prepare Him room

This morning I woke up with the song "Joy to the World" dancing through my head.

The line that kept jumping out in my mind was "let every heart, prepare Him room."

It made me think, what am I cluttering my heart with? What takes up space in my heart that has no place there?

Pride?
Bitterness?
Fear?
Feelings of unworthiness?
Relationships that the Lord has not ordained?
Lust?
Jealousy?
Anger?

I got to thinking today about my laundry.

With all the chaos of life, my laundry has gotten a little out of hand. Mind you, most of it is clean. I just cannot seem to make myself attack the three baskets of clean piles. So there they sit, getting rumpled, tangled, mixed in with the dirty laundry.

The more I fail to address it, the more the pile seems to grow and the more daunting it becomes in my mind.

Isn't it the same with the messiness of our heart. The more we ignore it and hold onto it, the more difficult it becomes to deal with it. It grows until it seems like an impossible task.

When you know you have company coming to your home, you tidy up. How much more should we focus our attention on tidying our hearts. Me first.

I have prayed so many times during the course of this journey, "Lord, I want to follow hard after you, and I want you to have my whole heart, but it's messy in there. Please be gentle."

Praying that as I take time this advent to prepare my heart to receive the King of Kings, I will trust the Lord to help me clear away the clutter. I want to believe that He has my best interest in mind when He strips things away that are taking up space that only He should fill.

Let my heart, prepare Him room...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

my broken

Image
This weekend, my little peanut Daniel broke his thumb. Now he gets to spend the next several weeks in a cast. Saturday morning I had gone to spend the day with him. He and his sister were playing contentedly in the play room and he come to me with a forlorn look on his little face. "It's not fair." He declared in his 5 year old sensibility. "What's not fair?" I asked. "I can't play like I want to because my arm broken." My heart hurt for him. He just wanted to be...normal again. I pulled in up in my lap and cradled him like I did when he was a much smaller boy. Then I told him this: "No pal, it's not fair and I know it stinks that you will have to wear a cast for a while. But you know what? I bet none of the other kids in your class have a cast like yours do they?" He shook his head. "So that's actually pretty cool. You're the ONLY kid with a cast like yours. And you can still play it will just be ...
Read more

reconnect

As I grow older and continue to seek after the Lord, I am amazed how I, how am much an extravert, crave stillness. I crave solitude. I crave silence. This weekend, I turned off much of the noise, put my phone on do not disturb and spent time in stillness and living a simpler form of life. It was lovely. It was necessary. On Saturday afternoon I hung in my hammock in my brothers back yard and read to my nephew from The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. As I read, I was stricken by the imagery. It was beautiful and eloquent yet simple.  I crave simple, more than I ever realized. In disconnecting for much of the weekend, yes, I missed chatting with my friends, but that was all I missed.  As I reconnected today and stepped back into all the pressures of regular life, I couldn't help wishing I were in my hammock in the woods reading CS Lewis or LM Montgomery. I think this has all been a lesson in balance. In order to connect well, I need to balance that conne...
Read more

whatever

This week has been ridiculously, unseasonably hot. I have spent way too much time complaining about and avoiding the heat. This morning as I was leading worship for church we sang the old stand by 10,000 Reasons. As we sang the first verse it struck me once again. The sun comes up it’s a new day dawning,  It’s time to sing your song again. Whatever may pass and whatever lies before me, Let me be singing when the evening comes. That word, whatever.  That’s a word that is said flippantly all the time but when you put it in the context that song is saying it in, it’s huge. Whatever. Not just a few things that may come into our days. WHATEVER may pass and WHATEVER lies before. After that I taught my Sunday school class a song. This song talks about following Jesus under any circumstance. There is a verse in it that really tugs at my heart. It says, When I find myself so far from home And You lead me somewhere I don't wanna go Even in my d...
Read more