Close to God

January 16

God is closest to those with broken hearts. Jewish Proverb

Perhaps this proverb unlocks the secret of "Why?" When we can't understand how it could be that God would allow disappointment and frustration and anguish of soul to His people, this ancient word reveals His heart. Because it is His desire that we draw close to Him, He woos us through the one method He knows will work. You may shake your head in disagreement, but careful pondering of the assertion will affirm it is a reality—in your life, too.

When things are going well for us, when our efforts are rewarded with the things we desire most fervently, we hardly feel a need for God. We feel very accomplished, very self-sufficient. When our fortunes turn, however; when life takes on negative aspects, when we feel helpless and without recourse—it is then that we turn to our Jesus. And it is then that He takes us in. He has stated in Revelation 3:20 that He stands at the door of our lives, ready to enter, but He won’t intrude unless invited in.

Jesus loves to bless His people; He longs to give them the desires of their hearts, but He knows when we are content and happy, we wrap ourselves around our delights. When we are broken and unable to extricate ourselves from the gloom of our situation, it is then we most fervently seek His light. It is when we grasp most fully just how helpless and hopeless we are when left to our own devices that we seek Him with all our hearts and minds and spirits.

May He help us hear Him knock upon the door of our lives and help us to open wide our hearts that He may enter and take control of every aspect of our being. We desire to live and move and have our being in Jesus and to thereby find the fullness of all the blessings He says are ours. This will indeed insure that we have, "beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garland of praise for the spirit of heaviness," as the Word says we will in Isaiah 61:3.