I did something really silly awhile back and I’m fortunate that it didn’t turn out worse than it did. I was in a rush at home. The kids were screaming, the Royals were playing, my mind was somewhere else and I needed to get a pizza out of the oven before it burned. I was so distracted that I reached into the oven and grabbed the pan with my bare hand. My hand immediately recoiled and the throbbing pain rebuked my ignorant brain.
You touch something hot and everything in your body runs away from that pain. We are hard-wired to avoid pain in order to keep ourselves alive. I think our hearts work the same way, and that often stunts our spiritual growth.
Our hearts get distracted and we go about life, sometimes without much thought of the Lord. And then He’ll catch up to us. Through various methods—most often His Word—God will cause our hearts to break with deep conviction. God is so radically dedicated to our enjoyment of Him that He will do whatever is necessary to rip out of our hearts sin and unbelief and to replace it with passionate worship. That truth is a painful one.
Our natural instinct is to run away from a broken heart. We feel terrible and our hearts are broken. So we’ll run away from the pain. We’ll try various methods to numb the sting of conviction. And before we know it our tender heart starts to harden up a bit. We feel a bit better but something is numb and callous inside of us.
John Bunyan spoke of this danger in his little book The Acceptable Sacrifice. He cautioned his hearers against a hardened heart this way:
Take heed that you choke not those convictions that at present do break your hearts, by laboring to put those things out of your minds which were the cause of such convictions; but rather nourish and cherish those things in a deep and sober remembrance of them. Think, therefore, with thyself thus, What was it that at first did wound my heart? And let that still be there, until, by the grace of God, and the redeeming blood of Christ, it is removed.
In other words when we are convicted and our heart is broken—let us not be satisfied with any remedy but the One remedy that the Father has provided. I know that conviction and a broken heart hurts. But don’t run away from God and try to lick your wounds. Instead run to the Lord in all your brokenness and find in Christ the only remedy for your wounded heart.
—
Photo source: here
