Jesus at the Center

"God is trying to speak to me. There is something He wants to show me."

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Sunday morning at church one of the songs they played for worship was "Waiting Here For You" by Christy Nockels. It happens to be one of my favorites. Later that afternoon as I was driving home I planned to stop by to visit the kids I watch because it had been a week since I had seen them. A few minutes before I got to their house that song came on from my phone. I had to turn it off before it completely finished though because I had pulled up to the house. When I got back in my car about thirty minutes later to go home and I turned on the radio the song was playing from almost the exact same spot I had turned it off on earlier. The rest of the drive home I just kept thinking about the song and the lyrics trying to let the truth in it sink into my heart. 

The next day I had to run several errands and when I got in my car to go to the pharmacy I turned my radio off and just started singing the song since it was still stuck in my head. After me singing it in silence for a few minutes I turned my radio back on and then it started to play. 

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"God is trying to speak to me. There is something He wants to show me."

This is where my thoughts ended up yesterday. 

I got home and started reading up on the meaning behind the song. I printed the lyrics and began looking over them. I searched scripture. I studied Hebrew and Greek words in these scriptures. The end result was nothing profound. The things I learned were all things I had already studied up on before. I prayed that God would open my eyes to see what it was He wanted to show me and my heart to receive it. 

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Today, after journaling and praying I grabbed a book I have called "Come Away My Beloved." I've mentioned it before in a previous post. It is a book filled with letters from God. I flipped it open today and read two of them. The last one I read brought me to tears. It said some things that went hand in hand with everything I had been feeling and also some instructions on what God was asking me to do in that moment. Right before I had read it, I was asking God questions about my heart. I was wondering why I felt the things I felt so strongly. I was getting frustrated too because I wasn't hearing any kind of response from God. The letter I ended up reading was called "Listen in the Silence." It was an encouragement to me about the season that I am, and how precious this season is (even if I don't always see it that way).  It said that I don't write to learn, but that when I learn I write. This was something that spoke a lot to me considering that I like to call myself a writer. It said that I need to seek the things God is trying to show me in the silence. I need to listen in the silence. 

So, with that, I grabbed a blanket and a pillow and I laid down on my couch and I just listened. I cried, but I listened. I don't have an entertainment center in my living room at the moment. I also have a lot of my painting that I have no idea where to put in my house. So, at the moment, they are all lined up against the wall on the floor across from my couch. So, while I was laying on the couch I was staring at all of them. It has been a couple of months since I last painted anything and I felt like God was telling me to paint. 

[DISCLAIMER: I do not consider myself to be a painter. I can paint, but I wouldn't call myself one. Here is the thing, I can't think of something on my own and paint it. Really, I have tried. The finished product usually looks like something a four year old would have done. However, if I look at a picture of a painting I can usually copy it and it come out looking good.]

I grabbed my easel and set it up. I got all of my painting supplies out and ready and then I just stared at my blank canvas. What was I suppose to paint? For some reason, I felt like the Lord whispered for me to paint my heart. So, I looked up pictures of heart paintings. They had several different kinds. Like painting of a heart and the way it is actually shaped. Nothing stuck out to me. Then, I had the grand idea to paint Jesus. 

[ANOTHER DISCLAIMER: I do not paint people. No really, I just don't. I have actually tried painting and drawing people, while looking at another picture. They all turn out completely awful.]

I looked up paintings of Jesus and found one that looked fairly simple. I was so so very wrong. Every stroke I made just made it worse. The wonderful thing about paint though, is that you can always paint over it! So I then painted the whole entire canvas black. Then I looked up other paintings of Jesus and finally I found one that I was about 95% positive I could do. 

It was only while I was painting it that I began to understand everything God was trying to speak to me. 

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In the song "Waiting Here For You," there is one verse that brings me to tears every time. 

"You're the Lord of all creation, And still you know my heart.

The Author of Salvation, You've loved us from the start."

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God knows my heart. He knows my heart better than I do. The truth of the matter is, when I am not focusing on Christ in me, I will not be in a place of peace. My heart without Christ in it is nothing. It is fragile and sinful. But, when Jesus is in me, when I pursue knowing him and spending time with Him, He takes the ugliness of my human nature and fills it with His glory and His Presence. When Jesus is at the center of my heart, why would I even want to look at any other part? 

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Just like in the painting. No one is focused on the black background. That isn't what captures your attention. Jesus is what you are focused on. Jesus is who you are looking at. 

Look at Jesus. He is what makes your heart beautiful.

 Let Him be the center of your focus and the center of your heart. 

Then everything else will fall into place. 

Through the Eyes of Christ

I bought a book the other day by John Piper called "When the Darkness Will Not Lift." So far I have read the introduction, which is not much, but there is a truth that is burning in my heart that I feel an urgency to write about. Over the past couple of days God had been working in my heart about a few things and giving me wisdom and confirmation about things through a few close friends. Often times I get so caught up in my emotions and it takes encouragement from friends who are willing to give me truth outside of what I feel. So I took some time to step back and examine my heart again. What I found was God's grace. When I allow my emotions to cloud my view I am forgetting the only truth that matters, which is that Christ loves me and the work He is and has done in me. I forget His grace. 

So what I would like to write about is the way we view ourselves and others, and how it directly affects our willingness to walk in His will. Christ has called me to love. He has called me to love Him and to love people. He has called me to pursue truth, to walk in faith, to encourage, to uplift, to be evidence of His grace. The way I see myself and others determines my ability to do any of these things. 

Let me explain what I mean. I am flawed. I make mistakes and I fall miserably short everyday. I do not deny any of these things. I am aware of how incredibly human I am. But, when all I see when I look at myself and other people is my own sin and shortcomings, I am not only viewing myself and them in a bad way, but I am completely missing the beauty of God's grace. There was a time when my self-image and worth was defined by my failures and regrets. This also meant that certain people who reminded me of those failures were people that I tried my hardest to completely remove from my life. Here's the thing though, until I found myself face to face with God and I was willing to confront those issues in my heart my perspective never would have changed. Not only was I missing the beauty of God's redemption and love because of my own flawed sight, but I was doing those people an injustice by labeling them because of my own sin. I was not only choosing to ignore the grace that God had given me but also the very same grace that He has given them. 

There are times when God needs us to confront the very things we are scared of before he can come in and restore those places. Of course it isn't easy. Sure, we can all accept that we fail and that we sin, but we sometimes can't accept the fact that Christ has forgiven us and made us new. So instead we just walk around dealing with the same issues over and over again because we never dealt with our hearts and we never truly accepted God's grace. We try and change our outward appearances and create social status hoping that if maybe everything looks good on the outside no one will see the ugliness on the inside. We become lovers of everything material and completely ignore the things that really matter.

 

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[1 Samuel 16:7]

"But the Lord said to Samuel, "Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart."

 

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When we see ourselves through our own eyes and not through the eyes of Christ we will never walk in freedom. Here is a bit of encouragement. Your righteousness doesn't come from anything you do! Nothing you have done in your past will ever make you less righteous. Nothing you do that is good will ever make you more righteous. Your righteousness comes from Jesus. Only Him. So stop viewing yourself in such a way that your actions determine your righteousness. All that will do is lead you to a place that lacks joy and peace and a place where your heart is not completely surrendered. Take the time to deal with your issues. Repent if that is what you have to do, but then accept God's grace. He gives it freely. 

 

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[Romans 6:18]

"You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness."

 

[2 Corinthians 5:17-21]

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

 

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I am a woman the fails everyday. I have not arrived. I never will. There are still millions of things that I need to work on. But, I am also a woman of God. I am a woman of faith and virtue. I am a woman that has been redeemed. My life is a testimony of God's grace. When I see myself I don't see the bad, I just see how good God is. 

 

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[1 Peter 2:9]

"But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.."

 

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When we see how good God is and take our eyes off of ourselves we can actually love Him and people. We can be people of faith. We can be encouragers. We can be a people of prayer and lovers of the Word. 

Forget about your style and your talents. Forget about everything that isn't about God. Never take your eyes off of Him. Never forget His grace. Never forget His goodness. Live in freedom from your own perceptions. Accept His grace.

Just be with Jesus.