My husband knows I love to write so, he bought me this new journal for Christmas. I’ve filled many over the past few years. Somehow it seems fitting to start it on this cold, blustery winter morning just before Valentine’s Day. He thinks I was born with a fiery spirit. Though how do I keep a fierce but compassionate heart in a world full of trials and suffering?
When we’re overwhelmed with situations, it’s easy to pull back in self-defense or become hard-hearted. But God calls us out into the battle like soldiers on the front line.
When we ask Jesus into our heart, He cleans it up from the inside out. This is not just for our benefit. We’re commissioned to go out into the world and use this new heart to serve others.
Even though I know this, I feel tired and worn out from all the misery I see around me. Can’t I take a break today? Instead of traveling out in the cold, I’ll use my pen (and my keyboard) to reach outside the confines of my home. With the internet, my words extend to places I’ll never see with my own eyes. It gives me the opportunity to be a voice crying in the wilderness to people I may never know personally.
Yet the challenge is to keep moving forward whether it be with my writing or in an exam room with one of my patients. There’s always a need wherever I look. Each of us is uniquely positioned for the work we do. Nevertheless, we must accept our assignment day after day-even if we feel in our heart that nothing we do makes a difference.
I don’t always agree with some of what philosopher Fredrich Nietzsche said, but one quote captures the essence of a fierce heart. “The essential thing in ‘heaven and earth’ is that there should be a long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living.”
If I judge my self-worth solely by the results of my efforts, I come up lacking. Obedience trumps outcomes. Always. It helps me to remind myself often that I am not God. Thank goodness! I don’t see the whole picture. I have no idea how what I do today fits into His overarching plan.
God calls me to faithfully step forth on the path He sets before me without knowing where it leads. In this way, my life and yours is akin to Abraham when God called him to relocate to the land of Canaan. He left everything to go where God called him with only a promise. “I will bless you…and you will be a blessing.” (Genesis 12:2)
It takes a fierce heart to walk in obedience without fully seeing the outcome. May Jesus give you the strength to keep moving forward in faith. You will surely be a blessing in someone’s life and in the process, you also will be blessed.
