What does that make me...

"You make everything Glorious, And I am yours... what does that make me..."

David Crowder Band

To the Dark Side...

“For the word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and is able to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” Hebrews 4:12.

Able to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart… I was having a conversation with my brother the other day when the latest subject of my last Blog came up. I had explained a few things to him about it and related that I disturbed myself with some of the thoughts that whip through my mind at times. The kind of thoughts that are so fleeting they last less than a fraction of a second, but the picture stays with you long after. Mike looked at me with a serious tone and said “yeah, I call those dark thoughts.” I was caught off guard for a moment. It wasn’t as if I actually thought I was the only one who’s ever experienced “Dark Thoughts”. But I was more interested in the fact that a conversation had been sparked into an untouched taboo topic that everyone hides away in the psyche of their own hearts. I loved the term “Dark Thoughts”. But what I really loved was that Mike didn’t shake his head one way or another after my remark and render a silent acknowledgment of half understanding, half I don’t really care. This was a God moment.

“Dark Thoughts” come in all shapes and sizes don’t they? They can range from the obscene or rude to much darker. Sometimes truly horrifying. These thoughts are uncontrollable, sporadic and reckless. They seem to surface from the very edge of our subconscious mind and haunt us so quickly you might be left asking yourself had it been real. Did what I just picture in my mind really come from me? It is so cunning that when it’s over you often never think of it again, or you push it away with every fiber of who you are. Who you “Think” you really are. Why do we ignore these thoughts? Is it because they are so fleeting that they appear unimportant? I believe this ignorance is not only dangerous, but it takes us far from the heart of God. It is shown as early as Genesis, the intentions of mans heart. In Genesis 6:5, “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the Earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually”. When we push these fleeting thoughts away as trivial, we not only ignore our sinful hearts, but worse, we refuse repentance.

I don’t believe that there are prerequisites to sin, such as forethought and action of the flesh, and to think “these” thoughts are harmless and insignificant is treading in perilous waters. It appears to me that not only is the thought sinful, but so is believing your hiding these thoughts from God, who (as you already read at the top of this Blog) already discerns the thoughts and intentions of your heart. Who are you truly deceiving?

We are so quick to dismiss these momentary thoughts as flashes of unimportance, when we are unable to control or understand them. We do that with most of the things in our life. We would much rather ignore than confront. Bury than repent. Jeremiah 4:14 says it perfectly, “Jerusalem, wash your heart from wickedness, that you may be saved. How long shall your evil thoughts lodge within you?” Repentance, not suppression.

Sin starts at the heart, not the flesh so do not ignore it, “For out of the heart come forth evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual sins, thefts, false testimony, and blasphemies.” Matthew 15:19. We must repent and seek God, even in the smallest of these thoughts.