With My Whle Heart

It started with an invitation to a party. I didn’t want to go. The guest of honor specifically requested my presence … and I still didn’t want to go, in spite of the fact that I wanted to please the guest of honor. I felt a certain amount of turmoil, I confess.

The next morning, still feeling emotionally tender as a result of an event unrelated to this party invitation and quandary, I considered the party, and I laid it flat out before the Lord. “I want to trust You with my heart,” I told Him.

The plain fact is that I want to live from my heart. This business of attempting to please people turns quickly into a nightmare. Once you get started on that treadmill, it goes faster and faster and becomes more and more difficult, and countless individuals who haven’t got a clue about their hearts bear witness to the fact that eventually, your heart just gets lost. It was a long, hard journey out of people-pleasing and into living honestly—I don’t want to make the return trip. No, thank you.

So I told the Lord that I was putting my heart in His hands. I wouldn’t go to that party unless I wanted to go with my whole heart. If I really, really want to go, I’ll go, and only then. And I can tell you that if I really, really want to go with my whole heart, it will mean that God has changed my heart.

Isn’t that what I really want, anyway? Don’t I want to know that Jesus is lord of my heart? How am I ever going to really know that if I don’t see him using his authority? How did he show his authority over the waves, if not by speaking a word and changing what they were doing? Surely, then, if he could do that with waves, he can change my heart. Surely he can change my desire, if that’s what he wants to do.

All I know, here and now, is that my whole heart doesn’t want to go to that party. If I chose to go at this moment, I would be succumbing to external pressure. If someone else chooses to live that way, that is their choice; it’s not mine. I want to live from the inside out, because that is where the life is.

So a friend asked me if I’d made up my mind about the party. I’m sure my face looked as puzzled as I felt, for a moment … what party? Had she invited me to some home party, and I hadn’t given her a yes or no? Then I remembered: oh, yeah, that party. Yes, I said, I’d made up my mind. Made up my mind that I wouldn’t go unless I wanted to go with my whole heart.

That’s a commitment, you know. I hope I never walk away from that, because it’s what I want to live, for always.

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