A Cold Heart & “If God Permits”: Not necessarily related, but can be
January 19, 2009
Talking to some people, and I believe being in Boston, has made me realize how cold-hearted I can be toward people. It’s not a good feeling, but that is my natural tendency when people just do not get on my good side. It’s also a very sad thing since I make it so obvious. I refuse to give them the light of day if they have nothing to offer me. But being Christian, it’s not exactly a characteristic that should be so evident. How to describe this escapes me at this time, but all I know is that it is true. Why does this heart continue to prevail?
A lesson that I have been learning these days is about how sovereign God is in my life and everyone else’s. Whenever I think about non-Christians who believe in a god but are not Christian, the first argument I think of is, “If you believe God to be, at the very least, “a god,” and having the knowledge of what “a god” is, then what makes us believe that we can push around this god however we want?” Even as a Christian, I tend to do this too. Whenever I pray, I always feel like there is this underlying motive that I’m just trying to manipulate God to do what I want him to do. Even to the hardcore prayers of asking God to help me persevere to the end, I still feel like I’m in someway trying to get God to do something for me.
As I have been learning in Hebrews, even in our faithfulness to become mature Christians, it is still ultimately up to God if we will be saved. There is absolutely nothing we can do that will bring us to saving faith. Only God will permit us to be saved or not, to persevere till the end or not, to be with God or not. Who are we to think that we “deserve” to be saved just because of the life we live? It is all in God’s hands.
Trying to bring this back to my cold heart, it’s only God that can give me a truly loving heart to love those that I do not love. To stop giving them a cold shoulder and to realize that I am in God’s hands just as much as they are and that I am no better than them. God is God alone.
Lately, I have been feeling broken and that I am falling apart…
If the chance is given to me again, will I take it?
