Dear friend,
I love that verse from Zephaniah 3:17:
“The Lord your God is with you,
the Mighty Warrior who saves.
He will take great delight in you;
in his love he will no longer rebuke you,
but will rejoice over you with singing.”
It’s beautiful isn’t it? He is singing over me. It’s got to be love song. It must be. But I don’t always hear that song. I don’t always feel his delight. I don’t live feeling loved no matter what. Feeling accepted. To be honest I don’t often live my life to the soundtrack of this love song. Sometimes I find it very hard to hear it at all. I think there is one main thing that drowns it out actually. It’s me.
In my life, it has always been my mind that is in charge. Perhaps I’m not the only one who has a very busy brain that likes to take control of my heart, and tries to stop it ruining things. I haven’t trusted my heart because it is not only the centre of love and desire but also pain. Often I have prioritised feeling happiness (or at least not feeling bad) over feeling love. When troubles come, my mind has prioritised a quick fix over the slower, deeper road of love. It has tried to tame my heart so that I don’t have to deal with being broken, so I don’t have to feel pain. Sometimes I can almost think we ought not to have negative feelings. As if it reflects badly on me. Or even on God.
My head’s response to my heart feeling something painful has often been to reason with it (“that’s a stupid feeling”), defend it with a cunning plan (“it’s ok we can fix this”), or rationalise it (“if I can understand it, it can’t control me”). All these are methods of control. I certainly haven’t been listening to my heart. Because I am anticipating it overwhelming or destroying me with it’s ridiculous reactions.
Effectively what my mind has actually achieved here is to bury my heart and my feelings. And there they stay, echoing against the walls of the cave I have constructed and now must guard. They are muffled, but also continuous. I have lived worrying that my heart might, at any moment, ruin everything. This constant guarding, repeating rationalisations and analysis to keep the feelings at bay, has become my new sound track. In places completely replacing God’s love song. I have begun only to hear my own thoughts, trying to hold myself together. I notice the patterns of this song. I am cross with myself, I am disappointed by my inability to feel happy all the time. I am trying to talk myself into feeling better...but I am drowning out the voice of the one who can actually help.
The problem is, with a buried, tamed heart, there is no access for Jesus. And the problems are never dealt with, only denied. He doesn’t just want to muffle my heart, to deaden pain. He wants to heal it. He wants to resurrect it.
When Lazarus died Jesus seemed to turn up too late. Death had already happened. Lazarus was buried. But Jesus is the resurrection and the life, so this is not the end of the story. The forgotten parts of us do not have to stay buried. What dreams and ‘foolish’ fantasies of feeling deeply loved have we tucked away? What hopes of life lived to the full? Life lived knowing the assurance of perfect love? Where have we decided to put up with a negative sound track about ourselves instead of the lovers song? What truth of how God sees us, beautiful and without flaw, has been replaced, with our minds trying to control and improve us? He wants all of that RESTORED.
You know what Jesus does when he turns up to unbury Lazarus? He cries. He sees the sadness of death and pain and grief and loss and he cries. He knows. He feels it with us.
I don’t think I often let Jesus cry with me because I won’t do it with myself. Can I let those feelings pour out of the echoing cave? Can I let love come and dwell in the cave with me? Can I accept that there are broken and sad parts of me and stop locking them away? Stop talking myself down? Can I let Jesus speak into my pain?
For this can become another moment of hearing the song. Another moment of being held by the one who has loved me from eternity past and will love me for all of eternity to come.
Next, Jesus speaks to dead Lazarus.
And what enchantment, what spell, what declaration calls Lazarus out of the cave of silence and death to the land of the living? ...It’s Lazarus’ name.
“Lazarus. Come forth!”
Just like with Mary in the garden. He speaks our names and our hearts know his voice. “Lazarus, it’s me! Come out!”
“My child, it’s me! Come find me. Come out. Come to me.”
Jesus calls my heart to himself. Not to a to-do list or an improvement programme. To himself. Just as we are, he calls us into his arms. He wants us with him.
And then Jesus says to the people around him, “Unbind him, and let him go free.” Because Lazarus is alive. He has heard the voice of Jesus, and he has come alive!
My heart is heard by Jesus, it is accepted by Jesus. Then it is awoken by his voice that speaks life and speaks my name. This is how I am set free. I am set free in his arms. I am set free by his call, by hearing my name, by hearing his song.
Jesus stands outside the dead places in our hearts. The places we are afraid of, the places that hurt. He stands outside the abandoned ruins and the lost dreams. He stands outside our disappointment, the places we have been let down, where our brain stands guard and says, “not again! You know what happened last time.” He hears our hearts. He knows and he cries with us.
Then he speaks life. He calls to us. He sings his Zephaniah song of love. And now that I am no longer letting my mind stand guard, I realise I can hear it! And it is beautiful. But it’s not complicated.
It’s my name. “Katy! Come out! Katy draw near!”
He is desperate for our closeness. He is singing our names. He delights in us so much. He wants that song of his love for us to reverberate through every moment of our days. He wants us to loose ourselves in his love. To learn to sit and listen to that song when we are overwhelmed. For our hearts to be captured by that unspeakable thing we ache for, so familiar but so unattainable. Because it is unattainable! We cannot achieve it! It is free. It’s his song. He loves us! He loves us. And he is singing your name out across the heavens because he is so blissfully pleased with who you are.
It is too much of a marvel for me to hold in my mind, but my heart, oh my heart longs to hear this. It knows his voice. In the deepest darkest caves of isolation and fear, in the very place of death, he calls us by name to himself. He says, “I love this one! This one is mine.”
I have neglected parts of my heart for too long. I want to unbury those parts that are hidden from his song, from his sight. I want Jesus to look on them and I want to be totally loved. So I am standing down the guard of my heart. I am learning to let go of my acceptance of diluted happiness and replace it with the joy of being known and LOVED in the deepest places. And it is messy as each broken piece has a chance to share its grief. But each big feeling is an invitation, and each buried part is getting to hear once more, in that voice that my heart is so hungry for: “Oh my precious one, come to me...”
Katy x