Heart | JOURNEY OF THANKFULNESS

Day 363 of Random (hopefully inspired) Thought. Today I Am Thankful For…God Taking My Heart of Stone

Yesterday at church, I read a verse that I am sure I have read many times before, but it felt like the first time I had truly seen it. The verse is from Mark 6:52. However, before I write the verse, let me give some backstory: Jesus had just finished feeding over 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish. He then told his disciples to get in the boat and go ahead of him, while he spent some time in prayer. As the disciples continue their journey, a storm begins, and they struggle to keep control of the boat. Jesus sees this and comes to meet them by walking on the water. But upon seeing this, the disciples are afraid, mistaking Jesus for a ghost. We will pick up in verse 50b as we make our way to verse 52. “Immediately, He spoke to them and said, ‘Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.’ Then He climbed into the boat with them, and the wind died down. They were completely amazed, for THEY HAD NOT UNDERSTOOD ABOUT THE LOAVES; THEIR HEARTS WERE HARDENED.”

You see it too, right? “They didn’t understand about the loaves, their hearts were hardened.” I have read the book of Mark more than once, and I have never noticed this verse before. The disciples lived with Jesus, ate with Jesus, journeyed with Jesus, and witnessed every single miracle FIRSTHAND and STILL DID NOT UNDERSTAND. It made me think about my life, about all the ways I see God move in my life and in my world daily, and how, despite all He’s done, I still struggle to trust Him with 100% of my heart. It can feel discouraging, can’t it? Like a hamster on a wheel, only the hamster knows where the food is, has all the tools needed to get off the wheel, yet speeds up its pace of going nowhere. We complain about the disciples and declare that we’d have done it differently, yet here we are doing the exact same thing in real time.

Here’s the hope, friends, Jesus didn’t leave the disciples; He continued with them because He knew that one day He would lead them to understanding, one day their eyes would see fully, and when that day came, they would change the world in His name. Here’s a promise to hold on to when you feel like your heart is hardened: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws” (Ezekiel 36:26-27).

Today, I am thankful that God will take away my heart of stone.

Don’t just see YOUR perspective. SEE the other PERSON’S as well.

This week has been long, and it’s only Tuesday! I feel like my emotional meter has skyrocketed past capacity. So many changes are happening all at once, and adapting feels akin to walking a tight rope. I have been realizing that on a whole we (human beings) don’t know how to communicate. We see only our point of view and have a hard time seeing the other’s person’s perspective because we are so sure we are right. Here’s a complication, what if both sides are right? What then, do we keeping pushing or do we take the time to find common ground? Pushing does nothing, but knock the other person down, leaving them feeling like their hard work amounts to nothing. But common ground gives us both something to build on, it produces soil that we each can sow into. When I read my Bible and look at things from God’s perspective I genuinely believe that is part of His plan for us. The goal of life is not to fight, fight, fight to prove we are the best. The Goal of life is to be aware of the people around us pouring into their lives and allowing them to pour into us, so we ALL can be the best versions of ourselves. Life is short and without even looking for it we will see the faults in others, we will misunderstand what is being said. We need to take the time to look past the faults, take the time to really hear the words…we need to stop looking at the surface and see the heart.

“The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).

So what’s my plan of attack? Stop fighting, starting looking deeper.