The Dark Places of My Heart

I’ve mentioned what a stressful few weeks it has been for me. Yes, all the things that have been happening are good things. But stress is stress, and for me at least, it often exposes the dark parts of my heart. That’s what has been slowing happening this time. I’m grateful to see those places, because I don’t want them there. But of course they are painful and that pain adds to the overall stress, even in repentance. It’s emotionally draining at a time I am already emotionally drained. The one comfort? These days I am more willing to see those places before they turn completely toxic and spew out over everyone else. I’d much rather confront my sin before everyone else sees it, too!

Anyone else find it emotionally draining to confront the sin in your own heart?

Lessons from Haman

I loved Beth Moore’s comment recently in the study of Esther. She remarked that when she took up the study she never imagined she’d learn as much from Haman’s life as she did from Esther’s.

I completely agree! I expected to learn (and be convicted) by Esther’s submission, by her faith, by her courage. I even anticipated lessons from Mordecai. But Haman? He’s the villain in the story! And yet don’t we all battle that sinful nature just as he did?

Haman shows us what pride and arrogance and a sense of entitlement and a thirst for personal glory lead to—humiliation and death. And they don’t look pretty in the process, either. I’ve been as convicted about what I don’t want to be as I have by the way my life falls short of what I do want it to be.

The funny thing is, I see this in fiction all the time. I can name several novels I’ve read where I’ve walked away shuddering to think that I acted in any way like this or that character—maybe even a character that I admired at the beginning of the book or even when reading it at a different stage in my life. I think God uses those people, real or fictional, to hold a mirror up to our hearts so we can see what we’ve been blind to before.

So what about you? Has a personality from Scripture or a book or even real life given you a grim look at your own heart lately? What did you see? How have you responded?