On Tuesday, I met with my friend, Liz, and during the course of our conversation, the theme became examining our hearts before God. No matter what frustrations, circumstances, emotions, even obedience that comes in life, we constantly have to examine ourselves in His presence and His word.
I am so bent in my flesh to cover over and build a wall to my heart…to try to fix situations instead of trusting God. I am also lazy. I know from experience and from His word that I desperately need him every moment of everyday, but I think, I do not want to deal with that right now…maybe later. I expect that eating a healthy meal on Tuesday will carry through to Wednesday, and it will not…I will be hungry and in need. It is through disciplined time with him day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year that fruit is produced in us by Him. I am so glad that the Bible uses analogies of farmers and athletic training…things that take hard work and patience to yield growth. I know these truths in my mind, but why does my heart so want to run to ease?
So, here is another day that I am in desperate need, and I will choose to set aside time to be with Him. And, once I am there, I will see the joy grow in my heart. I will see His hand shepherd and shape me. I will see that He is gentle and faithful, and I will see where I am not. My mind and heart will be transformed to think beyond my self-protection. And I will think to myself, why do I ever want to avoid this time to read the paper or look on the computer or rush off to do chores? And, I will pray that He draw me here again.
John 15:5 “I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”
The Art of Coming Alive 
I thought this mornings Spurgeon went well with your blog so I copied it below – all guilty, and yet all who have ears to hear and eyes to see may have hope in the Savior’s precious blood that alone can soften our hearts!
“All the house of Israel are impudent and hardhearted.”
Ezekiel 3:7
Are there no exceptions? No, not one. Even the favoured race are thus described. Are the best so bad?—then what must the worst be? Come, my heart, consider how far thou hast a share in this universal accusation, and while considering, be ready to take shame unto thyself wherein thou mayst have been guilty. The first charge is impudence, or hardness of forehead, a want of holy shame, an unhallowed boldness in evil. Before my conversion, I could sin and feel no compunction, hear of my guilt and yet remain unhumbled, and even confess my iniquity and manifest no inward humiliation on account of it. For a sinner to go to God’s house and pretend to pray to him and praise him argues a brazen-facedness of the worst kind! Alas! since the day of my new birth I have doubted my Lord to his face, murmured unblushingly in his presence, worshipped before him in a slovenly manner, and sinned without bewailing myself concerning it. If my forehead were not as an adamant, harder than flint, I should have far more holy fear, and a far deeper contrition of spirit. Woe is me, I am one of the impudent house of Israel. The second charge is hardheartedness, and I must not venture to plead innocent here. Once I had nothing but a heart of stone, and although through grace I now have a new and fleshy heart, much of my former obduracy remains. I am not affected by the death of Jesus as I ought to be; neither am I moved by the ruin of my fellow men, the wickedness of the times, the chastisement of my heavenly Father, and my own failures, as I should be. O that my heart would melt at the recital of my Saviour’s sufferings and death. Would to God I were rid of this nether millstone within me, this hateful body of death. Blessed be the name of the Lord, the disease is not incurable, the Saviour’s precious blood is the universal solvent, and me, even me, it will effectually soften, till my heart melts as wax before the fire.