet, they wander too. My feet get prickled by grass blades and burnt by hot asphalt and fully spread out in the sand. And where my feet go is all too often in avoidance of where they ought to be heading. As if they don’t listen well to my hearts directives.
Or maybe my heart is not listening to my feet, failing to communicate somewhere.
This week I have been reading the book of Ezekiel. A less gentle more convicting slice of the Bible for sure. In Ezekiel 11:17-20, we might understand the prophet to be saying that in sin, the heart goes astray first then the feet follow. Yet in contrast, we also know that in obedience the feet may go first but then the heart will follow.
Often in living out our faith through obedience to the Word, and living out our faith in each prickly step, it is our feet that must go first. Faith that obeys reflects trust in God. “Here I am; send me” said Isaiah in 6:8. It’s notable that Isaiah quickly took this action step after being forgiven for his great sins and his heart cleansed. I wonder if Isaiah even knew what he was offering. God needs our willing, repenting selves, before sending us out to bear fruit. Regardless of what emotion Isaiah felt in that moment, his feet were ready to go and do.
If we are painfully honest with ourselves it is likely that when we are in sin, the heart itself is impure in some way. Sin indeed begins in the heart friends. In the gospel of Matthew we are told that we are defiled from the inside out, not the outside in. “But what comes out of the mouth comes from the heart, and this defiles a person. For from the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual immoralities, thefts, false testimonies, slander.” Matthew 15:18-20. And while Matthew helps me understand Ezekiel better, it convicts me all the more.
If sin is a reflection of the heart, well, then how impure exactly is my heart? Your heart? And if we have accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, don’t we have regenerated hearts? New hearts? So then I am left in a conundrum; if my heart is made new, why does is it so easily unfaithful the one who made it new? Am I like Judas?
When I consider my inclination for wandering, my sin lays there exposed and bare, ever before me. Not only outward sin that draws tangible consequences but inward sin that enables evil thoughts to silently float around in dark pockets of my mind. And if I admit how many are there, unleashed, I wonder how dark must my heart be? How does such a diseased organ still beat?
Perhaps we can go to Matthew and understand more of what he said. Digging deeper into the context and meaning, we might come to understand that Jesus is explaining that evil things come from our inner nature, and reveal how incredibly fallen we are in that nature. We are all fallen indeed. In context, Jesus is comparing what goes into the mouth to what comes out of the mouth. He is referring to the ritualistic traditions of hand washing and various practices before eating. The point being, what goes in to us does not darken us - but what comes out (from our mouths, our hearts) can darken. Sin…there it is.
How do I reconcile my propensity for wandering with this newly resurrected heart God planted in me upon salvation? I was given a heart of flesh, restored to His likeness, and made righteous in Jesus. I have to ask sometimes, did I get shortchanged in the new heart part? Maybe the transplant didn’t take? Am I the only one wondering this?
The New Testament promises us, as believers, that we are given new hearts by way of the Holy Spirit who now resides in us. The glorious, holy, imparting of the cross. We are regenerated and a new butterfly-self begins to form. Our old self is laid to rest in the death of Christ. Yet, while we are fully alive in the Spirit of newness, we are also still residing in the flesh that earned his death. So while our hearts ARE new, we are being made new…we are in process. The Cross was the initiation of the New Covenant and we are not fully righteous until Jesus returns. Until that time, we are bound to the struggle of flesh and Spirit. We live in that tension.
We know we can’t escape our fallen nature until He returns, a nature that lines our skin and has great influence on the organs, and can be formed into a terrible weapon to be wielded by an enemy. But we also know it can be a beautiful vessel used for God’s glory.
This is the war we are engaged in, within ourselves. The struggle is real y’all. I am here to testify that my flesh fails me so easily that it can slip without even raising a red flag. I’m the car that would just die without even flashing a check engine light. My heart is new yes, alive through Christ, but still the inner turmoil of fallenness can sometimes permeate my words, thoughts, actions. If I have learned anything, it is that if we are Christians, we will. Struggle that is. Every, single, day.
Thankfully, with the eternal hope of a Heaven that compares in glory to nothing on this earth, the struggle will be every bit worth it. We never give up…even weary and worn out we run the race. May we let our hearts and feet both lead with the truth of God and leave our fleshly desires of self laying flat on the ground every chance we can. Peter challenges us to put to death therefore what is earthly in us… Colossians 3:5. Peter here gives me hope that even though I was born with sin nature, I can still rely on the Holy Spirit to rule over this.
Never throw your hands up and give up, never give in to your sin nature; fight, pray, and acknowledge your need for a Savior, every new day.
From time to time I have to imagine myself literally flinging my flesh, my sin, my darkest thoughts into the pit. Flinging them so hard and fast I have no time to hesitate. No time to stand at the edge, to be curious about what is down there, or get distracted. Then at other times, I go wandering, and fling them not. Clinging to the dark parts of my heart because they are comfortable, familiar. Thinking I can hold them at a safe distance. But no, hurl them I must.
As born again Christians we are engaging in a lifelong internal war where the desires of the flesh are in opposition to the Spirit and the Spirit is against the flesh. Plenty of scripture addresses this inner conflict. Think the Apostle Paul for goodness sake, oh wretched one. Listen to this angst played out and see if it sounds familiar to yourself.
For we know that the law in spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold as a slave to sin. For I do not understand what I am doing, because I do not practice what I want to do, but I do what I hate. Now if I do what I do not want to do, I agree with the law that it is good. So now I am no longer the one doing it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh. For the desire to do what is good is with me, but there is no ability to do it. For I do not do the good that I want to do, but I practice the evil that I do not want to do. Now if I do what I do not want, I am no longer the one that does it, but it is the sin that lives in me. So I discover this law: When I want to do what is good, evil is present with me. For in my inner self I delight in Gods law, but I see a different law in the parts of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and taking me prisoner to the law of sin in the parts of my body. What a wretched man I am! Who will reduce me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then with any mind I myself am serving the law of God, but with my flesh, the law of sin. Romans 7:14-25
Even James asks the question, what causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? James 4:1.
But then, here comes Peter warning us with an important piece of the puzzle:
Therefore, with your minds be ready for action, be sober-minded and set your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires of your former ignorance. But as the one who called you is holy, you also are to be holy in all your conduct; for it is written, Be holy, because I am holy. If you appeal to the Father who judges impartially according to each ones work, you are to conduct yourselves in reverence during your time living as strangers. For you know that you were redeemed from your empty way of life inherited from your fathers, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of an unblemished and spotless lamb. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was revealed in these last times for you. Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. Since you have purified yourselves by your obedience to the truth, so that you show sincere brotherly love for each other, from a pure heart love one another constantly, because you have been born again - not of perishable seed but of imperishable - through the living and enduring word of God. 1 Peter 1:13-23
Notice the underlined points which reflect our feet being ready in actions and conduct, while our inner selves continue to desire blemished things and drag our feet down. Even being born again does not instantly relieve the burden of the world or our flesh. Only Jesus can restore the two.
“Why did the apostles feel the need to speak this way to regenerated people? Because the hearts of these regenerated people were not yet fully free from the influence of their flesh, their old selves.” Jon Bloom, 2021.
To bring it all home, Romans 6:12-14 sums it up so there is no confusion. “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.” Present our feet for instruments of righteousness as born again believers with His grace in us.
Now back to obedience as mentioned in the beginning of this post. I can grasp this one with my fingers…it is palpable. Perhaps because I have seen it in action and can verify it. When my feet run toward the Lord in sincere obedience, my hearts intentions set upon the Lord, feelings will eventually follow. We forgive, serve, love, pray, and submit to His will all out of our surrendering to the grace we have received and the love we have for God. We go, like Isaiah, because He asks. We do, because He has commanded. We know, because He has instructed. For action oriented people like myself, this is a win win. When we do what the Lord asks of us, sometimes we may not ‘feel like doing it’ but once we do the thing, our hearts will be full and we will know it was the right thing. The feeling comes as confirmation, our hearts will reflect we have honored God. The desire to honor Him will grow.
May our feet always be ready and willing to go toward the Lord, focused on the moment in front of us. When our hearts grow weary or dark, may obedience be swift to shut down selfish sin simmering in the inner self.
As I reconcile these two opposing things, I can see it a little clearer now. We were created with perfection in mind but once we arrived, we were tainted like a hereditary or pre-existing disease. Then when we accept Jesus, accept Gods free gift of grace, He replaces our diseased hearts with perfect ones that will one day come in handy for eternity. But in His infinite knowledge of our tendency to wander, God also gives his Holy Spirit as an escort for our new hearts, so they can operate fully - only with His power - while still housed in diseased flesh. Once Jesus returns friends, we will be able to take our new hearts into a perfect body and all made right. Until that glorious day, struggle on.
If you are struggling in this, like me, perhaps we are perfectly where He needs us to be.
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