Heart, Why?

Heart, why do you do what you do?

I was reading in one of my favorite devotional books the other night. “My Utmost for His Highest” by Oswald Chambers never ceases to pull from my heart a groan and a smile at the same time. The depth of spiritual truth within those golden pages makes me feel like a little piece of my heart not in line with God disintegrates and that an even smaller part of my soul that is in line with Him grows. The fact that the “deep” devotionals in this book sometimes seem to go right over my head never frustrates me.

I may never understand it all.

But I may be drinking in more than I know.

Anyway, last night, a sentence caught my eye (as often happens). It was as if God was reading it to me (slowly).

“Has He said something personally to me to which I have deliberately listened – not something I can explain for the sake of others, but something I have heard Him say directly to me?”

Wow.

I love to write.

Am I so caught up in my writing that I don’t spend time with God?

No. I have daily devotionals (other than the five minutes it takes me to read through Mr. Chambers’s words).

Am I so caught up in my writing that my time with God is a source for my writing?

Do I come to my Bible, eager to learn?

Or do I come to my Bible, eager to learn so I can lead others to learn the same thing?

Do I pray to fellowship with my Lord?

Or do I pray to fellowship with my Lord so I can teach others to have fellowship with the Lord?

Do I love God because I love God?

Or do I love God because I love God and I love writing about how I love God?

What are my motives?

Even better, what are the motives behind my motives?

Is my heart saying, “I love writing about God, therefore I love God”?

Because I want it to say, “I love God, therefore I love writing about God."

Would I be willing to watch it all turn to ashes, if God asked me to? (He has asked that before, you know.) Oh, Abraham, what could you teach me?

If God came to me and asked me to give up

my dreams,

what would my response be?

Heart, why do you do what you do?

Why do I write?

To love others,

to love myself,

or to love Him?

Can I truly say,

“Therefore I glory in Christ Jesus in my service to God”? (Romans 15:17)

...

God has asked writing of me.

Writing is my spiritual discipline.

"To write is my joy and my work. Writing is the one place I feel I actually articulate the deep, aching things in my heart that I never seem quite able to say. To write is something God has asked of me. I think I finally understood this best in the context of story. Of realizing that my writing, even the nonfiction, goes toward narrating grace into this world. I can tell stories, and I can weave story out of the seemingly disparate events of life in our world. To be a woman of story is the work to which I want to give my life."

-Sarah, Thoroughly Alive