i have been doing a lot of heart searching lately.

any good Christian knows that God searches the heart, but the Christian that searches his heart is rare.

unfortunately

i have a friend who was praying that i’d step into parts of my heart that i didn’t know and was afraid to. that prayer has been, is being, and will continue to be answered in me.

my heart is a scary place. do you identify?

God commands so much of us, and yet settles for so little. why???????

why do we make God suffer with so little of the so much that he so kindly asks of us?

i search my heart. and i question. i question my motives. are they pure? why did i bless that person? was it to genuinely bless them, or was it to gain some sort of sick, selfish pleasure beacause I blessed them? sick. why do i pray what i pray to God? do i pray for the benefit of others, or for my own convenience? why do i what i do? why????????!!???!!?!?

i have been praying that God’s reality would eventually become more real to me than this perverted physical reality. the demands on our easily perceiving senses are so easy to yield to without realizing it. but the requests God makes of us, perceivable only in a Spirit, practiced only in obedient love to King Christ, are hard to hear and understand.

but it’s possible. i have taken this saturday as a sort of sabbath. i have been searching my heart. i have been doing my best to yield to God my whole heart and let him search it. for we truly cannot control our hearts. no matter our best efforts, they do things that we have no control over.

which is why often times we distance ourselves from our true selves, because we’re scared of the control over us our hearts have. and thus the product is the very thing we hate to become. a viscious cycle. not broken by being merely saved, but only by King Christ’s power in a truly transforming way, met with glorious Scripture, changed by unchangeable words of God.

you youth are so real, so genuine. you don’t hide because you’re young. you hate fakeness and you can smell it in harrisburg. but unless you let God search your heart, and change it, you will eventually fade into what you don’t want to ever encounter.

God searching and changing our hearts is PAINFUL!!!!! it hurts! it stinks! i hate it! i honestly do not like it! it’s hard! it’s hard to yield! it’s hard to be honest, real, genuine to God! we want to say “i believe you wholeheartedly God!!!” and we want to impress God with our undying love and faith. but he’d rather we come to his feet, with no faith, no belief, no trust, but a heart willing to learn, and a genuine teachable spirit.

search your heart. guaranteed you’ll scare yourself. but it is worth it. with God, you can do it. you are deep, because God made you that way. and your depth will be either a great blessing to you, your family, your friends, and every person you ever meet, or it will be a wretched curse to all life.

you choose.

God loves you. and he will help you choose rightly. simply ask him for help. he will. and it’s okay to take time. i’ve been saved for 5 years….it will take time. and that’s okay.

last night Pastor Jeff talked about faith, and he started by asking if you’ve ever not believed, if you’ve ever had times where you simply didn’t believe

let me tell you a story about myself. i have always struggled with finances, and the lastest chapter in this frustrating battle to believe, happened recently.

at summers end, i will be going to a wedding in michigan, where i’m best man. so i have to rent a tux for it, and i have to buy a plane ticket to fly there. that, among other costs i will have, and needing some money to buy textbooks for college adds up to quite a bit of money that i need. i added it all up and i figured out that the absolute minimum sum of money that i’ll need is far greater than the absolute maximum amount of money that i’ll have.

and do i believe God that he can provide? i wish i could honestly say yes. i want so badly to believe. and yet, deep down, in my innermost parts, in the depths of my heart, i don’t believe. i don’t.

and i have to tell God that. something i’ve learned about faith and believing is that God wants us to believe, right? he tells us all over the place in the Bible to believe in him. so he wants us to believe.

now if God is all powerful, and he can do anything, can he not help us to believe? can he not take my doubts, fears, and disbelief, and help me to believe? he can. and he will, because it is a part of his will for me, for all people.

so do i now believe that God will provide? he is started to bring my heart to a place of belief, but it’s an arduous path of hardship and toil, but God can do it. that i do believe.

so my question to you is, do you believe? are there times when you say that you believe, but you know deep deep down that you really don’t? are there times when you want so badly to believe but you just can’t force your heart to actually believe?

be honest and real with God. he will honor you and he will help you to believe. but you have to be willing to admit that you just simply don’t believe. but God will honor that. he will not judge you, shout at you, or condemn you, but he will instead reach into your deep deep heart and help you believe. for we are vast, and our hearts are truly far too deep for even us to ever truly touch and control.

in having faith, it’s okay to not have it, but recognize that you don’t, and ask God to help you to have it! and he will!

I sit inside, at work. but i am not inside. my heart is free, and it roams around outside, enjoying the warm sunshine, the warm air, the refreshing breeze that will never be matched by canned air conditioning. how can God live in a building? why do humans always want to put God inside? God made the outdoors. we made the indoors. i just want to be outside, God made it for us. he made it for us to enjoy. when we sinned, he cursed it, but it’s still enjoyable. it’s beautiful, only because God is. the essence of true beauty is God. humans have perverted that, but if you look closely, you can see God’s depth in all that he’s created. look at a tree, why does it grow up? why do some twigs have leaves and some don’t? what person can tell you that, without years of study? and that came from a word of God’s mouth. what about bumblebees? ever seen them fly around? they make ridiculously high G-force changes in direction every few seconds. how do they do that? i bet few scientists could tell you that. God is so mysterious! and nature inspires me. here i am, sitting in four, straight, smooth, uni-colored, tame, lame walls of the same….boredom… God created man to be outdoors. and therefore, that’s where my heart is. but at least man had the sense to make windows. and so here i sit, staring out a window, jealous of my free heart, roaming around outdoors, longing to join it.

i guess i sound somewhat crazy. but then, free hearts usually do. not many people are used to free hearts, and i suppose few know how to handle them…but then that’s because they not handle-able.

beauty inspires me. as it does every man. it helps me to passionately chase after God. who can know his mysteries? and yet he longs to show us and reveal to us his mysteries. but we have to seek him.

and so i seek him. even from inside the rooms of nothing. i seek God.

there’s more to prayer than it seems…