“The truth is that time has no more power to sanctify a man than space has. Indeed time is only a fiction by which we account for change. It is change, not time, that turns fools into wise men and sinners into saints. Or more accurately, it is Christ who does the whole thing by means of the changes He works in the heart.” AW Tozer’s That Incredible Christian
i would call myself intellectually inclined and would say that, despite being outside of the classroom, i have grown in that area very much since being on the race. reading is something that i enjoy even if the content of the books i choose to read are what some people may call dry. bonhoeffer, tozer, spurgeon, sproul and their works are often frequent guest to my phone screen. getting to enjoy the revelations from God given to my brothers in the body is something i genuinely enjoy. these books often challenge my understanding which in turn sharpens this intellectual side of who i am and have offered much fruit in my relationship with my Father.
but books and debated theology are not the topic of this blog.
no.
it is something which many may see as quite the opposite of those things. it is my heart.
the heart, the organ designed by God to bring physical life to your entire body. also the heart, kinda the source of our emotional state but not really too. also also the heart, the very venue for God’s redeeming love and grace as we are shaped by him. so yes the heart is important, but what is important about my heart?
my heart has always seemed to be intact, never has seemed overly active or concerningly numb. coming into the race i was confident in my heart and my emotions, they were strong yet not leading, present but not in control. however, after nineteen days in georgia i began to wrap my head around a big idea concerning my heart.
maybe my heart didn’t have to just be fill with emotions, maybe there was a love or passion that could fill it that wasn’t actually from me, but from the Father. my love is imperfect. when someone is being loud my emotions will tell me to be annoyed and put off. yet when i ask for the Father’s heart for that person i don’t have to settle for a fleshly self love but a godly sacrificial love.
so september 21 i wrote my second song in gainesville. it was a monday night, my squad was all having a good time in the training center and i decided to spend sometime alone with the Lord. i walked down to the pavilion and stepped into his throne room in worship, praising him and declaring my love for him. following that i began to asked him for things. a heart. i wanted his heart for the people i was surround by.
these are the lyrics i penned that night:
give me a heart for you kingdom
give me a heart for your love
give me heart for the orphans widows
the ones the world ignores
i wanna be like my savior
i wanna be a good friend
who points those to Jesus
the one who died for their sins
i wanted a heart like the Lord’s. i wanted to love the people around me well. this became a common prayer, one i still pray today, asking to see people through the Lord’s eyes and to love them with his heart.
now fast forward a few months. we are in guatemala! the international leg of my race has just begun and everyone is filled to the brim with excitement, joy, and thankfulness.
but my heart. o my heart. something happened, i didn’t know what, but something was up. it was as if someone pulled out it’s power cable or even poured water on something that was ablaze. what was once red hot now seemed to be dragging along behind the rest of my body as my team and i walked down the dusty streets of our ministry villages, asking the Lord where to go.
i wish i could say i felt anger or sadness or confusion about my situation, but even that seemed foreign. on top of that most of this was completely under my radar and has only been revealed to me in recent weeks through prayer, processing, the Lord’s work on my heart. i was walking around and feeling nothing with no answers and no understanding.
so what do you do when you’re on the worldrace? you bring it before the King and your team. honestly what i presented to them must have been quite confusing because i didn’t even know where i was myself. but i was able to bring to light my struggles even with a complete lack of feeling.
this began in mid january and continued until mid april.
during these months the Lord began to show me not only where i lacked my own emotions but also that i wasn’t able to identify with other people’s emotions. many times during debrief my teammates would be revealing very deep and raw parts of their hearts which they were being burdened with and i would be seemingly carefree.
an example of the Lord revealing a lack of tenderness in my heart was at our midpoint debrief. for the previous two months marissa and i had planned this debrief. we had figured out transportation, lodging, food, and finances for twenty eight people. however, even then we were not done, we still had a travel day to prepare for. on our upcoming travel day we would lead twenty four people into a country we had never been to ourselves.
so this is the scene. i am not stressed, i am just very aware of my responsibilities that must be done in the next few hours. i am handling about $1,000 dollars of my squads fundraised money and even then paying out of pocket for a bench a few of my squad mates had broken. as i was coming in and out of my room with various amounts of cash clenched in my fist my brother cole sat on my bed surrounded by nick and jason. with tears running down his face he shared with them the stress and fear he felt in the uncertainty of his new leadership position. the Lord had asked jason to step down as team leader and asked cole to step into that position out of his previous position of worship coordinator and God had orchestrated it that very day. he was distraught as he sat on my bed. but even in the great love i have for him i wasn’t able to empathize with him. in fact, i looked at him in his new role which factually speaking has less responsibility and fewer stakes than mine and disregarded his emotions as invalid.
because of comparison i wasn’t able to identify with him in his pain, i wasn’t able to partner with him in the journey he was beginning. this is just one example of probably fifteen to twenty situations where the Lord brought up to me my lack of tenderness.
throughout this time i was praying fervently for tenderness and for compassion to fill my veins and to become plainly evident in my life. i was asking God for tears, emotions, and passion.
then i felt it.
excitement.
the Lord spoke something over one of my teammates lives and i nearly jumped of the bed i was sitting on during team time. i was filled with so much joy and happiness. i was able to rejoice with him in the beauty of God’s nature in that moment.
then a week later, it happened again.
i felt.
i was in the jungle with about half of my squad. we were there for four days and we’re getting to do ministry with a body of believers in an indigenous community. we were sitting at dinner our last night, before rejoining the rest of squad, talking about the end of the race. cole had sad music playing and everyone was going around the table sharing what scared them about going home and what excited them.
then the spotlight began to shift, off of us and onto the King. with plates of oily tuna pasta in front of us we began to worship, singing “you are worthy, you are holy.” we were thanking him for the blessing of community.
tears. they came and they poured down my face. my God calls me holy and i call him Father. i call these radical, loving, and obedient people around me my brothers and sisters. i have a love for them. it was my love for them but it is from the heart of God. it is a self sacrificial, flesh denying, sweet love that can only come from God. but i didn’t get that heart right then. no. i just got to see the fruit of the work God had been doing in my heart since i first prayed that prayer asking for a heart for these people.
God showed me he was growing my heart for them when people asked me to buy them something from the vending machine, play Banana Pancakes just one more time, make their SP sandwich for them, switch shower times, sit in the AC-less van to Louisiana, have a 1-on-1 with them over a meal, eat their extra tortillas, buy them a Pepsi, walk around Antigua with them, carry their bag up a volcano, or even forgo a much needed nap.
these things required sacrifice but in return they grew my heart for my family. it also showed me the value in the love that Jesus walked to the cross with. now i know that nothing can tear us apart. not because we did the world race together, but because of what Romans says.
“For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
what is stronger than the blood of Jesus? not living in different places. not different careers. not time. not different interest. nothing. nothing i say can separate me from the love of the Father or my brothers and sisters to whom i am bound by the blood of Christ.
we are one body. we are one church. we are all united.
this is the testimony of the changes that God has orchestrated in my heart over the last four months.
this is my heart that beats.
