There is no sinner greater than I. I wonder often how a person with the thoughts in my mind, and the desires of my heart could be touched by God. How can everyone not see how black are the beats of my heart?
Its important to understand, here, that Sin, begins far before the act that makes Sin material. Becasue I have not amassed a long list of acts and crimes, doesn't mean that thoughts and desires which are far outside what God would ask and want for me, don't spin and wail and thunder through my mind like storm
Sin begins in a flawed and wicked heart - and I cannot imagine a heart more depraved than my own. The darkness in my heart, perceived darker still because of the touch of the Father.
Non-believers have not had the Spirit infused into their hearts, they have not had their eyes opened to their sin. They may be aware of it, but not like the eyes of a believer ... eyes that knew themselves as helpless, and poor, and without hope of their own, and eyes that witnessed the hand of the father reach into the grave in which they found themselves, and pull them out, and love them, and make them sons and daughters of the Alpha and Omega, and give them a sense of God - of the creator of all that is, that whispered energy and mass and all the universe into existence - deep within them, and in almost everything they see. For them, the vile thoughts and desires that rage within, are made blacker still next to the light in us where God tells us that we can prevail. Short of changing reality, I wouldn't exchange a true image of myself for blindness, but truth is a weighty and persistent beast.
What a two-sided, person I am. Torn and ripped by a heart that desires what I wish that God couldn't see, and in the same hour wants for nothing more than a life lived glorifying him who opened my eyes. It is war in me ... a war. I forget that it's there at times, but it is a war that never ceases. And the tool most often used to damage the heart-scape across which the darkness screams, is the whisper that it is beaten, that the light has won. The light will win, and the light gains always against what would attempt to drag me to places where defeat would color my life - but the war is never won for today. Today, the war rages.
I see today, so I struggle, and I win. When tomorrow is today, there will be a struggle, titanic and cosmic in scale and power, and so used to the struggle have I become that I don't notice until I find my heart filled with what God would cast out of me. Every day ... struggle. Every day ... Battle. So thankful, in this fallen existance, that war carries on.
Sometimes when I'm at church, not often but sometimes, when I am singing, and I hear the choir, and I hear the voices of those around me that I don't know, but lifted all the same to God ... I close my eyes, and I think of Heaven. I can almost feel the joy of lifting my heart in song, and joy, and worship of Him who saved me, covered in warm light and the song of the saints who have gone before, and an eternity of no more struggle. A thousand years of knowing my own heart, full of love, and compassion, and desire for nothing more than to sing with a perfected heart-voice to him whose ears are tuned to hear each and whose smile at the sound lends softly to a heart that is tuned to know the joy of that touch. A thousand years by ten thousand, by forever... Beginning the day my eyes close here, and open for the fist time, there ... with no struggle.
Lord, change my heart here, grant me the desire to see and serve the needs of those who need, and to have compassion for every person. Fill me with love Father, and give me the desire and strength to do what must be done, and the eyes to see those things which you set aside for me to do before the founding of the Earth. Let me see the world, and the people with whom I share this moment, as you see them Father. Please, Lord, don't forget your promise to your children, that you will not leave us as we are, but that your Spirit will make us ever more like the Son that died to bring us into you.
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