Wow! I haven't blogged in a long time!

Yesterday I was studying for my small group that was last night. We have been talking about a study by Max Lucado about How to study the Bible. Sounds very repetative and simple. "How to study the Bible? Don't we already know that?" was the reaction of many, but I think we were all suprised by how much we got out of it. Last night was the last week. And there were several things about last night that confirmed things that God has been saying to me as well as reminding me of somethings I may have forgotten.

The main thing that stuck out that I feel like I've forgotten was that God is our comforter and our healer and He is capable of healing us. One of the lines from the study was something to the effect of "Remember that you are not the first one to weep and you are not the first person to be comforted." Wow! God knows me better than I give Him credit for sometimes. There have been times where I was in such hurt or sorrow that I was convinced that no one could possibly understand the depths of my dispair. He knows our hearts and He knows how to heal us...if we will let Him.

He wants to heal us. He is close to the broken hearted. But we have to decide that we are not going to wallow in self pity and we are going to get up, dust ourselves off and keep moving. Not to say that we shouldn't mourn, or be disappointed, or heart broken, or hurt, but we can't stay there forever. If we do then we will harden our hearts in order to get not get hurt again. But it won't work.

There is a difference between hardening your heart and guarding it. If I have a friend who continually treates me poorly and looks down on me for being honest, my tendency is to harden my heart towards them and lie to them. God has REALLY been working on me about this. I would rather lie and keep the peace than tell the truth and risk you rejecting me. I should guard my heart against people and things that are not good for me or are not helping me grow. But I shouldn't harden my heart against people. This is just my opinion and it could be completely and in every imaginable way wrong by I question how close you can be to God if your heart is hardened against so many of His people. If you get in the habit of hardening our hearts against God's people then we can easily transition into hardening our hearts against God.

I don't know if any of this makes sense. I hope so. It does to me. Sorry for abandoning the blog for a while. I didn't have a real reason in doing so and I will try to improve. =)