Saltwater Heart

Hear my cry, O God,

     listen to my prayer;

from the end of the earth I call to you

     when my heart is faint.

Lead me to the rock

     that is higher than I.

--Psalm 61:1-2

I’ve been praying over the past week or two for wisdom. I mean, who doesn’t want to be wise?

So of course, the whole time I was praying this, I was experiencing short term memory loss; I would pray in my car on the way to work for wisdom, and then I would get there and get really frustrated, angry, or impatient. I may have cussed at my computer this week. (No children were in the room, you’ll be glad to know.) I also may have complained about a few people. ….Ok, a lot of people.

I’ve gotten angry about small things, or self-critical about small things, and actually enjoyed indulging irritation and self-pity. I reacted suddenly and rashly to my emotions rather than the truth, and my saltwater words (see James 3:10-12) poisoned my speech, so that I was closing the way for God to give me the wisdom I asked Him for.

Here’s the next verse in James, coincidentally: Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. (3:13-15)

Ouch. Direct correlation between words and wisdom (or lack thereof). He just comes right out and says it: earthly wisdom is demonic.

But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere (James 3:17).

This definition of divine wisdom is the opposite of how I’ve behaved this week. Seriously--I’ve been like a walking PSA warning against worldly wisdom.

Just the week before, the pastor gave a good sermon on faithfulness. He talked about Joseph, and how he garnered lots of favor on the earth because of his faithfulness in small things. Following the spiritual principle Jesus told His disciples about later, Joseph was faithful in small things, and was put over much.

I feel that I have always been this way as far as work is concerned. I have been very faithful to do what I am asked to do, which is probably why I have had such favor (in addition to the fact that God just gives me divine favor in spite of myself).

So I was feeling good about the whole thing, until he brought up being faithful not just at work, but in relationships. That means acting in faith by treating others with the love Jesus gave us, according to His commandments.

I wrinkled my nose a little bit when the pastor started talking about this. If you are being faithful in relationships, you are not being selfish by indulging in negative emotions; you are not using harsh words toward others (even if, granted, they are not in the room). It’s one thing to be given a task and complete it well. It’s another to daily flee from the devil’s temptation to choose yourself over others, to turn your eyes away from God and glorify the mess inside of your earthbound heart.

Clearly, when you want wisdom, the go-to book is Proverbs. So this week, after the faithfulness sermon, I found this verse, which I thought pretty much summed it up for me:

Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you; bind them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart. So you will find favor and good success in the sight of God and man.                           

--Proverbs 3:3-6

Steadfast love and faithfulness are paired in this verse. They work together; they are co-dependent. Steadfast basically just means stubborn refusal to give up your belief in the face of direct attack, so to have steadfast love is to cling onto love with every ounce of strength you have, no matter what—to insist on loving people in spite of what is going on around you….or how you feel. That’s faithfulness—both being faithful to God, and having faith in Him, because you believe Him when He says you’ll be blessed when you love people.

The kicker phrase in this verse: Don’t let them forsake you. In other words, don’t drive them away with your negative words, your self-indulgence. Salt ponds cannot yield fresh water. You can’t have your spiritual cake and eat it too.

Here’s the much more familiar, oft-quoted verse that follows right after this one in Proverbs:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.

Don’t lean on your own understanding. Ironically, THAT’S wisdom: to know nothing, and trust the Lord.

Thus says the Lord:

“Cursed is the man who trusts in man

and makes flesh his strength,

whose heart turns away from the Lord.

He is like a shrub in the desert,

and shall not see any good come.

He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness,

in an uninhabited salt land.

Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,

whose trust is the Lord.

He is like a tree planted by water,

that sends out its roots by the stream,

and does not fear when heat comes,

for its leaves remain green,

and is not anxious in the year of drought,

for it does not cease to bear fruit.”

--Jeremiah 17:5-8

Thus says the Lord. Blessed is the man who not just trusts the Lord, but whose trust is the Lord.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to cease to bear fruit, even in drought. I don’t want drought to come and find me turned around spitting out saltwater. In order to bear fruit, I have to trust the Lord. This means not giving in to “bitter jealousy” and “selfish ambition.” I mean, I can sit there and indulge in those feelings all day. God won’t stop me. But in order to bear fruit for Him, I have to lay them aside. Those things are just emotions. They aren’t the truth.

For context, here’s the next couple verses in Jeremiah:

The heart is deceitful above all things,

                and desperately sick;

                who can understand it?

I the Lord search the heart and test the mind;

to give every man according to his ways,

according to the fruit of his deeds.

--Jeremiah 17:9-10

The heart is deceitful and desperately sick. Those few words sum up what is wrong with the world. What is the cure, then, for a lying, deathly-sick heart?

Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Do not have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts. Write steadfast love and faithfulness on the tablet of your hearts.

I think once something is written on your heart, it’s pretty hard to smudge off. Cure that desperately sick heart with overdoses of love, faithfulness, and trust.

So basically what happened this week was that I prayed for wisdom; and the Lord said, “If you want to grow in this, we’re going to have to get a few things out of the way first.”

It’s not that I have been particularly emotionally-indulgent and self-focused this week. I haven’t suddenly gotten worse about this. I think that God just used certain circumstances to highlight these sins in me that were already there. He just gently brought it to my attention. And, I’m sorry to say, I wasn’t very faithful to respond in humility. I saw my behavior, and acted even worse.

I admit it: sometimes I enjoy being angry. Like Jonah, I sit under the fig tree and remain happy in my anger. Or I’ve consciously let my stress and anxiety spin out of control, instead of curbing it, because curbing it was too hard—and, let’s be honest, once you open a box of chocolates and start eating them, it’s really hard to stop. Sometimes self-righteousness—“I have a right to be angry about this! I have a right to be anxious about this!”—can taste just like chocolate, even though it is making you sick.

Enough of this. I will always be irritated and upset by daily things—that’s just life. But I am far too old to indulge my negative emotions. As my good friend Jennifer would say, “That’s just straight-up stupid.” It doesn’t honor the Lord.

Let’s revisit that definition of heavenly wisdom from James in the Amplified Translation.

But the wisdom from above is first of all pure (undefiled); then it is peace-loving, courteous (considerate, gentle). [It is willing to] yield to reason, full of compassion and good fruits; it is wholehearted and straightforward, impartial and unfeigned (free from doubts, wavering, and insincerity).--James 3:17

I think that about covers it, don’t you?

The one thing I can say for my negative emotions was, at least at the beginning, they were sincere; but when I began to indulge them, they became lies, untruth, because they weren’t founded in my trust in God. They were founded in my trust that my flesh knew what was going on better than God did—and my belief that I had a right to indulge them.

It’s time for a change. I can feel God calling me to a new level of spiritual maturity—a new pair of spiritual shoes. When you have a worn-out pair of running shoes that don’t work anymore, you can sit down and refuse to go on. Or you can put on the new shoes He offers.

When I began this blog, I compared my journey first to a walk, then to a run. Now I feel like my Father is holding out a pair of climbing shoes. I don’t know if you have ever worn climbing shoes, but they are very uncomfortable to walk in. However, if you are going to climb, you need them. “Put off the old shoes,” Jesus is saying to me. “It’s time to climb.”

Give me a leg up in prayer, if you don’t mind. I’m clinging to the rock that is higher than I.