my envy

One of the most frustrating things to me is that i can become very envious of others in their expression of joy to the King. I get jealous of their heart, of their tears, of their praise. Last night, it happened again.
I was reading more in that book, “The Lessons of St. Francis: How to Bring Simplicity and Spirituality into Your Daily Life” by John Michael Talbot, and i found this little gem detailing what his friars would see when they stumbled upon him in moments of personal praise time.
“Sometimes Francis would act in the following way. When the sweetest melody of spirit would bubble up in him, he would give exterior expression to it in French, and the breath of the divine whisper which his ear perceived in secret would burst forth in a song of joy.
“At times, as we saw with our own eyes, he would pick up a stick from the ground and putting it over his left arm, would draw across it, as across a violin, a little bow bent by means of a string; and going through the motions of playing, he would sing in French about his Lord. This whole ecstasy of joy would often end in tears.”
i read also that there were sometimes when one would walk into the office of that great teacher, preacher, and author, A.W. Tozer, and see him, by himself in the room, laying prostrate on the floor in prayer. It isn’t just people that i hear about, there have been times in my life when people i know personally would be praising God in wonderful ways when they thought no one was watching. i have seen people during times of worship in a group that they look like they have been swept away, faces pointing up to heaven, smiles on their faces showing joy that few have known, tears that stream from eyes and hearts that have seen what grace really is.
Now there are times when i have let the heart of skepticism and cynicism dictate how i viewed these individuals and there have more than likely been times when this may come from less than sincere hearts. Whatever the case, i believe that this happens to achieve one goal: to decrease my desire to get lost in “wonder, love, and praise.” i firmly believe that the Prince of Lies, the Master of Deception, has a love for getting people to fall out of love with their Father and prevent others from ever feeling that love at all. He will do whatever it takes and will send whatever forces he has at his disposal to cause this to happen. This is Satan’s goal, to hurt God by having His creation turn against Him, to have their hearts grow cold. In any relationship for it to grow it takes a desire to grow closer today than i was yesterday to them and a dream for it to be much more wonderful tomorrow than ever. When i cease working to that end, the dreams fades and the relationship dies. Expressing love does more than let the person you have the relationship with know how you feel, it reminds yourself of that love. True joy, rapture, and love is infectious, it is the most wonderful cancer because it eats away at the misery and loneliness and frustrations in your life and empties out your heart to make room for the most wonderful love that man can ever know. Who would not want this to happen?
Satan tricks us into believing that this can not happen, that it is a pipe dream and it can only be faked by people or a figment of the imagination, a delusion. Shame on Satan for feeding us these lies and shame on us for sitting at that banquet table of deception and feasting. We make the choice to eat, to believe. We get conditioned to perceive everything of this nature with eyes of skepticism and cynicism, we justify it by saying we are realistic in our perceptions. As time goes on our hearts grow cold and hard and we see it as an impossibility to have an emotional heart, and our hearts then turn bitter, Satan’s favorite kind of heart.
How do we keep this from happening? How do we instead let our hearts grow fonder so that we can express joy in wonderful and ever-growing ways? We cultivate. We work. We fight of the nature and tendencies that we have that hold us back to take on new ones. We pray that our hard and cold hearts be made soft and supple so that they can be placed on the Potter’s wheel and molded into a more wonderful design. We pray that our hearts be broken so that the Master Craftsman can start again to build a joyful heart. We pray that the Super Weaver unravels our hearts so that we can have hearts that have love and graciousness woven in them. It won’t happen as long as we hold on to our vision that keeps us where we are. It won’t happen as long as we doubt that it can happen. It won’t happen as long as we have no one to hold up as an example. We need to have people around us that encourage us by their actions to unashamedly worship, praise and love our God.
We need to desire it.
Christina Rosetti prayed this wonderful prayer that we need to make ours:

“Open wide the windows of our spirits and fill us full of light; open wide the door of our hearts, that we may receive and entertain Thee with all our powers of adoration.”

Please make it so.

raymond, a child of the King