Distorted
Do find yourself drifting away from God? Talk to one of our mentors about that.
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“A perverse heart shall depart from me” (Psalm 101:4).
Susan had wanted the photo to be perfect. But it came back distorted and she realized she had moved at just the wrong moment.
Distortion is subtle. We often don’t know its happening. It’s a bending or twisting out of shape. It can happen in conversations, in creative projects, in paintings and in photos. It often isn’t even noticed at the time.
My husband laid some hardwood floor in our house last week. At one point several rows were down and we noticed an end in one of the boards had twisted out of place and a sharp edge appeared where it should have been smooth. Immediately he reworked the area to remove the distortion. It seemed small but in the overall view it would have distorted the look of the whole floor.
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It’s much the same with our hearts. Jagged edges pop up of resentment, anger, negativity, self pity and any number of little things we rationalize away. Left alone they will create a distortion in our hearts that will interfere with the picture God wants to paint of our heart in connection with Him.
Psalm 101:4 says “A perverse heart shall depart from me.”
In the original Hebrew language the word “perverse” means “distorted” and the word “depart” suggests to “sour” or “decline”.
Normally we would never view our Christian hearts as perverse and departing from God.
We recoil at the thought! But here we are warned to be careful we don’t let our hearts become distorted. It can cause a heart to become sour and decline away from our God. Distortion is so subtle.
Are you feeling a sourness in your heart? Is there a slight decline away from your God and you are puzzled by it? Ask God today to show you if there is a distortion in your heart that you have allowed to come in by resentment, hurt, or some emotion or circumstance that has caused your trust in your God to falter just a bit. Ask for forgiveness and let God know you want a pure heart so you can see Him undistorted.
Father God, I confess to You that I have allowed distortion of my view of You to creep into my heart by some relational or circumstantial difficulty I have experienced. I recognize my potential for a sour heart that can decline away from You. I don’t want that Lord. I ask that You would forgive my wrong attitude and heal my hurt. May I see You clearly and draw near to You with a pure heart today. In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen.
Questions: Do you find yourself drifting away from God? Has your attitude become sour over time? Let’s spend some time asking God to forgive us and to heal our hurt so that we can again draw close to Him.
About the Author Gail Rodgers
I really thank God for his love toward me I have felt every emotion there is to feel. I lost my husband about 6 years ago to skin cancer left with three beautiful children. at the time I didn’t understand that He has a plan and that he sent my husband in my life for a season.Thank You for the post.
Oh my, this was a hard devotional but yeah I have struggled in this area.
How beautifully put. Thank you for the reminder that distortion is subtle and begins in the heart with anger, resentment, selft pity and negativety (emotions I have felt at different times in my life). Exactly what the enemy Satan’s plan is for destroying our relationship with Jesus. My prayer for us all is that we guard our heart never to become distracted, but always on guard recognizing when our hearts may be headed toward perverseness, being distored, sour or departing from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
I have alot of self- pity and anger because of the way my life’s going right now.I feel like everyone has it together but me and I have been moving from God instead of leaning on him. This has me realizing that God has a plan, and I have to be patient and everything is going to be okay.
I completely needed to read this TODAY. Realizing that like a sheep, my heart is often inclinded to drift away, I TRULY love MY GOD and want Him to keep me FOREVER! Thank you for posting this wonderful daily devotion. May the love of God burn bright in my heart today and may I do nothing outside of living for my Jesus!
~Robin
Thank God for Jesus, His Word and The Holy Spirit!
I have had an attitude problem for a about a year and a half because I felt abandoned by my former Pastor. Our church merged w/another church and our Pastor left to help another ministry and that was very hard for me and some others but we where trusting that God was in control at least that is what I thought I was doing. needless to say I was not fully trusting God, because I seen wrong in everything that was going on. But I thank God that things are getting better because I have had to seek God more and more to get me through the discomfort and push aside my agenda for Gods.