Soft-Hearts can't be Stubborn (J2:Self-hearted to Soft-Hearted)

"God created the world out of nothing and as long as we are nothing, He can make something out of us."

--Martin Luther

It's been almost a week since I blogged about the 7 Journeys. I'd like to blame it on busyness, illness, writer's block, or my preperation for the Pro Bowl (I was failed to be voted in. Again.), but ultimately I haven't been writing much this week because J2 is a very difficult topic. And to leave it as a topic would be to damn the whole thing, because the point of these journeys are not to create good conversation, but to create good transformation.

For those of you who know me well (and as a warning for those of you who don't) I am a stubborn son of a gun. Not literally though, my mother and father were both people and the milkman wasn't a gun, but a crossbow. But that's besides the point...

I'm stubborn. I knew I was stubborn already, but I knew I was stubborn like I know I can't win a triathalon. It wasn't until I tried to not be stubborn that I saw how far I really fell short of that goal.

Self-hearted to soft-hearted. Mine to his. Me to You. My hopes, dreams and fears vs. His desires, plans, and will. When I choose to be stubborn against God, I will always choose to be on the losing team.

Soft-hearts can't be stubborn. This is what I'm learning this week in very convincing ways. God asks me to think of myself in a certain way--as a fallen, BUT redeemed one-of-kind work of His. A lost but found heir to God's grace.

For those of you who know me well, you know that I'm a self-loather. Loathe. Even the word "loathe" depicts in my head images of pot-bellied pessimists in old, stained sweat-pants lounging all day on a large couch while they bury themselves under a shallow grave of cheet-o dust and miniature candy bar wrappers as they watch day-time TV and think, "Why can't I have Kate Gosselin's hair?"

To self-loathe is to be prideful. How? I explain my particular brand of self-loathing like this: Because I am incapable of letting God's love be enough and because God's style of love often goes against what I want, I need to find ways to trap love from other people--a love that is shallow and cheap yet seems much easier and less challenging than God's love. God wants me to run on clean burning, powerful, and non-pollutive Grace. I'd prefer to fill up my tanks on pity and adoration which is not only really bad on my mileage, but will fill my engine with thick, black, nasty crud.

It's hard to move from self-hearted and soft-hearted. Really freaking hard. I've been running on pride-guided, pity-filled fuel system for so long that to look inside my engine, you'd think it impossible to clean. Just walls upon walls of thick, black, crusted grease. And now I'm trying to switch over to something better for me and...they say you should never change metaphors mid-stream, but here goes...it's like if you've grown up eating junk food and then try to eat healthy. It's almost impossible not to crave the old junkfood again.

Being soft-hearted means that I don't try to get what I want, but I become more concerned with what God wants. Being soft-hearted means that I am easy to move and to shape. Being soft-hearted--being malleable to God's will--isn't something that most people change into doing overnight.

I hope that as I read through these journeys and blog about them, I'm not just ingesting and expelling words, but that I'm taking these ideas and getting nutrition from them. I hope that God challenges me and I accept His challenges. That's what I feel is one of the great things about this Living God is that He looks at me--a speck of a speck of a speck on a fly's butt--and still wants to transform me into something that shows off His glory.

It's hard to become soft. Softness is not something that is highly esteemed in our culture. Especially if you're a man (which I hope to become someday...). A man is not supposed to have a soft-heart. He's supposed to be tough as nails and strong as an ox. A real man eats steel and pisses fire. A real man does what he wants and doesn't answer to anybody.

And yet God says?...God says manhood is soft. If Jesus is our example of ultimate manhood (and I would argue He is) then what kind of a man was Jeus? Jesus was soft--not wimpy--but soft. His heart was very soft in that He let himself be guided by God and the Spirit. He wasn't stubborn. He didn't hesitate to bow his knee to God. Jesus didn't try to do things his way, but he did it his Father's way.

Soft hearts have to be willing to let God move them. Just like the metaphor Roy uses about the man who drowned in the rapids I have to ask myself, "By letting the waters take me down now, will my life be saved, even expanded, later?"

By being aware of how God is tugging at my heart and by being receptive to that tugging--sensitive to even the tiniest pull from God's fingers--my life becomes so much more fulfilling. How much more love and joy could I be feeling from God if I gave Him a soft, malleable heart to work with?