A Heart for the Lord
Written by Jennifer P.

It is cold and rainy outside. Inside there is a fireplace with a warm fire crackling and a cozy couch. You make yourself a cup of hot chocolate, grab a cookie and a soft throw and snuggle up with a book you have been trying to read for weeks. You are immediately enthralled in the story and the time passes quickly. Your mind is filled with adventure and new lands. Or maybe is it a heartbreaking tearjerker. It could even be a missionary biography that has you gripped in the amazing story of how God brings his children to him. Before you know it, it is dinnertime and your afternoon is gone. You hurry through dinner and clean up so you can get back to the most exciting part of your story. Anything that calls you away from it is an annoyance. Sounds like a scene from a hallmark movie, right? We all have books that capture our attention and that are hard to put down. Once in a rare while I have found myself staying up until one in the morning to finish a book I just “couldn’t put down.” I have a long list of books that I want to read, but knowing my busy life, the likelihood of my getting to all of them is slim. You probably have the same problem.

Yet I could say the same thing about many other things. I have a long list of paintings I would love to finish. I have a list of projects that need to be done and that I would like to do. I have piano pieces that I have not been able to play yet, several cross-stitch pieces that need to be finished, sewing projects sitting in bags in the shed, and photography pieces waiting for me to have an art show to sell them. You would think with all of these projects calling my name, I would get some of them done in my spare time! But something always manages to come up or I spend time loafing with my family, or (this is a terrible thing to do) I start a new project. Before I know it, my spare time has flown out the window never to be seen again. If I were asked what I would like to be doing right now, I would probably say working on my wedding dress or finishing the drawing I am working on. If asked what book I am currently reading, I would have to say Ben Hur and another one that I am working through with my fiancé. But what about if you had asked me what I am reading in my Bible right now, or if the Lord had blessed me with something special recently? How would I respond? Do I desire to read my Bible more than any other book? Do I read it with such delight that I can’t seem to be able to put it down? It has all the elements of a good story. It has adventure, battles, biographies, autobiographies, danger, romance, wisdom. Everything that we seek in other books. But when we sit down on that couch by the fire our tendency is to reach for any other book but the Bible.

This month’s topic is “Keeping our heart for the Lord.” One of the best ways to do that is to learn to love God’s Word above all the other things we fill our time with. This is a rebuke even to me. In spending time developing a relationship with my fiancé, I have seen a whole new realm of what our relationship with God is to be like. My fiancé comes over to visit and it would be wrong for me to spend the time he is there talking on the phone with a friend and ignoring him. He is there to see me. God feels the same way. He desires to be with us, to show us His love and provision, to commune with us face to face. But God is not a physical person that we can see and speak to. To build that relationship with God we have to spend much time talking to Him in prayer and letting Him talk to us through His word. O, to have the love for God’s Word that the Psalmist did. To be able to say “O how love I Thy law, it is my meditation all the day” (Psalm 119:97) The Bible is a book we should be reading every day with delight as it teaches us about God. We must learn to take joy in His precepts and write them upon our hearts. No one can keep their heart for the Lord if they do not take the time to get to know Him. My relationship with my fiancé will not grow if I just skim by on the times we meet at church or by just listening to what others say about him. I would not really know him. Yet many times we have the idea that if we don’t get to our devotions for a whole week, two services on Sunday and another on Wednesday night can suffice. Sometimes we are more interested in hearing what God is doing in other people’s lives then letting Him do a work in our own. Christ said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” (Matt. 4:4) As regenerate beings, our soul hungers for the feeding from God’s Word, but our flesh starves it. We fill our time with novels or projects that “have to be done.” We get up in the morning, get ready for work or school, then run off without spending time in devotions. Then we come in the evening and do things around the house until it is time to go to bed and drop wearily off to sleep with maybe a quick prayer. When did we read our Bible? Are we delighting in God’s word?

On a different note, we may be reading our Bibles every day, but like our list of half finished projects, we started a Bible study that we never finished. Or it was a hurried reading so we could get out and do the numerous things that the busy schedules of the day are filled with. We have given God part of our heart, but He does not have the whole. I will refer to my fiancé again. If I spent little snatches of time with him instead of taking the time for serious conversations, he would feel neglected. If he wrote me a letter, and I glanced at it quickly then ran out the door to go shopping with a friend, would you say I loved him and cared about what he said? With God, the Bible is His “love letter” to us. The more time we spend reading it the more our depth of understanding of Him grows. The more time we spend on our devotions and prayer, the more He is able to tell us and the more we are able to share with Him. And like my fiancé, God has much He wants to tell me if I will only sit and listen. It takes focus and concentration to hear Him. When my fiancé is over at my house, I have to turn my attention to what he is saying instead of listening to him with one ear, listening to my sister’s conversation with my Mom with my other ear, and teasing my brothers at the same time. I would not really be hearing what he is saying. With that list of projects, none of those things are going to be done if I don’t take the time to carry them through from start to finish. My time with the Lord cannot be fruitful if I allow my mind to be crowded with the tasks of the day, the last story I read, or anything that may take my mind away from comprehending the words my eyes are skimming over. Those precious things He wants to share with me are lost in the clutter of life.

You will recall that at the beginning, I said the lists of unfinished paintings and projects are long. You may have the same problem. You always have something new that comes along, and you drop the first to take after the second, which then becomes interrupted by a third, etc. Before you know it, your time is gone and you have a pile of unfinished projects. Maybe you started out the year with the intentions of reading your Bible through in a year and have devotions that are more meaningful. Only now, it is February and you are three weeks behind in your Bible reading and your devotion time has been lost in the flurry of school or work. You may think, “When I get out of school and don’t have to study for classes any more I will have more time to read my Bible.” Maybe you are one of us who have finished school only to find out that you don’t have any more time when you are working then you did when you had to study for classes. You sit there and think where has the time gone? If your heart truly desires to have that close relationship with God, it is easy to get despairing as you look at your long list of unfinished studies or failures. We don’t have to despair ladies! God is not a terrible taskmaster nor will He “dump” you if you lose your focus on Him. He so ever gently leads us back to Him. For those of us who have fallen, he picks us up again and sets us right. He does not hold a grudge or deny us the sweetness of His love. Rather “His compassions fail not. They are new every morning. “(Lam 3:22) I heard some one say once that “Each day is a new day with no mistakes in it yet.” Each day I have a new day to start fresh in my efforts to have daily devotions and to spend time with God. It is a clean slate and God does not keep a running tally of how many times we have forgotten Him this week, month, or year. To me, that is very encouraging. It is still an effort, but I don’t have to despair that God hates me or is going to cast me off because I have neglected Him. He is saddened when I fail, but every time I try, again He welcomes me with open arms. He may not always bless me with something meaningful in my scripture reading the first time I pick up my Bible, but I am confident that if I strive to continue, the blessings will come. I will be closer to Him than I have ever been. The verse says to “Keep your heart with all diligence.” (Proverbs 4:20) This is to be our desire. I pray the Lord may grant you much grace and blessings from His word.

“One thing have I desired of the LORD, that will I seek after;
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life,
to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to enquire in his temple.”
Psalms 27:4

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