Undone

O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
    my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
    as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,
    beholding your power and glory.
Because your steadfast love is better than life,
    my lips will praise you.
So I will bless you as long as I live;
    in your name I will lift up my hands.
My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food,
    and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips,
when I remember you upon my bed,
    and meditate on you in the watches of the night;
for you have been my help,
    and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy.
My soul clings to you;
    your right hand upholds me.
But those who seek to destroy my life
    shall go down into the depths of the earth;
they shall be given over to the power of the sword;
    they shall be a portion for jackals.
But the king shall rejoice in God;
    all who swear by him shall exult,
    for the mouths of liars will be stopped.
Psalm 63

You may be wondering why I have simply copied an entire Psalm here. Why this Psalm? What a weird way to start a post, Kimmy. The last two days have been rocky for me. But if you were to look at my life, you wouldn’t be able to tell because all of the rockiness has been happening on the inside. God has been hammering away at my heart and it’s not comfortable to say the least. Imagine with me for a moment a shelf full of idols. These idols have nametags like control, self-sufficiency, reputation, eloquence, pride, desires, knowledge, etc. God has been going along and one-by-one, tipping those idols off the shelf and breaking them into pieces. Some of them- I didn’t even know were in my heart!

Right now I feel lost and broken. My world has been turned upside down as the Lord has shown me my sin. I cried all through this morning’s sermon. The conviction was deep.

But more than that, I feel UNDONE. The lyrics to one of my favorite songs go like this:

I’m undone by the mercy of Jesus
I’m undone by the goodness of the Lord
I’m restored and made right
He got a hold of my life
I’ve got Jesus
How could I want more?
(Selah- I Got Saved)

With my idols and sin staring me down came an even stronger realization and image of our Savior. And accompanying the words of the Psalm- that his steadfast love is better than life, that I SO thirst for him, and that my soul clings to him– there was a resounding YES in my heart.

So I wept but I wept because of his great love! Because I realized that my sin was so deep but his love was deeper still. He knew it all and loved me enough to take down those idols.

UNDONE, people.

 

Who to Follow

There’s a lot of talk these days about believing in yourself.  You know, You can do anything if you just believe in yourself and follow your heart.  Everything is about self-esteem.  People are so badly off because they have low self-esteem and if we could just boost that up, the whole world could unite in peace and harmony.  Uh-huh.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t think the problem is low self-esteem. As a matter of fact, I think the exact opposite. Do men destroy others because of LOW self-esteem?  Was the Holocaust a result of low or high self-esteem?  We seem to have no problem of low self-esteem. In fact, humans have a way of pridefully thinking of themselves HIGHER than they ought to.  Hence all the follow-your-heart jazz.

Do you know what your heart is?  The Bible tells us what our hearts are like in Jeremiah 17:9:

“The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately sick;
who can understand it?”

Do you really want to follow something that is deceitful and wicked?  Because of the Fall into sin, our hearts can deceive us and we can’t even understand our own hearts.

In contrast to that, there is something, or rather someone, we should follow.  As a matter of elimination, it can’t be someone who is human because all humans have hearts that are deceitful. So it must be Someone who is not human. May I offer a suggestion?

(1 John 1:5) This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.

(Psalms 5:4) For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you.

(Psalm 18:30) This God—his way is perfect; the word of the Lord proves true; he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him.

I think I will follow the Lord.