Heart of Stone

I have recently been struggling with a hard heart full of anger, bitterness, resentfulness, and basically  selfishness. This stone cold heart makes it hard to love, rely, trust, and seek help from my God, who should be my hope and refuge. It also puts a separation between me and my wife, family, and friends. Then when I act out from that heart position it only creates a sense of shame that drives me deeper into a downward spiral of self loathing and isolation. Yuck!

So what can be done about it? First and foremost as a Christian (or Christ-follower if you must) I would say prayer is the first place to start. Often times that sounds like pretty tripe advise but, its true. Though, its funny how when you need prayer the most in your life you tend to not want it. There have been so many times in my life where someone asks me if I want to pray and I just want to say "no, F off." Which, of course, is a dire sign that prayer is most definitely needed. But more so than that what do we pray? What do we lay before the Lord? More importantly are we seeking to deal with the symptoms or  the disease? A pastor of mine from the past used to say if your not dealing with your disease your transmitting it. Though he said it better, I think it even rhymed. But its true. When we sit and stew in our mess we tend to infect others with our sickness.

Anyhow I have started to see this recently in my own life. When my heart is full of dark sickness it makes it hard for me to love my wife in a warm way that is pleasing to the lord. When my wife does not feel loved by me it makes it harder for her to be patient and warm to our children. When our children don't feel loved in a warm way we start to skew and misrepresent who God is to them.

So after days of putting it off I prayed to God. But before my prayers could take root in my heart I had to ask God more than to take ways the symptoms of my heart, I needed to ask him to heal the true problem and source of my disease. Pride.

You see, I hate it when I am confronted with the fact that maybe I am not really as great as I thought I was. I am also really judgmental. So when, by God's grace I do well in certain areas of my life I start to look down on people who are not where I am at. I take credit for God's grace and generosity, boasting in myself and not in Him, and that's when I seem to get knocked on my butt. You see, God opposes the proud. I don't know about you but I do not want to be in opposition to God because personally I don't like loosing and when you go head to head with the King you're going to get knocked on your arse. The good news is He also lifts up the humble.

What got me, specifically, was that I was starting to look down on other peoples marriages, judging them because they weren't as great as mine. I felt bad for the husbands that just didn't get it like I did. And.... That's when I was confronted with the fact that I was falling short in my own marriage. Ouch!

I can sometimes be insecure and to be honest my feeling get hurt fairly easily. But why? Because I want to be a the kind of righteous man that loves God with everything that I have. I want to be a husband that loves his wife like Christ loved the Church. I want to be the father I never had, who's children will say my father loved the lord and left behind a beautiful legacy in us. In short I want to be the man God made me to be.  I ofter forgot that I can't do it by myself. I can't make myself all the things I want to be. I need God's help and if I want God to lift me up I need to do the opposite of pride, I need to be humble.

So now that I made you read a bunch of words. Here's the prescription for your disease. At least this is what has worked for me in helping my cold heart melt back to flesh.

1. Humility (The opposite of pride.)
2.  Identify the disease, not the symptom. (Clue, you need God's help and others through discussion.)
3. Confession (To God but also out loud. Their is something incredibly deep and spiritual that happens when we speak the truth out loud. When we confess where we are at it brings light where darkness lives. The chains of the enemy that binds us are suddenly broken when we open our toddler like fists and let go of what we are greedily clutching to ourselves. And yes, even when you keep negative things to yourself it is greed.)
4. Prayer (Real honest and open dialogue with God. Prayer is not a preset ritual, it is a conversation with you father in heaven who is dying to hear from you and speak healing words into your life. He is waiting to wipe away your tears!)
5. Some kind of plan, accountability, and finally action. When we open up to God and to others we often times start to get a sense that God actually wants us to do something. To change, to get up out of the mess. The greatest disservice we can do to ourselves is to not go down the path God is imploring us to go to. 

I hope if you have been in a funk or your heart feels hard right now you found some nuggets of truth that might help you. God loves you and is well pleased with you as much on your worst day as on you best day. You're loved and there is hope.