With All My Deceitful Heart

It’s the Valentine’s Day season.  Words of love and things heart-shaped are everywhere. 

The combination of deep emotions and hearts has been around a long time.  Jesus said that to love God with all our heart is one of only two things we must do to fulfill the entire law of God.  (The other half is to love our neighbor as ourselves.)

The Bible also says “the heart is more deceitful than anything else and desperately sick.”  A quick look at the world around us confirms this… so does a look inside myself.

God acknowledges that my heart is full of wickedness.  Yet He wants me to love him with that same heart.  Somehow He sees through the ugliness and accepts my love, and me.

To offer God the love of a pure, clean heart is impossible.  But if I love Him in a desperately sick way, full of selfishness, ulterior motives, and grossly imperfect attempts at overcoming temptation, He’s OK with that.  In fact, He longs for it with the deepest desires He knows.

Loving God with all my deceitful heart… It’s the best I can do, but it’s enough.