Choices and Pain
The message was addressed to the students I help to mentor, but I am consistently listening for what God has for me.
The book was Ephesians. The challenge was to stretch our faith by letting go of something and taking hold of its replacement, by the power only God can provide. After a lively brainstorming, scripture-scanning session, the speaker invited us to ask what transforming substitution God was calling us to make. Here is part of the text:
They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness...Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
-Ephesians 4:18-24, 32 (ESV)
After reading over the passage again, I wrote:
“Oh, Papa, I have become hard-hearted in response to their pain. My compassion is worn out. Please give me Your compassion! You are tenderhearted and compassionate…always! I weary of being like that. I need You to empower my heart. I surrender the right to protect my heart from the onslaught of their negativity and pain. Teach me to hurt with the hurting and model turning my pain over to You instead of holding on to it and seeking revenge!”
Reviewing that commitment this morning, I recognized a bit of a paradox.
We are commanded to be tender-hearted, like God. It is an aspect of His eternal, unchanging nature. Tenderhearted = able to be wounded,
We are also commanded: “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.”(Proverbs 4:24)
According to Ephesians 4, a hard, (self-protected, guarded) heart results in ignorance which separates us from the life of God and makes all our thinking pointless. Instead, the instructions about living as children of light includes tenderheartedness and imitation of God, living a life of love like Jesus who gave His whole self up, holding nothing back. So how do I reconcile the two apparently conflicting instructions? Ah! I remember that the armor of God (see Ephesians 6:10ff) protects our hearts when we put it on.
The challenge last night was to let go of the “old man” and take hold of the “new man.”
My old man can ONLY be hard-hearted, occasionally appearing tender when it suits her selfish purposes.
My new man can ONLY be tenderhearted because her heart is rooted in and protected by the great heart of God. Of every javelin thrust, He takes the biggest injury; I get only the tip. Every wound is painful, but none that reach me here are deadly. I need not fear my heart being crushed beyond recovery for I am shielded by His great heart. Held in the hands that already bear the wounds of my rescue, I need not fear what comes to me; He has taken it, and having surrendered fully to the Father in it, He was raised in triumph over it!
When we put our confidence in Him, all that was ours became His so that all that is His may become ours! It is not that suffering and pain are eliminated, but that they take their proper place in our thinking, for He always thinks clearly!
Following Jesus, choosing tenderheartedness, every day in the everyday,
Christi
PS How are you drawing close to His heart this Lenten season? I would love to hear. Please leave a comment or DM me.
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