For years the haze of mediocrity loomed over me. I was resting in the ease and security of complacency and enjoyed the sweet caress of comfortability. Who was I…I was just another face in the crowd, another body trying to fit in and do what everyone else was doing. It was a dull pattern of conformity that left me feeling empty inside. The pangs of hunger never abated and I carried on in this state of deluge, walking around with eyes drooped and a disheveled sense of who I was.

Such a slumber left me desensitized and disoriented. I did not recognize, nor could I, that a blustering cloud of approval-seeking proclivity surrounded me and had blocked out the sun from my eyes. I had to squint to see anything and the only shape I could make out was the blurred silhouette of my figure lying on the ground beside me. All my efforts to clear the air around me were about as effective as sweeping the front porch in a sandstorm—I was exerting a lot of effort with nothing to show for it but a pocket full of rocks.

What was I missing? How could this be all there is to it? Why did it leave me unsatisfied and thirsting for more? Slowly, I began to see that I had predicated my faith as a pretense for a better life. I was working for myself and that is why all I saw was my own shadow around me. I was looking down trying to find my way with a small, broken lamp that I had constructed from a few pieces of scrap metal I scavenged up—a make-shift light that scarcely illumined my path in front of me.

I slowly came to realize the sad case was I believed in order to be blessed! I wanted to receive all the good things faith had to offer without surrendering what it required. How did I come to embrace such an absurd notion? How could something so preposterous be the core motive for my faith? My heart was disgruntled at the thought of my miserable constitution and I seemed to have no answers. I was a self-serving Christian who was only looking for the practical benefit of faith in order to live more abundantly. My soul was downcast and I was walking a lonely road that seemed to have no signs pointing me to where I needed to go.

In ignorance I stumbled thinking that if I did what the Bible says, I will be blessed. What I had missed was the fact that faith does not fundamentally consist of behavior modification. Granted, that is an indispensible part of having true faith. But, what I had lacked for so long was a heart transformation. I loved God and the Lord Jesus in my mind—intellectually. I sought to grow in my knowledge and understanding because I thought that was what I was supposed to do; it was the “right thing” to do as a disciple. All this time I had been travelling on a “How-To” mission to change my actions and do what the Word says. I had a mental passion for the Creator and my Savior but not really a passion in my heart. It was not as though I was calloused and indifferent, but I had been working for so long under a false premise and I had unexpectedly placed a valley within myself that inhibited me from obtaining that indescribable connection with God and Jesus Messiah. In my dilapidated state, I had been looking to Jesus only for instruction and exemplification, not for strength or encouragement, and I had been worshipping God selfishly to receive good graces, rather than simply in awe and wonder.

I was still walking in the night not knowing that if I would just come to the end of my short-sighted, false-sense of self-acclamation and lose myself in the greatness of God’s majesty and the vastness and warmth of Christ’ love, my heart would be renewed and I would experience the ineffable joys and graces that accompany intimate union and fellowship with them.

Under the gravest of circumstances, I came to realize that the most powerful Christian experience of truth is not stored in your head but felt in your heart. When I had let the dawn rise in my heart and distilled the murky waters of my soul, I came to know and experience the true life of one who believes in Jesus. I no longer held him at a distance or as a lofty idea as the one who merely died for me, but I began to embrace him in my arms and to not just see but become part of his body. I was a lost sheep that the Shepherd found and he brought me back into his fold.

In Psalm 108:1-5, the Psalmist describes having joy and excitement for God and his glory and to be a herald of thanks and praise to God the King, whose glory covers the earth. In his joy and fervor he exalts God and honors him with song and melody as though serenading the dawn to bring forth her light. He will sing before all the nations and praise the Lord before all the people because of the Lord’s steadfast love and faithfulness. Why? Because he is commanded to? No, but because his heart stirs within him and he has known and experienced the goodness of the Lord. He does not celebrate the Lord for any particular purpose. He celebrates the Lord because of who HE is.

Faith is not about getting us right. It is about getting HIM right. And he wants to live in our heart, not our head.

I want my heart to be a song that sings to the Lord, a song that conveys a transformed heart, a heart overtaken by love, a heart with a song that awakes the dawn. ~JW