The Wellspring of Life

In early 1996 my father took ill. As in all the other seasons of my life, I was unprepared. Trouble never asks one's leave to walk through one's door:)

I keenly remember the feeling of inner bankruptcy. There were no inner resources, no reserve, to stave off the ominous feelings of fear, guilt and foreboding. I felt absolutely inadequate and drained to deal with the situation.

How had I let myself come to this debilitating deficit? I wondered.

Gordon McDonald's Ordering Your Private World provided some answers - I had exhausted my inner world. I hadn't known of it's existence; I never stopped to think where all my energy actually came from.

There is an inner world within us - where the heart dwells. Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life (Proverbs 4:23). The heart needs care, just as our physical bodies do. Our hearts can be like the "green pastures" and the "still waters" in Psalm 23 - or they can be a one-room shack with leftovers, hanging precariously on a cliff, about to hurtle into oblivion. They can be places of restoration or irreparable harm.

In one sense, it is up to us how we preserve our hearts. But that's just the beginning. A home always reflects its inhabitants. If we let God live in our hearts and make His home there, God's order, His peace and calm, His restoration, slowly work their way through.

Later, I read Max Lucado's The Great House of God, which cemented the idea of making the heart a dwelling for the Almighty. We've got to let God in; we've got to let the things He's said permeate our beings. In fact, in The Great House of God, each of the sentences in The LORD's Prayer is likened to a part of the house that our hearts can be, to house The LORD and build up and protect our hearts from the forces that assail it all through our lives.

It's comforting to know that I do not have to wear myself out house-cleaning - I can let The LORD sweep my heart clean. I don't have to fix the broken shingles; I don't have to plug the leaks. The LORD has His way for each of these. If I give Him the keeping of my heart, He fills it with Himself, and never will there be a more impregnable fortress inside!!!!!