The Well

ALL YOUR HEART!

There is a definite cost associated with answering the call of God on our lives. I suppose that is why it is much easier for the person who accepts Christ in their young adult years as opposed to those who accept Him either as a little child or an adult to trust God implicitly. Okay, I feel you asking me where and how I get that. Well, I’m about to tell you.

Little children have a tendency to believe anything they are told, but not everything they are told is absolutely true. Yet, as a teenager or young adult, most people go through a "growing up" period when they seek the truth for themselves. As a general rule, these are truly the tender years before hearts begin to harden. Once a heart is hardened, like the soil, it takes much tilling to unlearn the things we learned through heartache.

Deuteronomy 6:5 teaches us the foundation of this truth: "And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength." I believe that when the Lord says "all" He means "all"! If that means the soil has to be tilled over and over and over and over until the seeds planted there can grow, then that is exactly what He will do.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a tiller at work or not, but if the soil could voice feelings I know it would be screaming. Blades cut deep into the earth and dirt goes in every direction. Does that remind you of any people you know? Maybe God is tilling their heart and, unlike the soil of the earth, the have the ability to run from the tilling process and their lives become totally unmanageable.

The first steps of The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous states: "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable." Guy Doud, in his book, Joy in the Journey, took great liberty and rewrote the first step in terms that any person can relate to. He rewrote it to read: "I admit that I’m a sinner, born with a rebellious nature. I have no one but myself to blame for my sin. My sin has separated me from God." Now, I don’t know about you, but I find that any time I am walking outside the anointing of the Holy Spirit my life becomes unmanageable and I start walking in rebellion – again.

So, as we mature in our faith we lean less and less on our own understanding, God’s ways become our ways, and we take fewer steps off the path God prepared for us. In Robert Frost’s poem about the road less taken, he implies that the road less taken is all grown over with weeds and doesn’t look very inviting. However, once we start breaking through the weeds and get well into our journey we find that there are beautiful open spaces just waiting for us to enjoy!

Where are you on your journey?