This is my first post actually sharing anything personal. Up until now I've just shared what's on my heart in devotion form, and what God has shown me through reading a devotion, or hearing a song, or just something he's placed on my heart from something I've seen.
Today I need to tell you that in my past I was very much about appearances. I was very much caught up in the world and how the world looks for beauty on the outside rather than on the heart.
In the story of David in being chosen by God as king in the Bible(you can read this story in 1 Samuel 16), he had seven brothers who were way more stout, taller and masculine then he, but God did not choose them to be king, he did not look at the outside appearance, he rather looked at the heart and he chose David.
At Christmas time it's hard not to look at the outward appearance of things: the lights, the sparkles, the cute little Christmas cards, the bow ties, the cookies, etc.
But what if we stop looking at the beauty in appearances and rather the beauty in HIS APPEARING!
God showed me a few years ago that I was only going to be able to change my life to live for him, if I began to change the way I saw things. God doesn't care what I look like, he cares about my heart.
The world lives fixated on facades, blinded to the realist real. This shiny shell of things can bind you and blind you.
Its a temporal world that elevates the foil, the plastic, the status, the skills, the physical, and the tangible. But it is God who elevates the heart, the interior, the soul.
Humanity obsesses with vapors not eternity.( “yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.”James 4:14)
The reality was for me that I had lost my joy because I was caught up in the world. I was caught up in the bombardment I was being faced with of ads and gloss and Photoshop, it schooled me to have eyes for everything unimportant and unreal. From Hollywood to Pinterest, the media of this world aggressively schools your soul to see the exact opposite of the way God sees.(I plan on writing another blog sometime in future, as the Lord leads, sharing why we don't watch prime time tv, have Netflix, cable, etc.)
People aren't bodies they are hearts.
God has helped me train my eyes to turn everything inside out, and he can do that for you too. You can close your eyes and ask it, see it:
"is my life about the heart of things?" "is my Christmas?" "Am I deeply absorbed in him and the heart of things?" "Or is my life a shallow absorption with surfaces?"
It can affect us in all areas of life, and if it's the surfaces that absorb us, then we're mostly superficial.
God showed me that my priorities were not right because they were focused on things seen. He has now showed me that my priorities should rather be on things unseen, and it's only then that my life began to have substance and weight.
Only God can give us eyes to really see. To see past surfaces, to the heart of things, all the way down to the love.
I am praying now for all reading this. God bless you, and have a great day.
