Week One
Monday
A Hungry Heart Is Surrendered

I ran across a fascinating story about the late newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst. I want to share it with you because of the tremendous truth it holds.

As the story goes, the extremely wealthy Mr. Hearst was an avid art collector who spared no expense in acquiring costly artifacts from all over the world. One day, after reading about some exceedingly rare items, Mr. Hearst decided he simply had to have them in his possession. So he sent an assistant around the world in search of them. Mr. Hearst was determined to discover who owned these items and how much it would cost him to acquire them. Finally, after months of searching abroad, Mr. Hearst’s employee reported that the treasure had been found—in a warehouse belonging to Mr. Hearst. Yes, Mr. Hearst had been willing to pay whatever cost was involved for treasure he already owned. If only he had scanned the inventory list of his own blessings.

Friends, I believe that’s a picture of us as believers, especially the American church, which has been so well fed on God’s Word. We’re constantly looking for that extra something, that latest devotional, the newest translation, when everything we really need to live a fruitful Christian life lies within us. We are rich in Christ Jesus! We have all we need to partner with God in the sanctification process through Jesus, Immanuel, the hope of glory. (Don’t panic at the word sanctification. Just think of it as being transformed through growth.)

How will we do this? How will we partner with God to see the manifestation of the gift of Christ within us? The Word teaches that our lives rise or fall on our individual wills. We’ll be ineffective, so-so saints, never changing, never growing—or we’ll be constantly in the process of being transformed, being made new, and exploring the riches that are ours in Christ Jesus. And this will hinge on whether we live with our wills surrendered to God.

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”  John 12:24

Week One
Tuesday
A Hungry Heart Is Intentional

I dropped the big juvenile bottle of bubble bath in my cart with a grin on my lips and the old jingle playing in my head, “Mr. Bubble in the tub’ll get you squeaky clean. . . .” The soap was an impulse buy, but oh, it was worth it. That evening I enjoyed a trip down memory lane and a mini vacation all rolled up in one brimming bathtub, compliments of Mr. Bubble.

A sudsy bath with Mr. Bubble ranks right up there on my list of favorite childhood memories. We didn’t enjoy the experience on a regular basis either. This wasn’t an oversight. Mr. Bubble was a luxury in our penny-pinching world, but when he did make an appearance, our regular bath times paled in comparison. And, trust me here, he outpaced Mama’s infamous spit baths by a country mile and then some. My sisters and I weren’t expected to participate much in Mama’s spit baths. We were simply expected to sit still and endure the washing as she wet her finger and cleaned our faces. The end result—we got clean, clean enough to be seen in public, anyway.

I see an analogy here that’s worth digging out and holding up to the light. Scripture teaches that the Word of God washes us from our sins. We receive both an initial rebirth and a continual cleansing. And yet one of the greatest tragedies the church as a body struggles under is our willingness to settle with spiritual spit baths from those in authority.

Am I thankful we can hear God’s Word through others? Absolutely. I’m extremely grateful for the many fine teachers and preachers I’ve learned from, but I have a message I’d like to take to the ends of this world. Being content to hear His Word secondhand rather than personally and purposefully soaking ourselves in the Word’s deep waters on our own time is like settling for a spit bath over a tub of Mr. Bubble. There’s simply no comparison.

They received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so. Acts 17:11

Week One
Wednesday
A Hungry Heart Is Praying

I was minding my own business and typing away on my laptop when I noticed something out of my peripheral vision. Something large was moving across my backyard. I turned around to discover a redheaded cow loitering on my property. Surprise! It was bizarre—the redhead and her clown suit.

If you knew my BFF, you would be ahead of me at this point. Yes, it was Rhonda (also known to my readers and radio listeners as Red), and she was strolling across my backyard wearing a cow outfit and acting for all the world like it was the most normal thing a middle-aged woman could be doing on a beautiful fall day. I grabbed my phone and documented the moment with video footage and a weak joke about how “utterly” ridiculous she looked. I love corny puns.

To be fair, why Red had a cow outfit in her possession isn’t that strange, even if meandering through my backyard in said costume was, but I’ll need to skip the backstory to move this along. Bottom line—Red knew we’d both get a chuckle out of it, and we do so enjoy a good laugh. There’s also the maturity thing. Red and I haven’t grown up. Nor do we plan to anytime soon, which brings me to a more serious takeaway from the cow moment.

It’s okay to be young at heart; but as believers, you and I are supposed to be growing up, and it should be obvious to all that we are maturing in our love for God and each other.

As a follower of Christ, I shouldn’t be the same person day in, day out, year in, year out, stagnant in spirit and devoid of growth, and neither should you. Growth isn’t about bearing down and forcing maturity, however. That fails every time. Just spend time talking with Jesus, y’all. He’s like Miracle-Gro. You’ll be transformed and ever growing, and the first person surprised by the change will be the one doing the changing.

Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ. Ephesians 4:15 esv

Week One
Thursday
A Hungry Heart Is Celebrating

I see hearts all around me. I’ve seen them in big puffy, white clouds, and I’ve seen them in the knots of old oak trees. I’ve seen them drawn into the scales of a fish and outlined on the back of an insect. I can trace this fascination to the earliest days of writing a book called Heart Wide Open, and I’ve never gotten over it, and I’m okay with that. I hope I never do.

Not long ago  I once mentioned this heart thing to my oldest grandson. He was six at the time. We were walking across a parking lot holding hands when I pulled him to a stop and showed him a heart formed from the mortar of the pavement at our feet. “God shows me those,” I told Grant. “He knows I like to see them, so He shows them to me. It’s like a little note from heaven right in the middle of the day. When I see it, I think about how much God loves us, and I have a little party in my own heart.”

My next trip to Houston to see the “grandboys of Texas” featured a sweet surprise. I learned that Grant Thomas had become a heart seeker in his own right. And he was good at it! Grant showed me all kinds of hearts around his house, and his mommy said he’d been showing her hearts all around Humble. Of course, the hearts have been there all the time. Grant is just now seeing them because he’s just now looking for them and expecting to find them.

While I am unapologetically guilty when it comes to oversharing grandchildren stories, I offer this tale to share a deeper truth I’ve discovered about pursuing God. If we walk in this world demanding special visions or revelations from God that He might prove His existence to us, we seldom find the evidence of God we’re after. However, if we abandon such egocentric demands and focus instead on looking for God and celebrating Him in our unspectacular everyday lives, we find that He is all around us and He has been here all the time.

“[God] made from one man every nation of mankind. . .that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.’ ” Acts 17:26–28

Week One
Friday
A Hungry Heart Is Needy

A light fog blanketing the landscape can be calming to the soul. For instance, sitting on my back porch talking to the good Lord while the early morning is trying to slip out of its thin pale robe is a nice prescription for peace.

There are other times when fog is less appreciated, like when you’re driving. Or how about when a cloud begins to roll up from the floorboards of an airplane cabin as you’re flying through the friendly skies with a group of polite strangers? That’s not so relaxing. But it’s exactly where I found myself a couple of years back.

I remember how uncomfortable my fellow travelers and I were at the onset of the mist, and I remember how our pilot’s cheerful announcement over the PA did little to alleviate our growing apprehension, not when he told us it was “nothing to be concerned about,” and not when he explained the small “incidental wiring issue” behind it. We were eager to chill, just as soon as we got our feet on the ground. In the end, the fog of smoke dissipated as slowly as it had arrived, and we landed without incident.

“Don’t worry, be happy” may have been good advice that day, but you and I would be unwise to adopt it as a blanket prescription against all early warning signs; and we’d be especially foolhardy to ignore the internal God-given monitor of our conscience. For the snare that trips us up in the walk of faith is rarely the obvious one.

Sin is stealthy, and apathy—why, apathy rolls in as silently and insidiously as fog. Our inner warning system might go off when we first start choosing other activities over church or when we quit praying quite as often and open our Bibles even less. But the alert grows fainter over time, and the less attention we pay to the growing fog of apathy, the more it builds until we can’t see the forest for the trees and we can’t find the way back home to Jesus if our lives depended on it. And they do.

But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death. James 1:14–15

Week One
Saturday
A Hungry Heart Is Sharing

I once enjoyed an invigorating worship session in my backyard that I’m sure gave my neighbors cause to lock their doors. Backstory? I like to rework and redeem secular songs, offering them up to God with an entirely new twist from the intentions of the one who penned them. I’ve sang “Jesus, Jesus, I get down on my knees for You” for years. Go ahead. Laugh. But I think He loves it.

The morning in question I pulled a fast one on the late Percy Sledge. For the record, weak pun intended, the lyrics to “Cover Me” make a beautiful praise song when sung to Jesus: “Cover me, cover me, spread Your precious love all over me.”  And yes, I performed that selection that day with my tennis racket as a stand-in guitar. Right there in the backyard in front of God and everybody.

The racket was a handy replacement for a musical instrument I had begun using to try and tire Dixie Belle, my late chocolate lab, during what she preferred to be an endless game of fetch. You should be grateful to get this story in print. It spares you an audio encore. But enough of my less-than-captivating entertainment career; I want to make a deeper point about my secular/sacred music session.

I speak at all sorts of events, many of them Christian, some of them civic, or what might be deemed secular. My aim is to respect the wishes of the event planner. If I’m there for entertainment, I’ll give you laughs. If you want Jesus, I’m your girl. Both? Oh, I’m all in!

I once enjoyed the “sacred” events more than the secular ones, but not anymore. I’ve become convinced of the importance of being fully present in every moment of our believing lives. If we pour ourselves wholeheartedly into a Christian event but we don’t engage with others at work, for example, we effectively divide and therefore diminish the light that’s in us. The Bible says our gospel light is for the highest hill, not the underside of a basket. You don’t have to play air guitar or wear a clown outfit, but if you’re a believer, you are called to shine. Whatever that looks like on you, shine on.

“Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” Matthew 5:16