How Protecting My Ministry Vision Caused My Heart To Harden

confessions-week 3
This is part 3 of ‘Losing The Christian Economy: Confessions Of An Ex-SuperPastor’: Read from the beginning here.
My tears are beautiful.They’re beautiful because they are connected to my heart, and when I cry I realise my heart is alive, with me on my journey. I don’t desire tragedy. I take no interest in any kind of pain. I hope, like all of us, that misfortune passes by my household. However, if it does arrive upon my doorstep, I’m glad I’ll have my tears to accompany me. I’m glad my heart has been softened by the love of God enough to do more than acknowledge the facts; it can feel the situation.

Throughout the years of my successful accession to my glorified position as a Senior Pastor, I lost sight of the necessity of a soft heart. In fact, I thought having a hard heart was actually a strength. Of course I never would have used the word ‘hard’ to describe my heart. I would word it more along the lines of ‘well protected,’ but upon reflection I can confess that I believed a hard heart, with the ability to discard people at a moment’s notice, was of great value to my ministry and leadership position. People were around my life constantly, but they weren’t in my heart. My heart was the exclusive sanctuary of something that had to be protected at all costs: my ministry vision

How sad a man I truly was. It was a sadness my wife knew about for years, but the hardness of my own heart stopped me from realizing it for so long. I’m an emotional man these days. I’m not afraid to let people see my weaknesses, my challenges, my questions – my sadness. I’m also not afraid to be filled with joy and outrageous hope.

I’m a rollercoaster, big highs and big lows, but I’m happy because I’m finally being honest to myself. Back in my days as a career clergy man I was more like the never-changing church mascot. Always the same. Always well-kept. Always smiling. Always inspiring. Just like my vision, I was perfect as much as I was lifeless. All that time I held my vision tightly, nursing it, protecting it, and allowing the walls of my heart to turn into a concrete fortress, all entry points securely locked in order to protect the vision inside. For so long, my great ministry vision was the only thing I cared deeply for. That’s why I was so lonely, because no matter how much I loved my ministry vision, it couldn’t love me back.

What I’ve come to realize while journeying down this honest road is that my heart wasn’t designed to hold lifeless things; it was designed by its Creator to hold other hearts. God has given me the blessed opportunity to collect the hearts of others around me, as many as I’m willing to receive, and store them in my own heart. I’ve learned that my heart is a place of refuge. It is designed to keep its doors open. Trying to protect my own ministry vision caused my heart to become so hard and calloused it no longer functioned as God intended it to. It wasn’t until I allowed my relationships with other people to make their home in my heart that I began to realize what it meant to have a soft heart that was fully alive. It was only then I could cry for others, and only then did I develop friendships that allowed others to cry for me.

My tears are beautiful, because no matter how sad the situation that caused them may be, they remind me my heart is soft enough to feel. To care. To love.

New updates to the story will be posted each Monday. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below or on the story’s facebook page. You can read the story from the beginning here.

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http://www.7lights.com Sandra

Been there , done that. Well, the hardhearted part anyway. When I was the happiest I had ever been with my life a few years ago, I didn’t want to lose my long awaited happiness by being involved in anyone else’s pain so I closed my heart and became hard.
However, my Father loves me too much to leave me like that so I started to get panic attacks again and phobias again and the tears started to flow and I became compassionate again.
Now the challenge is to become happy again while keeping the softened heart!

Mick

So true Sandra. I believe when we first allow our hearts to be soft we do go through a sad season in our emotions, as everything we blocked out previously is now allowed access. But through this journey I believe God strengthens our hearts to be not only soft, but also a place where true happiness flourishes.

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Donna Keevers Driver

“My tears are beautiful, because no matter how sad the situation that caused them may be, they remind me my heart is soft enough to feel. To care. To love.”

*Applause*

Mick

Thanks Donna, that sentence is my favourite in the whole piece too

Lover-Ann

After over 35 years of Christian-journeying and being involved in a 4th church-split in a period of 10 years, the Lord began to unfold to me some interesting stuff on “grief.” I noticed a pattern when experiencing “a loss” of what once was. We each go through some kind of grieving process–not just when a loved one dies, but also when we loose a pet, a house, a job, a favorite object, a friendship, an idea or vision, our health, or etc. The way we are wired by our Creator is that we actually need to process through many emotions such as denial, immobiliation, anger, depression, bargaining, etc. to get to the “acceptance” stage, or as i call it, the “surrender” stage. We have an enemy of our souI that wants us to “park” in one of those emotions and drown in it and never come up and out — never process through to the acceptance of the loss. How cool it is to be in relationship with others who will help us in the right way to process through to acceptance so we can move on in a fresh new way with new hope and joy and peace– as we have been liberated from our past hurts. Loosing control and brokenness opens the path to becoming more softer-hearted, able to hold others in our hearts and feel with them. I have mused upon this and searched through the life of our Lord in the gospels. He has been there-done it all — experienced loss to the extreme — totally accepted the will of the Father at the highest cost ever paid – He experienced each and every emotion that we will ever go through (without the emotion controlling Him and sinning) and that is why He is able to strengthen us. What a savior and redeemer. There is nothing quite as powerful as a man who has allowed himself to feel emotions, who has been broken and allowed the Lord to put Him back together. He who is weak in himself and strong in the Lord is an overcomer and a glory to God
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Fay Bickle

I bought God’s Grammar as a gift for a prisoner. I bought it because of the high ratings it has on Amazon. The prisoner wrote to thank me and said that 3 other prisoners had read it and enjoyed it, so I bought it on kindle for myself. What shock and embarrassment as I began to read . I am continuing, hoping it will have some merit, but there should be some warning about horny and vibrators. Well, I will never again give a book without reading it and I will never again read one of your books.
Fay Bickle