lynnbusby.com Bread for your hunger. Water for your thirst. Oil for your wounds. Strength for the journey in the desert.

A heart of Flesh Part 4

Be still my beating heart!” was an idiom first coined in 17th century poetry. I remember my friends using it in a light sarcastic yet melodramatic tone when we saw a handsome boy. It indicated a need to calm the rush of adrenaline in the presence of the opposite sex.

There is One. A Holy Other. We can still our racing hearts and thoughts in His Presence because our heart has been captured. Tamed. It is interesting as I write this, Song of Solomon comes to mind. The Bridegroom declares His bride has “captured” His heart when she glances in His direction.

Has your heart been tamed by Him? Has He won you over? This place where the world can stop. I too, stop, cease from my many words and striving. A phrase from a song comes to mind “Say the things you used to say, and make the world go away”. It is the place of emotional intimacy where I am laid bare. But in a safe way. Not exposed in a dangerous sense. One of my favorite Psalms describes this scenario  well. Psalm 131:2 Surely, I have calmed and quieted my soul; Like a weaned child [resting] with his mother, my soul is like a weaned child within me.

There is another rendition of a quiet heart in the scriptures. A heart silenced, not by love but authority. A chastised heart. It is hinted at within the verse about the weaned child. A child who has been disciplined and is aware someone else is in charge.

Silence is demanded within our legal system and we can hear order in the court! Silence in the Court! There is Someone with authority here and His word is Law! Revelation 8 describes this silence of the awe of God and His impending judgments.

Mere words are inadequate to articulate this, but these phrases come to mind. “Air so thick you can cut it with a knife” and a “you could hear a pin drop” silence.

It is this silence before God that Job talks about in chapter 42. He says “I am going to stop talking now, I had everything wrong, there is nothing I CAN say before You now that I have seen Your glory. You are God and I am not.

Oh, how I wish this were an aspect of our regular worship in today’s church. I am ashamed to say it would be closer to the reality we are like boisterous voices in His Presence. Hear me. This is a spirit of anti-Christ. It is opposite of Jesus’ nature to boast of who we are and what we are going to do in His Presence.

I write  with sadness that it is the man of lawlessness who makes arrogant boasts in the temple. Yet we have somehow been convinced to make bold declarations of our dominion theology in our sanctuaries!

Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians mentions boasting no less than twenty-one times. The Corinthian church was rife with “giftedness”. And  pride. Noisy gongs and clanging cymbals. This is current state of the church.

Where is the silence before God, where is the penitence. Why can’t we acknowledge that “our ways” are not working? 1 Corinthians 1:7 But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; 28 and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, 29 that no flesh should glory in His presence.

A heart that has been quieted, chastised, even silenced before His glory is the beginning of God’s work to give us a heart of flesh.

I humbly suggest that you try to be quiet. Stop talking. Stop telling God the ways you promise to improve and listing your requests. We are taught that listening is a foundational element of proper and respectful communication. How much more so should it be a part of our communication with God? He is worthy of our time and attention and demonstration in respective listening.

Let no flesh boast. He is worthy.