What fires up your heart?

What fires up your heart?

If there are no peer pressures, 'society constructed norms' or 'biblically correct answers' to this question, what would be the answer?

For quite a long period, perhaps 2 years or so, I thought that the thing that fired up my heart was serving in church. But as 2005 draws to a close, I begin to see things in a different light.

Serving in church was a form of telling me that 'things' are alright so long as I am in line with 'expectations'. However, there are two problems in my outlook on serving God. Firstly, I could not exactly pinpoint the 'things' that are 'not right'. Nonetheless, I believe that as long as I am serving, these indefinable things should be resolved somehow. Secondly, on whose 'expectations' am I really trying to meet? I suppose I was trying to meet God's expectations, or to meet the natural expectations that come with leading a cell, or at a more human level of meeting the expectations of the senior church leaders.

But I am not sure if you have ever felt that at the end of the day, or at the end of a Sunday, there are things that seem so hollow or empty in the deepest core of your heart despite your every effort to live a Godly-centred life in the best possible manner? After all, isn’t Jesus supposed to fill that emptiness in your heart the day you accept Jesus? So what is it that triggers the tear on the Sunday nights, and the soft brushing away of the alienated heartache by a mere “it’s okay, ‘things’ will be fine”?

Or for the matter, some of us who aren’t serving in Church right now maybe pursuing other things that we assume are what fires up the heart. For some, it maybe dance or composing songs or playing the guitar. As for me, I thought that photography was the one passion that fires up my heart.

What if, I’ve been living in a lie that satan wants me to believe in so that I will not experience the fullest glory of Jesus? Perhaps the things that apparently fire up my heart are not so much my natural passions, but false fronts that masquerad the heart wounds that were either developed over a prolonged period of time or simply a heart condition that had been left neglected and unattended for far too long such that it becomes what we usually call the ‘hardening of the heart’?

Do not get me wrong, there is nothing evil with photography, dance or music. And certainly, there is nothing wrong with serving in church. But, sometimes, at least to me, I know that I’m using them as stop-gap measures to occupy the different gaping holes in my heart so that I have no time or space or opportunity to attend to the root of the heart condition itself. Serving church and photography becomes my way of ‘expressing’ my heart without words, but so long that I do not want to ‘share’ the problem with people or to God, I am putting a wall between myself and God, and preventing Him from healing me completely. Serving church become repetitive, unexciting and unfulfilling, photography degenerates into a silenced black and white, and even my studies are nothing but a political tool to rule over the heart, mind and soul.

It is with such awareness that I entered into 2005 this year. I was to some extent, indifferent in church, sceptical of God, and without any expectations of others or myself. Of course I won’t show it in my exterior mannerism, and there were times when I really feel the peace of God in my heart. But deep down, I know that I need to face head on with God to confront my heart condition. I do not want to simply express myself through abstract photography, neither do I want to gloss over things and talk to God ‘about it’ yet showing an absolute faithless nonchalance that ‘it is just me and I can handle it somehow’.

To some extent, I want to thank my mentor who put up with quite a lot of my anti social-ness and indifference in the first half of the year, and was patient enough with my silencing attitude towards everything that is about my inward self.

I think I’ve slain a few ghosts this year through the undeserved grace of God. God opened up my perspectives in different ways. And I would say that if I have to answer the question

“what fires my heart for 2006”

I suppose there are 3 things that I know for sure aren’t just masquerading false fronts. Firstly, it has got to be missions and mentoring two guys in my cell. Secondly, it has got to be political science (more specifically, the whole thrill of looking at the world in terms of international relations). Thirdly, well, I can’t quite define it now, but I suppose it does fire up my heart in really strange ways.

I do want to streamline my life next year and cut down on unnecessary schedules that will wither my energy away. And by God’s grace and wisdom, I pray that I’ll be able to follow the desires of my heart with the utmost passion and commitment. Maybe time will reveal more things, and maybe pull me back to some form of level zero reality, just so that I can have a better grasp on a balanced walk with God. But to some extent, I think I’m living on borrowed time in 2006, I want to uncover the remaining gaping holes in my heart so that I will not become a shelled out version of what He wants me to be in the future.

Somehow, I do think that one or two of my friends might share the same problem that I have, in terms of the heart condition and the barrier to articulate it in a manner that removes that wall between God and him/her. I still struggle in different ways. But I pray that during this Christmas season, God will bring you the restoration and joy in your heart. :)