Thoughts on the Hardened Heart

Tough skin and a soft heart. That's what Aaron Jones, long time mentor and friend, told me I'd need to have to be in the kind of ministry I want to be in. Hardness of Heart, to use some Christianese, is an awful thing. To say that it's all bad would be incorrect since God chose to harden the hearts of people at times in order to accomplish His will. There is a difference, however, between that and a heart hardened by choice of the owner.

"I'm really detached," would be what I would say if I were joking with my friend Jordan, but it's the truth to a degree. I am and have been in this strange place where my mind, or essence, or spirit or whatever is being polarized and I'm getting to watch it. It sounds kind of dramatic, but rather than there being one Colton, there are two: the old Colton who was a jerk and liked that fact, and the new Colton who's more mature and sensitive. If I'm paying attention, I go back and forth between those two sporadically. The strange part is that I can immediately observe my decisions and reactions and can tell which Colton did what.

Stop.

Okay, the thing I've just realized/remembered is that I'm thinking too much about myself. That's kind of how I got to where I am. Introspection is a good thing to a degree, but easily and quickly leads to self-centeredness, which is a symptom of having a hard heart. To surmise this initial point and move on to the next and main point, God is slowly working out the bad habits I have by showing me what they look like and their effects. It's really weird. There's a lot more, but that's a different blog.

I know I've said that if I could physically see Jesus, if I could be with Him in the same room, that would be enough to keep me from ever sinning again. I know many others have said that, too. This, unfortunately, is just not true. Take for example the disciples: Twelve dudes who were with Jesus constantly, yet they betrayed him for petty things, lost focus, bickered among themselves, and just plain sinned in His presence. Jesus went so far as to call Peter Satan. That must have hurt. Now imagine you are Judas Ischariot. With Jesus always, Him doing nothing but loving you and helping your dumb self along, planning to give him up for some cash.

Hardness of Heart is a creeping thing. It sneaks in without you noticing it and it kills you. It takes so many forms that I can't hardly begin to expound upon them. If it is powerful enough to cause the Israelites to lose hope and make and worship a golden calf when they were waiting on their leader to come down with the very word of God, if it is powerful enough to convince a man who was constantly in the presence of God incarnate to sell Him out, it's certainly powerful enough to sneak in and convince you to be a jerk to your mom. I know this.

I've prayed a lot lately that my heart would not be hard, that I would be given a heart of flesh. As great and terrible a thing as a hardened heart is, it is conquered. Perhaps not in the time or fashion I would like, but knowing that God is sovereign I'm not going to fret too much about it.

¹⁶ Therefore say, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD: Though I removed them far off among the nations, and though I scattered them among the countries, yet I have been a sanctuary to them for a while in the countries where they have gone.’ ¹⁷ Therefore say, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD: I will gather you from the peoples and assemble you out of the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel.’ ¹⁸ And when they come there, they will remove from it all its detestable things and all its abominations. ¹⁹ And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, ²⁰ that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God. ²¹ But as for those whose heart goes after their detestable things and their abominations, I will bring their deeds upon their own heads, declares the Lord GOD.” Ezekiel 11:16-21 ESV

One thing that has been glaringly clear as of late is that I don't have it right. There was a short time where I thought I did, but still had the knowledge that I couldn't have had it right. God grants me my honest prayers, I just have this way of praying for hard lessons. Gah. One thing I know is that it is almost never a "one and done" type deal, that the whole process of salvation is just that: a process. Philippians 2:12-13 is a strange and notable passage.

There's so much I have to say, but sorting out what is relevant to this topic and what is a different topic and what is simply something I must say to myself is a really large task that I don't care to tackle right now. That and it's lunch time.

Love,
Colton

Thoughts on Romanticism and Winter

I have this great habit of being able to throw myself down into a funk. I haven't yet figured out how to rein in my emotions and feelings to the point of being able to function normally in arduous times. I'm not a self-pitying mess like I used to be, but I just get in these weird funks. And you know, it may just be that it's winter and that's where a lot of people are right now: in weird funks. People keep alluding to and mentioning the strange spiritual season we're all in right now, maybe that's it.

Something I noted recently that makes sense but didn't cross my mind until now is that I tend to really hate romanticism. The beautiful stories of two people getting together, the wonderful tragedy of a spurned lover, destined to marriage to the warm haze from a bottle of whiskey, the lone hero sticking to his beliefs despite the whole world being against him. Yeah, all that stuff is good and well I guess but I have an admittedly very cynical view of it all.

I really doubt there are hobos that handsome. (Side note: I literally just opened up my Facebook and saw this at the top of my news feed. This is not helping my cynicism.)

The cold, bitter, logical part of me would just like to throw all that out. To be truthful, I have and it's not treated me well because of it. Perhaps it's the sheer number of times I've seen people caught up in some false romance, be it a flurry of emotions worked up to take place of a real relationship with God or be it one of any number of immature, tempestuous relationships. The thing I just now got is that it's not the romance that's bad, but rather how it's handled. Romance is an emotion in a way and just like any other emotion, it needs to be properly handled. In my banishment of the romantic ideals, I've replaced the relationship with a stoic acquisition of knowledge which has only gotten me so far.

The moral? Lewis pointed it out well in The Screwtape Letters when he essentially said that any extreme, save for extreme dedication to loving God, is bad. My dedication was to approaching God through logic, not through His Son. There are certain personality traits, negative things we gravitate towards, that we will all have to overcome in our pursuit of God, but that doesn't make those things inherently bad. So I suppose the moral is look to God and don't let anything distract you, which includes looking at and analyzing things that may inhibit your relationship with God. We can get caught up in anything, especially things that aren't inherently bad.

I started writing this with the intention of disdaining romanticism, but I ended up with a strange, sappy feeling in my heart towards my Savior who chooses to love me despite my constant refusal to love Him. Of all the ways He could speak to me, He chose to have me listen to a song that I really needed to hear, despite my cynicism towards signs like that. As I drove down Clinton Highway on a cold Sunday morning with the sun hitting my face, I cried as the weight of a loving Son weighed on me with the gentlest of touches. I could and will go back and forth forever on what actions to take and what mindsets to assume but I'll never really get that far with that. Only God.

¹ I waited patiently for the Lord to help me,
      and he turned to me and heard my cry.
 ² He lifted me out of the pit of despair,
      out of the mud and the mire.
   He set my feet on solid ground
      and steadied me as I walked along.
 ³ He has given me a new song to sing,
      a hymn of praise to our God.
   Many will see what he has done and be amazed.
      They will put their trust in the Lord. ⁴ Oh, the joys of those who trust the Lord,
      who have no confidence in the proud
      or in those who worship idols.
 ⁵ O Lord my God, you have performed many wonders for us.
      Your plans for us are too numerous to list.
      You have no equal.
   If I tried to recite all your wonderful deeds,
      I would never come to the end of them.
 ⁶ You take no delight in sacrifices or offerings.
      Now that you have made me listen, I finally understand—
      you don’t require burnt offerings or sin offerings.

Psalm 40, NLT

Part of me wants to be the handsome hobo who gave everything up for love. A really big part of me.

Love,
Colton