THE HEART | RECLAIMED

I’ve been thinking about the heart lately. 

I’ve been reading this book called Waking the Dead by John Eldredge. (He’s the author of Wild at Heart and Captivating too, which I would highly recommend to all of you.) I’ve been making my way through it really slowly, because I was trying to read it during school... and we all know what gets done during school besides school... yeah, pretty much nothing. Ha. Anyways.

I’ve mostly been reading it sitting on a box in the back room at work during my break. It’s great. Pretty much, it helps me snap back into reality--REAL reality--when I get caught up in the stress of being on the job. The reality that I have purpose outside of my performance. That I am significant. And that I want every single person that comes within 20 feet of me to feel significant too. 

Because they are. 

Waking the Dead is about reclaiming the heart. 

Listen to what I'm listening to? 

Do you remember that scene near the end of Prince Caspian in Narnia, when the Pevensies and Caspian are kneeling on the beach and Aslan says, “Rise, Kings and Queens of Narnia”? Caspian remains kneeling humbly while the rest get up. And Aslan gets this glow in his eyes and this fond warmth in his voice when he says, “All of you.” Caspian is still trying to come to terms with the idea of being King: “I do not think that I am ready.” I think there was almost a laugh in Aslan’s voice then, you could almost touch the joy in his answer. “It is because of that that I know you are.” 

I love that scene. I love it because it’s thick with reality and I have to breathe it in deeper every time I think of it. 

Because honestly, how often do you feel like what Father calls you? How often do we feel like we are capable of what we are called to do, to be, to live and breathe?

And how much does how we feel matter? 

Because often, I don’t feel like a chosen and beloved, purposed, predestined, redeemed child of God. I feel like a failing perfectionist, a worried, drained, confused, overly-analytical-and-yet-never-in-tune lost kid.

Remember that pain of being human that we all know? Yeah. That. 

The pain of hurts we can’t, or don’t want, to handle. The idea that we’re not enough and yet always too much.* The way we all deeply need and yet often deny needing to know that there is something. more. 

Something more than this. More than us. 

At least, I need that. And then I came across this verse: 

Ephesians 1:18-23 (NIV)

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

The same power that raised Christ from the dead. 

Can you imagine the force, the life, the incredible might that it took to raise Christ from the dead? That brought death caving in on itself? That ruptured the darkness and drew a line in the sand saying, “Come no further”? The same power that tore the curtain and made the clouds boil black and said that Satan’s time was up? 

Yeah. God’s power there. That’s what we’re promised. That’s the God that stands with us.

But it’s the last line that gets me. 

Us. 

We are the fullness. And he fills everything in every way. Fills us in every way.

John Eldredge quotes St. Irenaeus as saying, “The glory of God is man fully alive.” 

And that’s why it’s so important to guard our hearts. To reclaim them, if we’ve lost them, if they’ve been wounded in any way. Which they all have. 

We are meant to live fully alive. Not relying on how we feel, our accomplishments, our so-called positions or dispositions. Our hearts are reclaimed, bought with the priceless blood of a sinless man, the Son of God. 

If you feel like nothing, that’s a lie. 

God didn’t die for nothing.

Do you believe that? I always squirm a bit here. Um, yes. I believe it. When you put it that way. But I struggle to live that belief. And that’s what I want to change. 

I want to live like I’ve been reclaimed. Chosen. Transformed. Undone. Remade. 

And here’s what struck me hard:

He is, and I am willing. 

He is the great I AM, so that I don’t have to be. 

It’s not about how I feel. It’s about what Father calls me. 

He makes everything glorious. 

And I am his. 

What does that make me?

*In Captivating, Eldredge addresses this feeling: of being too much, and never enough. It is one of our (especially women’s) deepest wounds. I’ve never forgotten his short descriptive sentence. Amazing how striking such a small thing can be, how powerful the truth of it is. If it struck something in you, I would definitely recommend that you read the book.