Teachable

“I feel like The Lord is telling me I need to be more open minded toward something where I have been very narrow minded”.  I was stunned by what was coming out of my own mouth as I chatted with some friends at a party a few weeks ago.  What I realized in the coming days is that The Lord was already changing my heart long before he brought it to my conscious mind. I thought, from the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks as I processed what was happening in my narrow minded thinking on a particular matter. To tell you the truth, my strong will refused and I dug my heels into my stand.  In an effort to hold tightly to what I have known my entire life I began following more people who share my view and thinking. Yesterday another quote came out of my mouth that surprised me but it was something I believe made God smile! No need to go into specific details because the bottom line can be applied to all areas in our lives. I encourage you to ask God to show you where you may be a little narrow minded and to go deeper why. My God is not done with me regarding this matter. Honestly, I’m thankful but dang.

Broken To Reveal the Beauty Below the Surface

Not to long ago I took a not so gracious tumble down the last few steps on the stairwell to my front door. I injured the big toe on my right foot and it hurt; really bad actually. In the moment I was more upset that I lost my diet Arnold Palmer from Chick-Fil-A that I had bought the night before to save time on this particular morning but thankfully my little dog was spared an air flight to the parking lot. When the massive pain decreased I realized the potential to lose this particular toe nail was great. This made me really sad. In vain I've had pedicures to make it pretty but it still looked gross compared to the neighbor toenails.  It's summer and flip flops are what I want to wear everywhere.

As I had suspected, the surface of the nail began breaking off this week from the bottom upward! Honestly, it's really gross. I thought about tweeting a picture but I just can't bring myself to make it public. Maybe I will add a picture to this post ....

Warning, I am going to share some nasty details but it's critical to my point in this post. The top layer is hard and broken which is what I was before Jesus captured my heart and called me His own. Underneath the surface layer is a really thick coat of dried blood; thank you God for the sacrifice of Christ to cover my sin and brokenness! The most incredible truth about this really gross thing on my foot is that below the blood is a new, beautiful and perfect nail. It was in that moment that my heart was pierced with a fresh outpouring of God's love, grace and mercy. He not only made me a new creation but he continues to transform my stubborn heart into something beautiful that I actually want to share and hopefully other people want to behold.