As I’m preparing my heart to spend a month loving on people on the other side of the world, I realized I need a heart check.
Life has been so crazy for me the past month and a half since I started the nursing program at the university I attend. I am still trying to get the hang of my new schedule and the fact that nursing school is completely different from all of the schooling I have been through before. What I mean by this is that ever since elementary school we have been trained to learn something, memorize it, test on it, and then move onto the next thing without holding on to what we just learned; however, now I am learning things that I will need to know for the next 40 years not to mention that everything learn can then be clinically applied. I feel like this is parallel to attending church on Sundays. We listen to the sermon and praise how good it is but then we move on with our week and forget to look back on what we learned that Sunday. I’ve realized that I personally struggle with this and that I need a heart check.
Right now, I am reading 1 Samuel during my quiet time. One of the things that has stuck out to me so far is the story of Samuel anointing David as Israels new king. I think that it is a beautiful reflection of the Lord looking at the heart. In chapter 15, Saul is rejected by the Lord as the King because the Lord values obedience to his commands over religious practices. Saul’s heart did not exemplify what it means to be a leader and instead an unlikely choice named David was better suited. The only thing that the Lord cared about was the fact that David was a man who desired to know Gods heart.
This was a huge wake up call for me. Although I am constantly seeking to spend time with God during the day, am I doing it because I want to check it off of my to-do list or am I doing it because I want to spend time with God and seek after his heart?
I realized that my intentions with spending time in the word was more about achieving that task rather than celebrating the gift of the gospel that not everyone gets to experience. Therefore, I have really been checking the intentions of my heart and why I am doing the things I am doing. I don’t want to get lost in all of the daily tasks I need to complete. I don’t want my time spent with God to be something that I delegate for a few minutes a day, I want to chase after his heart all day. I want to know Him better before I go to the Philippines to love on others the way He loves us. Thats why I need a heart check.
