What do you love?

When Justin posed the question, “What do you want?”, “What are you chasing?” I knew the Lord was already stirring in my heart, calling me to pay attention, to probe deep to answer the question.

In Mark 10, the rich young man asks Jesus, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus then reminds him of the commandments. “And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, ‘You lack one thing; go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come follow me’. Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.”

Jesus is trying to get the man to see what he really loves. Justin reminded us that looking and loving comes tied together. It is tremendous grace that God reveals our hearts and helps us reorient them. But, we are often left in the gap between knowing and doing. We have our own vision of the good life and our hearts are aimed towards that. The things we love are about what we worship-and we are always worshipping something, as David Foster Wallace reminds us.

Here I am. Digging deep. Leaning into these realities and letting God look at my heart. Here is what I see: my unconscious, default setting is that I worship and want control. Control over my time, home, children, my body, even recognition for what I have done. I want things on my terms, that what surrounds me exists for me. And when I feel lack of control, my default is anger. I have really been struggling with harsh words, angry tones, and shaming language, especially with my family. So, what do I do?

I am really good at self-analysis. I can think about all God is stirring in my heart. But, as Justin reminded us, that is not enough. We need different habits. There are two steps to this:

1. Become aware of your liturgies: What rituals and routines do we do everyday that shape our vision of the good life?
2. Reframing: We must practice our way out of our disordered loves to our reordered loves.

Obviously, the second piece to this is hard and complex. But, one of the ways we do this is through corporate worship on Sunday, notably our time of confession. In our Romans bible study material, the writers note that “the word confess, when used about sin, means to agree with God, to say the same thing about your sin that he does” (p.117). When we confess each week, we engage in a practice that orients our hearts, rightly. In his book, “Toughest People to Love”, Chuck DeGroat speaks to the rhythm of worship, stating, “In worship we are invited into an alternative reality. Because our lives are narrated by the cultural and personal stories we live in, we can get stuck, bound by the rat race...Worship invites us into an alternative Story where our lives find a center in relationship to God”(p.151).

This is where I am starting, asking that God would continue to reveal my heart to me, helping me to see where the habits I have formed are shaping me. And then, I will engage in confession each week, trusting that through these reorienting practices, God would meet me. Recognizing that without God, my eyes could not see the sin rooted in my heart. Jesus’ disciples after telling them the story of the rich young man, they ask, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus replies, “With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God”(Mark 10:26-27).

~ Bronwyn Siebert