teachable heart

Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy.  Proverbs 27:6

In the past few weeks, there have been a couple times where my friends said words to me that stung in the moment.

They were spoken in love and deep conviction for my heart but receiving them was tough at first. They came from imperfect human lips but with pure and kind hearts desperately wanting me to grow and be strong. 

The enemy was right there. He wanted to take the words and twist them. He wanted me to find all sorts of justifications to toss their way. He wanted me to hear words more than hearts and to believe that my friends simply didn't understand MY life. He sought to unearth all the roots of comparison In my heart. He wanted to divide me from my friends by putting a seed of bitterness in my spirit. He wanted to wound me deeply and separate me from the lifeline that is beautiful fellowship.

But somewhere over time, I have learned the amazing spirit and character of my friends and also that of the enemy. I could see him hiding there and could hear HIS words mixing with their words. I knew what he was trying to do.

So I took the words to Jesus and He spoke truth, peace, grace and love. He showed me the heart that my friends have for me and what I could take away from their words. He reminded me that if I want to grow as a woman of God, I must always listen with a soft and teachable heart.

I don't always do this well.

But I want to do this well.

I need to learn to take all the teaching, rebuke and correction I receive and place it at the feet of Jesus. When I do this, He can sift through and show me what I need to carry away and keep as a lesson in my heart. Both times He has been faithful to do just that. 

His heart is for me. 

He has given be incredible friendships and their heart is for me.

I want to be teachable, moldable and yet strong and unbreakable. I want to learn how to receive with joy trusting that the Lord is speaking to me in all things. Yes, sometimes as frail and sinful human beings our delivery can be tough to take. Trust me, I am probably the worst. But thanks be to our great God that He uses frail and broken people to accomplish so many things. 

I want to be a friend who speaks truth to my friends.

More than that, I want to be a friend who can receive truth with the same amount of grace and love as it is spoken.

I am not there yet, but a teachable heart is the only way I know to get there.


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