It’s been 13 years since I experienced three significant physical ailments. I was a teenager, having moved out of my parents’ house and into my first apartment. I lived in rebellion against authority. The first three months away from my home, I contracted mono, chipped a bone in my ankle, and experienced intense pain in both knees when jumping.
Of course, at the time I didn’t make the connection. It was just one thing after another, and the events meant nothing to me other than an inconvenience. Within the following year, I was told by a chiropractor that my back stabilizer muscles weren’t receiving a strong electrical signal from my brain and thus all the muscles in my back were very weak and underdeveloped.
How did I never know that each physical ailment was a sign of my internal emotional and spiritual disfigurement? But I could not see.
Several years later, I was driving a bus full of kids to the daycare center. I felt the strain of weak back muscles as I sat in the driver’s seat, and wondered when I would ever have the determination and strength of will to exercise faithfully and strengthen my back muscles.
I am 30 years old, and finally taking my first serious strides to strengthen my back. I’m not claiming total victory over that issue just yet. That would be foolish. I’ve made that mistake too many times – talking about something I’ve just begun as though it were finished. But I have begun.
The exercises are simple. I’m sitting on an exercise ball while watching television and bouncing lightly for 15 minutes. Sounds ridiculously easy, right? It IS simple, but not easy. My back is obviously VERY weak.
I could ramble on forever. The point is that I have many physical problems I want resolved. And rather than assume that these are just a sign of my body degenerating as I age, I believe that they are the results of choices and lifestyles and are a sign of my internal condition. I believe that God will restore most, if not all, of my physical ailments over time. I believe he will do that because he will honor the alignment of my entire being with his will.
I am strengthening my back for the first time in my life. It is a sign that I am slowly learning how to sit and stand firm. It is a sign that God isn’t through with me yet. The restoration of my back will be a sign of my life’s restoration. Things are coming into alignment.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
fore they shall see God.
I cannot tell you how much this passage has meant to me. It is a state of existence I have longed for and felt impossible to reach. How I long for a pure heart! I’m sick of being filthy. I’m weary of feeling shame over and over again. I want a pure heart, a clean conscience, and peace in my heart.
These are the things I experienced as a new Christian. Purity of heart was relative, of course. I felt completely new compared to the horrendous condition I was in the day before. But as time marches on, I had to face more and more of my heart’s condition, and I was sick with sadness.
Several times over the past ten years, people with words of knowledge have told me that I am like David in that I am a man after God’s own heart. I am still puzzling over the meaning of this, since both David and I have had our desperately wicked times.
Some say that being a man after God’s own heart means that you simply never give up the pursuit. Perhaps. I don’t feel so driven as I once did, though. That is part of the reason for this website. I need to reconnect. I need a deeper connection. I need to desire him more. And all of this begins with a renewed mind. You have to know what to think about God and your position with him before you can feel much of anything about it.
Then there’s that whole “they shall see God” bit. I’ve developed a theory or two on that verse over time. I’m actually just now going back to those and trying to deconstruct them. I don’t want to live on assumption. I don’t want to make decisions based on half-assed ideas either. I think I’ve missed out on more than enough already due to those silly assumptions.
How shall they see him? Will they see him face to face, like Moses? Will they see him as in have intimacy with him? Will they have revelation of him? What will they see?
I have no exact answer, but the questions are worth asking.
How easily I slip from fixing my eyes upon you, O Lord! I forget and I give all of myself to other things. Help me, Father, to think on you… to be amazed by you. I return as always to images of the great universe. I picture planet after planet, star after star. I see galaxies and comets. And you hold them all in your hand.
But outer space is not enough today. I need to think of you as immediate. I need to focus on your presence. I need to meditate on your “everywhere at all times” – your ability to be here and hear me and care about my thoughts.
It may only last for a brief moment this morning, God, but I fix my gaze on you. I imagine your spirit hovering over me, brooding with creativity, power, and purpose. Have your way today, Lord.
