my heart is catching up to my head.

“Belief is more than intellectual ascent. Belief is more than ‘here are the facts.’ Belief is ‘I’ve been transformed by this reality.’” — Matt Chandler. 

I am so naturally a “here are the facts!” type of person. Not to say that my life hasn’t been transformed by the truth, because in at least the past 10 years it definitely has. But there is this part of me that so desperately wants to take the facts, take the truth, and use it to transform myself rather than to take Jesus, because of the truth, and let Him transform me. And it’s not something I was very aware of, it was this buried deep down distorted part of me that was sneaky and sly. In the past 6 months I feel like God has been breaking me of this need to control and condition. To fix and to perfect. I’ve studied so much. I know so much. I’ve read so many books. So many articles. Listened to so many sermons. Probed so many ideas. It’s so strange to learn a lesson that you already knew in your head but didn’t seem to embrace in your heart. It’s hard to sit here and admit that for years I wanted God’s approval over His love and grace. I know with every ounce of me that you can not earn the love of God. That His love and grace are freely given. That is a truth I professed for years, possibly one of the first truths I ever learned, but the motivation of which I find myself living does not reflect such truth. Like I said, it’s hard to admit, because I know it’s all about where your heart is at, I know that the Good News is that in-spite of our incapacity to be good enough, God saves us. And yet, what do I desire? Not His love. Not His grace. But His approval. It’s not like I thought I was good, or perfect. It’s was more a “Jesus, look how much I love you I’m confessing _______, look how much I love you I’m reading _______, look how much I love you I’m doing _________.” And doing everything in hopes that He might think higher of me, or that I might be one of His favorites. I know that sounds ridiculous, and it’s because it is. It’s only is hindsight that I can recognize and articulate this. In my head, I know thats not how it works, Praise the Lord, but somewhere deep and dark thats what was going on. So, since actually getting that kind of approval from God doesn’t happen I found myself finding it from others, people I respect, people I saw as solid followers of Christ. If I felt like I was getting approval from them, then I felt satisfied in my efforts. One of the places that I think I felt the most approval from was a male friend of mine that I’ve known for a long time, and about 8 months ago we began to drift apart for varies reasons. Feeling like you are loosing a person you care about deeply is always hard. Whether it’s life just getting busy, or something else more complicated. But It wasn’t even that lack of communication that was hard on me. It was the hole I felt, this hole that used to be filled with a false sense of how awesome I am, or how correct and above average I was. (Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a completely arrogant self-seeking friend. I do love and cherish and appreciate and care about my close friends. This was just a huge lesson God was teaching me during this friendships’ slight absence.) Anyway, when I began to realize that the surface idol was this friendship, and another idol was the need to feel like I was better than I am, and a deeper idol was the need to have control over everything, even my salvation, which really boils down to the idol of pride. Which by the way, pride manifests itself in my life in so many ways. And I hate it. One of the ways I’ve been keenly aware of lately is that I suffer from elitism, ha! But seriously, there is this subtle attitude I have that causes me regard myself as someone who is better than most. Sometimes I feel like if people knew about everything going on inside my head they would think I was a snobby arrogant know it all. I mean, shit, I often annoy myself with all my elitist induced cynicism. Within the past two years I’ve tried to learn to keep a lot of my thoughts to myself by honestly I wish I could just turn off consistent opinionated narrative. I don’t want to be that person that always has to be right, that always has to have an answer, that always has an opinion. Anyway, getting a tiny bit off topic here… There is probably even a deeper idol but I’m still processing and figuring things out. In coming to terms with these things I began to realize that I have trouble receiving the love of Christ. The depth of separation that pride creates between oneself and Christ is bereaving. I do believe that nothing can separate you from the love of Christ, but pride fights it. Pride pushes it away because Christ’s love is so perfect that it’s obviously given to the undeserving, and Pride never wants to be undeserving. God has been working so hard in redeeming my heart lately. Teaching me to not only love Him more but what it means to be loved by Him. And my gosh, talk about being humbled. It’s seriously such a weird thing to say I just learned this because it’s not a new concept to me, it’s just happening in my heart, maybe again, maybe for the first time. 

Over winter break I was home for a few days, I got a chance to catch up with friends I had not seen in a long time. I was explaining to a friend how the past semester had been for me, what I had been learning, what God had been stirring in my heart. When I was finally done articulating my current condition, he said, “It sounds like your heart is finally catching up with your head.” 

I think my friend is right. My heart is finally catching up to my head. And as painful as it’s been. It’s been so humbling. It’s brought me not only closer to my Lord, but it’s taught be how to be loved by Him. So thankful for a Savior that sanctifies, renews, and redeems all the time, over and over again. 

“Jesus is the hero and you’re not and that’s the best news you will hear all day.” - Jesse Bryan :: AMEN.