"What Are You Full Of?"

Take Two…Let’s See where this takes us…


“To Echo”…this is one of my favorite definition of the word render. As a Christian (and by that I mean sold out follower of Jesus Christ, the God of the Bible…not a fake representation of something that we have no real relationship with…not a person who puts up a façade to make the world think that we are perfect…okay I am hopping off of the peach box. Ha.), I could only think about what it means to echo something. I know as a child when I would visit the caves in the hills of Tennessee (you know, the ones that have all the neat natural sculptures, running water, and man-made colored lights to give it a cool effect), how I use to want to yell and hear my voice echo throughout the canyons. Of course, the echo of my voice never sounded the same as my exact voice and it would eventually fade away as the sound waves got further and further away from their original source (in this case, my big mouth). The further away from the source, the less of a reflection the echo was to my ears.
This is exactly why I love that definition of the word render. If render means “to echo,” then what is my heart echoing to the world? What is YOUR heart echoing to the world? What is YOUR heart echoing to you? Whatever "source" we are closer to, is what we echo to the world and to ourselves. I don’t know about you, but I agree with the saying “Garbage in, garbage out. Righteousness in, righteousness out.” Some of you reading this are like, oh boy, another dumb Christian saying…blah blah blah…Well, you’re probably the one that has been in the same boat as me.


I don’t know about you but I may need an attitude check (1, 2, 3)..Okay we’re good to go. Take a deep breath and keep reading.


So, I have noticed that what I fill myself with is what oozes (this is a nasty sounding word) out of my heart and sometimes out of my mouth and my deeds towards other people…if not toward other people, then toward God. If I am filling myself with things that are pleasing to God, then hopefully that is what people get a dose of when they “bump into me” spiritually, emotionally, mentally, etc. Honestly, days that I have a bad attitude or people leave a sour taste in my mouth, it is because I am so consumed with myself or some “thing” that has caught my attention...and unfortunately that thing has placed itself on the throne where God should be sitting.


If we are to reflect Christ in our lives then our hearts have to be broken, broken over our sin and our struggle to continue returning to our own temptations or as some would say, to our own vomit. What would it look like if we decided to rend our hearts and break away from the things in life that do not fulfill us? I mean, what if we broke away from the sex, the drunkenness, the hate acts: or maybe you deem yourself a good person and do not act on these things. Well, what about lustful thoughts, envious thoughts, hateful reactions, jealousy; maybe you are overly emotional and hang your every emotion on what others say or don't say or do or don't do, etc. It is easy to think that if we do not act on things that it is not a hindrance in life but I beg to differ. When our hearts and minds linger on the things that God so desperately wants us to get rid of, we are licking up our own vomit and digging our own grave. For those of you who know Christ as Savior, you do not have to wait until you get to heaven to be free! For those of you do not know Christ yet, you do not have to change yourself to find perfect unrelenting love.


We can’t echo the heart of God to the world if we are so consumed with other things; if we want to sound like Jesus and echo Him to others then we have remain close to Him, the source of abundant life. Lately, God has been telling me to let Him search my heart and rend it away from anything that would be displeasing to Him. What a scary thing to do…because it hurts for him to search the inner most parts of my heart and see the imperfections. However, by letting Him break my heart I am learning to render my heart and my life to Him. This is when this life becomes truly satisfying. I am able to stand before God and before man pure and holy declaring His love, His peace, His joy, His faithfulness, His grace, His forgiveness, and His unrelenting pursuit of us.


In order to echo the voice and heart of God we have to be in tune with Him. God forgive me, forgive us for being so consumed with ourselves and with what we want; forgive us for not loving You and others first; forgive us for not allowing you to love others through us and declare Your life giving grace to the world.


Luke 6:44-46
"Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers. The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks."