Bind My Wandering Heart to Thee

I call to you, Lord, come quickly to me;
    hear me when I call to you.
 May my prayer be set before you like incense;
    may the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice.- Psalm 141:1-2

Every morning is the same.

Coffee is brewed. Music fills thick the atmosphere. The sun rises. My bible opened wide before me and prayers set surrendered at His feet. I wait.

I wait.

Time ticks by quickly as I sit in His presence and it is sweet and refreshing.  I bask in His light until the very last moment and then I get on with whatever is planned for that morning.  I leave pleas and promise-filled scripture jotted down on lined paper and know that these words will be manifested one day into what I’m hoping and believing for.  

That leads into running off to work, then to church, then to rushed coffee with friends spent trying to reassure those close to me that I’m trying to make time for them.  The day is gone before I even knew it began. I hurry home trying to do laundry and straighten up whatever belongings were frantically thrown in the morning frenzy to get ready and out the door, then try to catch a few moments of peace within the covers of a good book or few late night texts to friends touching bases and sharing stories. I toss and turn trying to sleep but the rest never comes and my eyelids tire of being forced shut. My mind raises with the things that didn’t get done and the growing to-do list that never gets shorter, with the conversations that should or shouldn’t have happened and the tortured taunt of should-of-could-of-would-of banter with past. Before I even realize I’m falling asleep my alarm blares early, and the snooze buttons and alarm settings sit cozily next to a few statistics from my app that like to remind me that for the last 4 months that I’ve been using it I only get an inviting average of 5 hours and 48 minutes of sleep a night.

And I’m worn. But I throw the covers off.  Coffee is brewed. Music fills thick the atmosphere. The sun rises. My bible is opened wide before me and I set prayers surredered at His feet. I wait.

My God, my God, my heart aches for you.

There is nothing quite like this season that I have been in.  There are no words to well articulate the past few months of my life, but just to say that I have been here - waiting.  Waiting at His feet.  And there has been no other time in my life that God has made it quite so apparent that without Him – I am nothing.  Without His direction and His presence, my soul withers.  I have spent months now just pressing into His promises and seeking His will.  I’ve spent months drawing close to His heart and searching for that still, small voice.  This has been a journey for a years now, yes, but the last few months of my life have been unmoving.  

Have you ever groped around blindly in a room, searching for the light? The Lord has made it so clear to me just how blind we are. I often feel so lost within what I’m doing, letting my flesh intertwine and choke out the soft-spoken and restful reassurances of His love.  I can get so caught up in over thinking and planning that I forget about the sovereignty of His hand.  This has been a season where He has let my flesh run rampant in showing itself blind.  Its pride and its arrogance began this journey sure that it was capable of handling life on its own, needing God’s occasional direction but more than competent of marching boldly ahead. God is loving.  God is kind. God is breaking down my pride. Before when I was certain I could see a mile ahead in my future, He has made it plain that the mile I imagined was far from reality. He’s giving me reality – which is I can’t even see a second in front of my face.

Unless He grants the vision.

Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path. – Psalm 119:105 

 I love that we serve a God whose love is so relentless and whose ways are far beyond our own.  Each day we find ourselves in the midst of an unraveling of beautiful new wisdom in which we’ve never caught eye of before.   Our hearts and our minds try to be captured by temptations to control and temptations to make our own way. We become visionless and unsure. Unsteady. But then He leads us down a new way, and we find that as soon as this new path illuminates that this was what we were really longing for all along.

We thirst. We scavenge. We disgrace ourselves in the searching, like Esau to sell his birthright.

He leads us to still waters.

The past few months has been a scramble of over-packed schedules and busyness for me.  It has been a rush to make decisions and to try and find the next step, trying to grope for a light switch and finally be able to move on to the next area.  My mornings are spent in peace as I sit and wait at His feet. I worship and pray and read and write. I pour tears over psalms again and again and again, waiting for refuge from this season where I feel like I don’t know quite who I am or where I’m going. I plead promises of finding identity and course in Him.  I proclaim declarations of victory over the name of Jehovah Nissi, my God, my Banner. I pour out my heart and I wait for direction. New fire. New passion. I’m so tired of this song and dance of feeling like each day is full to the brim only to leave each evening with restless dreams and feelings of inadequacy. I’m worn.

But the still waters are there, and His name is faithful.  Jehovah Nissi is my banner but His name also reigns true as Abba. Abba, our Father.  And I’m so thankful for that.  It is in the moments when my heart clings to that name that it finds peace and its thirst is quenched by the still water of that promise. That love. My Father.  This season really has been a season above all else where I’m learning that His love is never going to be conditional upon His emotions or my performance, but that it is an unconditional love lavished in the cross. I’m thankful that He never gives up on teaching us new things about Himself and that if we don’t get it the first time, He is happy to try and try again. He is faithful to love and faithful to turn the lights off and let me keep feeling my way along this darkened room. 

He will let me keep searching until I can realize and internalize that this was never about a destination but about the journey. The more He I search for His direction the more I simply fall in love with the intimacy of the searching.  The depth of the pursuit.  My flesh keeps trying to find its own way, but I love that He has led me here. I’m thankful that I’m certain by now I’ll never find a light switch, but I’ll find His hand. Praise you, Lord, for knowing me far better than I know myself.  Thank you, Father, that you will not relent. Abba, Father, Your will, not mine. – Matthew 26:39

Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.