So here we are at the start of another New Year! I normally don't feel any different at the beginning of the year nor do I try to compartmentalize my years because they all just seem to blend and flow together in a normal order. This mostly might be due to the fact that for the past 16 years or so, the majority of each year was pretty similar: going to school. Grade school, high school, college. Once you've been a student for that long life just gets to be comfortable (at least for me) because of all the years of experience with going to school. Whether its writing papers, working on projects, taking exams, going to labs, etc., it all becomes familiar and therefore comfortable.
But as I sit on my bed writing this and thinking of the year ahead, what's familiar and comfortable is beginning to fade and what's unknown is starting to lie ahead. Yes I am excited for a change of pace and yes I'm glad to be done with my schooling, but at the same time I'm also nervous as I begin to step into unfamiliar territory. A year is starting to really seem like a long time as I enter my final week of being in the States. I've never really been out of the country besides the week-long missions trip I was on in a place in Mexico 1 hour south of the Texas border. I've never really had limited access to communicating with my family. I've never really lived for an extended period of time without the many luxuries I have available in the U.S. And all that, to an extent, scares me.
But on the other hand, I'm so excited to leave for the Race and spread God's Kingdom and experience other cultures and grow closer to God and fellow brothers/sisters in Christ. I remember when I was first applying to the Race I was constantly second-guessing myself because I didn't know if my heart was in the right place and my desires pure or if this was something God had planned for me. I've constantly struggled with the mind-set that the things that I desire can't possibly be from the Lord because I am sinful and therefore can't possibly have a righteous, God-glorifying motive. Therefore, I often think that what God has planned for me is going to be something that I'm not going to be really passionate about and won't really enjoy, but rather just become accustomed to after awhile. And so when I got accepted on the Race, I was very unsure as to whether God could possibly have this in mind for me as I was very excited and passionate for the Race.
But within those first couple months, God really encouraged me and revealed to me that this was part of His plan for me. Even though this brought me immense joy that my passions and desires matched with God's plan for me, I still held on to the notion that I always need to second-guess my heart because of how sinful I am. This was just an exceptional case where God was okay with my motives and passions.
But recently, I've been wrestling with this idea of my heart being sinful and deceitful. I think I have always believed that my heart (and therefore my desires, will, and emotions) are deceitful. As it says in Jer. 17:9, "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick." I've read that verse so many times throughout my life and have always applied that to my own heart. But over this past week, I've begun to question whether this verse is addressing my heart: a believer's heart. And frankly, I think I've been wrong this whole time.
This verse at one time applied to me, but that was before Christ came into my life. This verse applies to the heart I used to have before Christ saved me. But now that Christ has come in and ransomed me from my sin, the heart I have now is completely new! It's not even a better version of the old one…it's a totally different, pure heart! God confirms it in Ezek. 36:26, "And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh."
This truth has completely floored me these past couple days. Even despite all the sermons I've listened to, the Bible passages I've read, the truth God has spoken to me, etc., I still often don't understand/fully believe I'm a new creation. I still live under the mind-set that I'm a better, more God-pleasing Nick Shiley. The fact is Nick Shiley has never and will never please God. Nick Shiley is a sinful man and therefore can never experience God's presence. And that's why God creates an entirely new person, one that's graced with the inclination to keep faith with God and live for His glory. Nick Shiley is dead; a son of God now lives.
This truth has also opened my eyes and given me more understanding to passages like Romans 7 where Paul talks about his inward struggle between good and evil. Because of my "heart is always deceitful" ideology, I've struggled with Paul saying "For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing." Rom 7:19. How can Paul say he wants to do good? Doesn't he sin because he wants to? I've always seen my own life in this passage as I do evil because I want to, thus further establishing my case for my heart being deceitful above all things.
But I think I limit God's work for me on the cross and His power and therefore His glory by thinking that. I'm basically denying the fact that God has fulfilled what He promised back in Ezek. 36:26. I don't deny the fact that I still sin and that my flesh still wages war against me. There are still things that I struggle with related to this topic as to how the flesh is still at work despite God making me new. My only response right now is that even though God has transformed my heart and desires for His glory, He still has not freed me from my earthly body or from this fallen world which still wages war on my new identity. At least not yet.
So as I embark on this new year, I'm grateful that I serve a God who has transformed my heart and renewed my mind so that my will becomes His will and therefore God can take my desires and passions and use them in my life to bring about His Kingdom. And that's why I think God has graced me with the Race: the opportunity to follow my dreams and passions that God has uniquely given me in a way that fits with His plan and glorifies Him. I'm so excited of seeing what 2013 has in store! Oh the life-giving freedom of living as a new creation!
