undivided

Lord, teach me how you want me to live. Then I will follow your truth.

Give me a heart that doesn't want anything more than to worship you.

Psalm 86:11

Signs of a divided heart- restlessness, boredom, anger, depression, anxiety, lack of joy and peace- are everywhere you look. God longs for our whole heart to be fixed upon him. For all that he has done for us, he so deserves all of our love and devotion.

Something I am terribly guilty of- trying to control my own life and clean up my own messes. My pride and sense of self so often get in the way of surrendering my heart and life to the one who formed me! He doesn't want us to wait until we "have it all-together" before we come to him. He wants us as we are- unraveling, joyful, discouraged, hopeful, doubting, angry. He pleads with his children,

Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly.

Matthew 11:28

The threads of my life most often seem to me like a messy knot, but these are the very threads that bind me to God. Rather than trying to get all the cords untangled, I just need to believe that God has the other end of the threads and, if I allow him to, is weaving something that will be for my good and His glory.

 What Does An Undivided Heart Look Like?

It will show itself in a single-minded character. This is a person whose main goal, main purpose, and main passion is God. That means we live to please the one we love in everything we do. It does not mean we won't mess this up at times, it just means that He is our main love and we pursue Him.

The Lord said of David,"this is a man after my own heart."(Acts 13:22) David!? Really!? Didn't he commit adultery and then have the woman's husband killed when she came up pregnant? Didn't he allow his son to go unpunished when he raped his sister? THIS is a man after God's own heart? Yeah, he is. Why?

Read what David says over and over in the Psalms. He grieves over his sins because he knows He has hurt the God who loves him. Even though he has sinned greatly, he still seeks after God, loves Him and wants to please Him.

That is an undivided heart. It still messes up- sometimes on a big scale- but it repents over how it has affected the relationship with the God who loves so fiercely. And this heart gets back on track.

(taken from  here)

muse

 

"Listen  to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is.
In the  boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness:
touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because
in the last analysis all moments are key moments,
and life itself is grace."

Frederick Buechner

 

"By reading the scriptures I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to be a pure, a cooler blue, the trees a deeper green. The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet."

Thomas Merton

"The soul which has come into intimate contact with God in the silence of the prayer chamber is never out of conscious touch with the Father; the heart is always going out to Him in loving communion, and the moment the mind is released from the task upon which it is engaged, it returns as naturally to God as the bird does to its nest."

E.M. Bounds

“Pay mind to your own life, your own health, and wholeness.

A bleeding heart is of no help to anyone if it bleeds to death.”

  Frederick Buechner 

"It is good to renew ourselves, from time to time, by closely examining the state of our souls, as if we had never done it before; for nothing tends more to the full assurance of faith, than to keep ourselves by this means in humility, and the exercise of all good works."

John Wesley

the Source

When we are securely rooted in personal intimacy with the Source of life, it will be possible to remain flexible but not relativistic, convinced without being rigid, willing to confront without being offensive, gentle and forgiving without being soft and true witnesses without being manipulative.

inconsolable

"Sometimes I wake, and, lo! I have forgot,
And drifted out upon an ebbing sea!
My soul that was at rest now resteth not,
For I am with myself and not with thee;
Truth seems a blind moon in a glaring morn,
Where nothing is but sick-heart vanity:
Oh, thou who knowest! save thy child forlorn.

Thy fishes breathe but where thy waters roll;
Thy birds fly but within thy airy sea;
My soul breathes only in thy infinite soul;
I breathe, I think, I love, I live but thee.
Oh breathe, oh think,--O Love, live into me;
Unworthy is my life till all divine,
Till thou see in me only what is thine.

When I no more can stir my soul to move,
And life is but the ashes of a fire;
When I can but remember that my heart
Once used to live and love, long and aspire,
Oh, be thou then the first, the one thou art;
Be thou the calling, before all answering love,
And in me wake hope, fear, boundless desire."

-The Diary of An Old Soul, George MacDonald

"We are desire. It is the essence of the human soul, the secret of our existence. Absolutely nothing of human greatness is ever accomplished without it. Not a symphony has been written, a mountain climbed, an injustice fought, or a love sustained apart from desire. Desire fuels our search for the life we prize. Our desire, if we will listen to it, will save us from committing soul-suicide, the sacrifice of our hearts on the altar of 'getting by.' The same old thing is not enough. It never will be."

-Desire, John Eldredge

"Wilt thou suddenly enshroud thee,
Who this moment wert so nigh?
Heavy rising masses cloud thee,
Thou art hidden from mine eye.
Yet my sadness thou well knowest,
Gleaming sweetly as a star!
That I'm loved, 'tis thou that showest,
Though my loved one may be far.
Upward mount then! clearer, milder,
Robed in splendour far more bright!
Though my heart with grief throbs wilder,
Fraught with rapture is the night!"
-To the Rising Full Moon, Goethe

"We are made in the image of God; we carry within us the desire for our true life of intimacy and adventure. To say we want less than that is to lie."

-Desire, John Eldredge

"Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world."

-Oscar Wilde

"The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — my country,
the place where I ought to have been born."
-C.S.Lewis

"Indeed, if we will listen, a Sacred Romance calls to us through our heart every moment of our lives. It whispers to us on the wind, invites us through the laughter of good friends, reaches out to us through the touch of someone we love. We've heard it in our favorite music, sensed it in the birth of our first child, been drawn to it while watching the shimmer of the sunset on the ocean. The Romance is even present in times of great personal suffering: the illness of a child, the loss of a marriage, the death of a friend.
Something calls to us through experiences like these and rouses in us an inconsolable longing deep within our heart, wakening in us a yearning for intimacy, beauty, adventure.

This longing is the most powerful part of any human personality. It fuels our search for meaning, for wholeness, for the sense of being truly alive. However we may describe this deep desire, it is the most important thing about us, our heart of hearts, the passion of our life. And the voice that calls to us in this place is none other than the voice of God."

-The Sacred Romance, Brent Curtis & John Eldredge

 

music

 

 

  

 

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

- Mary Oliver

 

Very early on, I knew that the only object in life was to grow.

-Margaret Fuller

Each day, and the living of it, has to be a conscious creation in which discipline and order are relieved with some play and pure foolishness.

-May Sarton

‘The angels,’ he said, ‘have no senses; their experience is purely intellectual and spiritual. That is why we know something about God which they don’t. There are particular aspects of His love and joy which can be communicated to a created being only by sensuous experience. Something of God which the Seraphim can never quite understand flows into us from the blue of the sky, the taste of honey, the delicious embrace of water whether cold or hot, and even from sleep itself.

-C. S. Lewis

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.

- Henry David Thoreau 

 

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

- Mark Twain