Increasingly Aware

Yesterday I had lunch with a couple of guys. One of our friends is facing some difficult decisions and asked three of us if we would meet him for lunch. He spent the first hour just giving us history to his situation and the crossroads he was facing. He then quite humbly went around and asked each one of us, one by one, to speak truth into his life.

Driving back to the office I couldn’t help but think about the wisdom behind that lunch. Proverbs 15:22 says, “Where there is no counsel, purposes are frustrated, but with many counselors they are accomplished.”

Last night I read THIS article by one of my favorite authors Gordon McDonald. He wrote…

I have become increasingly aware of the enormous amount of activity inside of me that I neither understand nor fully control. Impressions, attitudes, urges, motives, and initiatives bubble up and out of that darkened space, and not all of it is noble. It’s similar to all the physical activity deep inside my body that I don’t know much about either. It just happens with or without my conscious consent.

Jeremiah seems to be thinking similar thoughts when he writes those oft-quoted words: “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?”

Only God can fully search the space called the “heart” and provide a remedy that leads to integrity and reliability.

When the Quaker writer, Thomas Kelly, mused upon the mysteries of one’s spiritual space, he concluded: “Each of us tends to be not a single self, but a whole committee of selves. And each of these selves is a rank individualist, not cooperative, but shouting out his vote for himself when voting time comes. And even when a consensus is taken, the disgruntled minority agitates on the streets of the soul.”

Going into today I’ve been reminded afresh that while only God can fully search my heart, I need to quite regularly invite other people to do the same.

Life is complicated.

I don’t always trust my motives.

I don’t always know the answers.

I don’t always do the right thing.

I’ve got to regularly invite God and others into this space called my “heart”.