Stay Soft Towards The Lord
Over the last few weeks this sentence has been something that has reverberated in my prayers and my hearts desire.
It will impact the way I follow God when I am not getting what I want.
It will impact the way I am a faithful member of my church.
It will impact the way I am a pastor in the future.
It will impact the way I am a husband when the time comes.
It will impact the way I display God’s value in my life.
It will keep me from sins.
It will keep power and authority from corrupting my heart.
It will keep me from love of money and possessions.
It will keep me humble and open to critique.
It will allow me to repent upstream of worse sins.
The sentence is this: “I want to stay soft towards the Lord”.
Heart Posture
I want to know and trust God so deeply that I do whatever He tells me, even if it’s confusing. I want to let go of anything He calls me to let go of, even if it’s something I love. I want to wait well, even when the waiting seems counter-intuitive.
Staying soft before the lord can be boiled down into this: doing anything God tells you to do. It means to be spiritually impressionable. Impressionable is often a bad thing because others will abuse that power and authority those who are impressionable give them. But, if the authority and power is pure, and Holy, and righteous, and wise… wouldn’t you want to relent to that power? Submit to it? If so, you are on the cusp of understanding what it means to be soft towards the Lord.
Examples
When I feel prompted to pray, I want to turn my TV off and pray. When I feel drawn to encourage someone, I want to encourage them. When I feel convicted of having a self-righteous attitude, I want to address that. When I feel conviction over being a jerk to a store employee, I want to ask for forgiveness. When God calls me to confess my sins to a trusted friend, I want to do that.
I want my posture before God to be one of humility. To be soft to the Lord is to trust Him in the deepest caverns of your heart because you know He has your best interest in mind; he wouldn’t ask you to do something if He didn’t have a reason to.
Reality
You might look at all this and come to the conclusion that this is the desire and prayer of a very pious Christian. Maybe for some, but hopefully this simple truth returns us back to reality and encourages you: the desires to stay soft before the Lord often comes from awareness of our failures to be soft towards Him in the past. I guess it’s just called growing up.
May we be Christians who do not harden our hearts towards God. Staying soft is a daily pursuit born out of humility and awareness that God is for us, not against us.
Praying my heart soft,
Josh.
