October | 2016 | The Burning Heart

…His word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot. Jeremiah 20:9
God has been stirring up a fire in my soul to know Him more deeply. I want more than an ordinary experience, I yearn for rare intimacy with Him. I want to be filled to the measure with all of His fullness, walk in the power of His Spirit and have the image of Christ more fully formed in me. However, it requires death to self, and that’s not an easy path.
There has been a growing sentiment in Christianity that God exists for us and for our comfort. Some are cramming Him into a magic lamp to be roused by our wishes. There has been a gradual shift away from God-centered Truth to self-centered truth. We’re losing our moorings to the solid Rock and are drifting into individualized reality. It’s a much easier path, but not the one I will take.
I don’t need a therapy God who only empathizes with me and affirms me and makes me feel good about myself. I don’t need a Concierge who will pander me, prosper me and grant my every wish. I don’t need a God invented and reinvented in the fickle winds of culture.
I need the real God in my real world. One who calls me to a higher path, to be more than I am and all He has designed me to be. I need a God bigger than I am and bigger than my world.
I need the only One who can free me from myself and my bondage to sin. I need a God who calls me to repentance and obedience, then gives me the will and strength to obey and who will do in me the very thing He asks of me.
I don’t need a God who will keep me from the storm or from suffering but a God who controls it and walks with me through it to deeper places of His heart. I need a God who will purge and refine me until He is the very center and pulse of my soul.
I want to be undone and my heart set ablaze by the consuming fire of His fierce love and holiness. I need the one True God, the immutable Eternal God, who reigns in Sovereign power and is clothed with splendor and majesty.
So it is with those in the Society of the Burning Heart.

To hear it: Secrets of Psalm 139

Lord, You have searched me and you know me.

You till and sift the soil of my soul,

And peer into the innermost secrets of my heart.

You know the raw me, and you still love me.

You know when I sit down and when I stand up;

You perceive my thoughts from afar

You know my thoughts before they occur to me;

You’ve known them from antiquity.

You discern my going out and my lying down;

You are intimately familiar with all my ways.

You see me rise in the morning and lay my head down at night

Throughout my day, even if I leave your path,

You will never leave mine

For where I am, you are.

You are closer than my skin for I am in You and You in me.

Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely.

Before I utter a sound, you’ve already heard it.

You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me.

You surround every inch of all that’s me.

You go before me with grace and behind me with mercy.

You guide me toward your heart and you redeem my past.

Such knowledge is wonderfully incomprehensible!

It’s too lofty for me to attain;

Too massive to wrap my mind around.

Where can I go from your Spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

If I go up to the heavens and into the very birthplace of the stars, you are there;

If I make my bed in the utter depths, you are there.

If I rise on the wings of the dawn, and settle on the far side of the sea,

Even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast

And will never ever let go.

If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,”

If a deep darkness of despair, fear and loneliness swallows my light,

Even that darkness will not be dark to you;

The night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you,

And it flees from your holy light.

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb –

Weaving soul and spirit, bone and muscle, according to your perfect design for me

You sparked the beating of my heart and I am Your image bearer.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

Your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you

When I was made in the secret place,

When I was woven together in the depths of the womb.

Your eyes saw my unformed body when I was a microscopic ball of cells.

All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

You picked the day of my conception and You picked the day of my death

You are Sovereign over all the days between whether many or few.

How priceless are your thoughts toward me God! How vast is the sum of them!

Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand— On the shores of all the Seas and the deserts of all the continents.

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