Every Friday I join a community of bloggers for Five Minute Friday. One word prompt, five minutes. Unedited. The prompt this week is … Explore.
My thoughts are stirred once reading this definition from the dictionary: “Surgery. to investigate into, especially mechanically, as with a probe.”
Exploratory surgery. The means by which a doctor would look inside our body to investigate and ascertain when a suspected disease may be present inside the body.
Scripture tells me:
“The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9, NASB)
Our hearts will deceive us, fool us, as we cannot be entirely transparent even with our own hearts.
It’s the reason we need to sit open before Scripture, allowing God, by His Holy Spirit, to explore our hearts.
Only He can take a scalpel to our hearts and gently excise the harmful poison which may lay hidden and dormant for years.
“For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12, NASB)
May we let Him explore our hearts today.
Photo by Sixteen Miles Out on Unsplash
Today I may be joining …
Good analogy. I feel as though the Lord is doing a bit of probing in me at the moment. Thank you for the encouragement to allow Him to do this.
We can trust Him to remove only what is needed for us to be whole. Not always easy, but always worth it. Blessings!
It’s a scary thought, to allow God to explore our hearts, but He already knows! We can run from Him, but we can’t hide, even what’s in our hearts. But He wants us to willingly surrender our hearts to Him, and therein lies the difference. Thank you for this thought provoking message, Joanne.
Katherine, it is scary to allow God to explore our hearts. As I sat thinking after I read your comment, I realized … even in letting Him explore our hearts, He does so in kindness so as to bring us to repentance.
Brilliant insight into an area I hadn’t really thought about too much before!
Just stopped by from FMF #18
Yes ma’am, experiencing the pain of heart surgery that is performed expertly by God’s scalpel can be transformative, life changing and of so worth it!
FMF # 22
Yes, it’s so easy to deceive ourselves. We need to seek God’s perspective!
I really don’t want surgery
to tell me all that’s wrong,
for what at now seems right to me
is facing dying with a song.
The doctors want to ease the pain
of these dreadful days,
ensuring that I may remain
in a morphine haze,
and yes, this can be tempting,
through hours that I weep,
through pain that’s unrelenting,
but I don’t want to sleep,
befuddled, still, and witless
when yet my heart may witness.