The Hidden Harbor of the Heart

 What is the condition of your soul? Does your interior truth match your exterior behavior? What is really going on inside of you? In the hidden harbor of your heart and mind, are the seas calm or tumultuous? Are you becoming detached from the very Jesus you worship, love and serve?

Not your everyday questions. Nor questions that can be answered with the typical Sunday School answers of God, Jesus, and the Bible. These questions require some soul searching. Raw honesty. That often is not highly prized among the people of God. People give performances that would rival academy award winners. They hide the truth about their interior condition. 

What is really going on in the hidden harbor of your heart? Is your soul on fire, ignited with fresh passion, zeal, enthusiasm for knowing and serving God? Maybe your soul is cold, apathetic, indifferent, and unmotivated. 

A harbor is a place on the ocean where ships may find shelter from rough water. The hidden harbor of the heart is a place you may find relief from stresses of life. God should be such a harbor. Some seek harbor in destructive vices that offer no protection at all. Such vices wither the soul. Meaningful communion with God is substituted for lesser things. 

C.S. Lewis once wrote that we humans are content to make mud pies in the slums while God offers us a holiday at the beach. He went on to write that we are far too easily amused. Are our hearts filled with lesser things? Are the hidden harbors of our heart distracted with cares and pursuits that will never satisfy. 

In our hurried, frantic and frenzied pace of lives, there is little time to tend to the soul. In a world of blaring noises, the still soft voice of God is easily missed or ignored. When is the last time your were really still before God? When you took the time to know Him? This goes far beyond keeping up religious performances. It deals with the authentic condition of our interior souls. 

I am convinced many of us who follow Jesus know how to fake it. We paste plastic smiles. We go through the religious routines, serve in some capacity, all the while shunning the Savior access to the hidden harbor of our hearts. We put up a blockade for fear of being exposed as frauds. We feverishly labor to keep up the performance. We convince ourselves nobody would understand and nobody else goes through what we go through. 

Often the withered soul is accompanied with emotional detachment, the desire to escape, apathy, a cynical attitude and thoughts of failure. Does any of this define us. We may keep these things hidden, but we cannot hide them from God. He desires truth in the hidden places. 

"Surely You desire integrity (truth) in the hidden self and You teach me wisdom deep within." [Psalm 51:6] CSB

Let's stop with the performance. Let's ask Jesus to show us the integrity deep within the hidden harbor of our heart. We may not like what He surfaces. The patient may not like the incisions from the surgeon's scalpel, but we can benefit from his skilled hands. We may not enjoy when God pushes through our vain attempts to keep Him out. He desires, wills, intends and purposes to get to the truth deep inside us. Perhaps that terrifies you. You fear being found out for who you really are. 

The truth is liberating. It is exhausting to pretend externally what is not true internally. Jesus offers a better path. He renews. Recharges. Refreshes. Restores. Revives. He does those things as we slow down, get honest and let Him surgically repair the broken spiritual places. That may mean retracing where our souls withered initially. Identifying the cause of our broken condition. This will again require courage. Few in the church will advocate for it. They are too busy keeping up their on religious appearances. 

It is time for me to come clean. I am a fiercely driven and competitive person. I often compete with the dead. Let me explain. My love for reading biographies and autobiographies goes way back. When I read about George Mueller reading the Bible through a total of 200 times, I tried to go about catching Him. For many years I have annually read the Bible through at least once a year. Some years more. I set out this year with the goal to read through the Bible more times than I ever have before. I started out with a blistering pace. I knew to accomplish my goal I would have to read through the scriptures once every three months. I speed read through Genesis, Exodus, slowed way down through Leviticus and then picked up the pace again with Deuteronomy, Joshua and Judges. 

The hidden harbor of my heart could boast I read my Bible. The integrity deep within is that I got very little out of it. I was more focused on accomplishing my goal than sitting with the Savior to hear from Him. A truth the Holy Spirit convicted me of firmly. I slowed down. To a snail's crawl. I still have not finished even reading through my Bible one time this year. In my warped mind I feel like a failure. I do not see that I will ever match Mueller's feat. I still feel the unhealthy thoughts of pursuing that goal even though it does not profit me spiritually. At times, not attaining that goal bothers me more than true communion with my Creator. 

At times, I find myself staring at the walls in my office, in a daze, unable to concentrate in prayer, Bible reading, blog writing and study. Sometimes I will myself to do these things out of duty and not delight. There are days when I feel empty and spiritually depleted. Like I have nothing else to give. In such moments, a well meaning soul will make a comment that fuels the unhealthy fraud to do more even if I know I have little more to offer. I fear beings labeled as lazy and a failure. Those thoughts drive me night and day. I feel a tremendous sense of guilt that I am not able to do more. Frustrated that I fall short of lofty goals. More consumed with doing than being. It is unhealthy. 

My truth in the hidden harbor of my heart is that I am not well. I have not been well since the failed revival one year ago. My frustrations, confusion, disillusionment, and shattered dream have haunted me most everyday since then. I do not understand. I felt God called us to those revival meetings. I prepared. I poured all my soul into my personal preparations and leading the church to prepare for God's fresh visitation. The truth is I also carry a little bitterness. Bitterness because I know many people did not take their preparations for that revival seriously. Even some key people. They do not even know that I know they did not follow through in their personal preparations. I caught them. In the normal course of conversation they exposed the truth about their lack of preparation unknowingly. When I discovered this, I was bewildered. 

Most people enjoyed a a few revival meetings of a year ago. We enjoyed tremendous worship. God's word went forth. My youngest son met Jesus as his Savior. The did not understand we did not experience real revival. I have been in real revival more than once. I know the difference. We had some good meetings. We did not experience genuine revival. I felt compelled, no mandated by God, to hold such meetings and to write devotion material in preparation. I prayed more during that season than at any other time in my life. I stepped out on a limb of faith and believed God wholeheartedly. I feel like I failed. Or that I did not really hear God leading us to those meetings. When the meetings ended abruptly and I got Corona Virus, along with a dozen other people from our church, I retreated to the hidden harbor of my heart to understand. Dark storm clouded thoughts blew in obscuring hope and understanding. Those clouds have lingered to this day. 

That has been the truth in the hidden harbor of my heart for one solid year. Maybe too honest for most people to accept. The vessel of my mind, heart and faith suffer severely. Externally it may appear that I fine. Look beneath the water and you will see gaping holes where this vessel is taking on water. Where Satan has broadsided me with doubts and confusion. 

I am thankful for the mercy of God to bring all these things to my attention and to yours. I am taking steps to find healing and wholeness. I am intentionally slowing my pace to recover and find renewal. Bible reading and prayer are no longer duties. The delight is returning. I also trust one day I will understand what God did and is doing with the revival of Spring Creek. Those are the truths in the hidden harbor of my heart. May God use it to help others.