Keep Your Heart

Keep your heart will all vigilance, 

 for from it flow the springs of life.

 Proverbs 4:23

As I have mentioned in a past post, the Lord is working in my heart.  I have to admit that it's a slow process as there are years of heartache and bitterness to melt through.  As the Lord and I work through this process together, I've realized a few of things. 

One-  I am not spending enough time immersing myself in God's Word and meditating on His promises for the sole purpose of  getting to know God and His goodness.- I have been reading my Bible, but lately it's been for a women's Bible study I'm involved in or I've been reading it to make myself feel better about our current situation.  It's basically been self focused Bible study, not God focused Bible study.

Two- My satisfaction in life has been dependent on my circumstances, not on God and his goodness-  Or to put it another way, I'm drowning in idolatry.  I've let my heart dwell on and find satisfaction  in my social status, my earthly possessions, my housing situation and many other things that are selfish.  When I rely on these things to make me happy, I only end up miserable and yes, bitter and I fall into the "woe is me" trap because my life is not what I think it should be.  Anything that pulls my focus off of God and on to myself is idolatry and as I said above, I'm drowning in it.

Three- My heart is capable of so much evil.- Mark 7:14-23 describes that it's not what goes into a man that defiles him, but what comes out of him that defiles him for evil things come from within (my paraphrase).  As an offspring of Adam and Eve, the inclination of my heart is only evil all the time. Yes, I have the Holy Spirit dwelling in me, but there is a daily battle between my flesh, and the Holy Spirit.  If I'm not immersing myself or meditating on God's word, my flesh wins.  As I mentioned on point number one, I'm not doing that, so guess who is winning? 

To put it plainly, I'm not keeping my heart with all vigilance as Proverbs 4:23 says to do.  But what does it mean to keep your heart?  Well, I've been reading a book by a pastor named Joe Thorn and this is what he says about keeping our hearts:

‎"To keep your heart means that your focus and work is on maintaining communion with God and pursuing the transformation that only God can accomplish in you. It is not performance-based religion, nor the moral improvement of your life, but the ongoing work of cultivating love for God and hatred for sin. It is the unending effort of guarding ourselves against idols while resting in the promises of the gospel."- Note to Self by Joe Thorn

This is my goal right now.  My goal is to cultivate a love for God by maintaining communion with Him and hating my sin of idolatry.  I need to rest in the promises of the gospel, and let God to the transforming.  I cannot transform my own heart. That is something only God can do, but it is my responsibility to be intentional in spending quality time seeking out God and coming to Him with a broken, contrite heart instead of a puffed up heart, seeking Him only for my own gain.

I'll finish this with one last quote by Joe Thorn:

"...The heart is what God is primarily interested in- Hearts that are broken over sin,  healed by God's forgiving grace, and consequently filled with love for our Redeemer God."- Note to Self by Joe Thorn  

P.S-  I know this  really isn't a homemaking post, per se, however I feel as wives and mother's it's so important to watch our hearts since, as Jesus says in Mark 7, what comes out of our hearts is what defiles us.  If we don't stay diligent in keeping our hearts, who knows what may come come out of them when we hit a difficult circumstance and we have such a strong influence over the tone of our homes.

It's Been a Long, Long, Time...

I cannot believe how time has flown. I didn't think it had been so long since I took a non intended blog break, but here it is, halfway through October and I've finally had a chance to sit and write.  

There is so much going on I don't even know where to begin.  I think I mentioned in a past post that my husband and I are making steps to move across the country and the time is coming closer to just take that step of faith and move.  There have been so many closed doors where we are now and the last door is about to close at the end of this month.  My husband's part-time job at the church is ending and since that was his main stable form of income, we are taking that as a sign from the Lord that it's time to move on.  

So what's the plan now?  Well, after much praying and searching scriptures and seeking out wise counsel from our mentors, the plan is that sometime in November, my husband will move first.  We have some friends and family in the city where we plan to go and he will couch surf while he plans to make his full time job, looking for a full-time job. The plan for me?  Well, at this point, I am looking for a seasonal part-time job to help pay our bills while he is looking for work.  Thankfully, we have absolutely no debt and I will be moving in with my best friend and only have to share a portion of utilities and food, so our bills will be really low.  The other benefit is that my best friend has a full time job and she's going to school for her master's program, so I can help with household chores and cooking so that she can focus on her schooling. We are praying and hoping that he will find a job by the beginning of the year. Once he gets a job, he will find us an apartment and them come back and get me.

At this point,  I'm a bit conflicted.  While we are so excited to see what the Lord has for us in our new city, the only part I don't like about this whole plan is being apart from my husband for a couple of months.  In the grand scheme of things, a couple months is nothing, but I'm really not looking forward to him being so far away.  

I am trying to stay positive, so another way I'm looking at it is it's like we will be newlyweds all over again!  We are basically starting over as our own unit so it will be fun to be reunited and re-settle in our new home.

So that's the scoop for now.  Things may change, but the more time we spend in prayer over this, the more we feel this is the right thing to do.  Keep us in your prayers, please!!!