Which Heart Do You Want?

According to my husband, we have smoke detectors in our house so we’ll know when our food is done. Don’t believe me?

Ask my teenage son who burned bacon in the frying pan. The good news is that he learned our smoke detectors work properly, and they’re loud.

I wasn’t home at the time. Hoping to get rid of the burnt smell, my son turned on the ceiling fans and lit scented candles. I’ve done the same thing.  

Besides, who am I to point a spatula at my son?  

I’ve scraped my share of burnt egg whites and stiff yokes off the ceiling because the water boiled away and the eggs exploded. Talk about a nasty stench.

Last week, I put two cups of water and a half a cup of sugar in a pan and turned on the stove. Normally, the sugar dissolves in the hot water and becomes hummingbird food.

Then again, if “the cook” leaves the kitchen to put a load of laundry into the dryer and forgets about the sugar water boiling on the stove….She’ll find a lump of rock candy bubbling on the bottom of the pan.

The good news is that it cooled and hardened into a heart, sweet enough to lick.

So I whipped together another batch of sugar water. Only this time, I waited near the stove and stirred the liquid while I pondered my rock-hard, heart-shaped candy.

Fact: I’m a happy person when Life is sweet. But when the Lord turns up the heat and allows trials to permeate my life … How do I respond, especially towards the Lord?

ØDraw near the Lord with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, knowing God uses trials to achieve His eternal purposes?

“These trials are only to test your faith, to show that it is strong and pure. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold—and your faith is far more precious to God than mere gold.” (1 Peter 1:7)

ØTurn Away from the Lord, allowing pride and/or unbelief to harden my heart and test God’s patience?   

“Be careful then, dear brothers and sisters. Make sure that your own hearts are not evil and unbelieving, turning you away from the living God. You must warn each other every day, as long as it is called ‘today’, so that none of you will be deceived by sin and hardened against God.” (Hebrews 3: 12, 13)

As I poured the homemade nectar into my hummingbird feeder, I prayed for a heart that would never grow cold or hard towards the God of my salvation.

“Search me O God, and know my heart; … point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.” (Psalm 139:23–24).

 

 

How do you respond when hard times come?