This month I want to share with you what’s on my heart.

While revisiting a favorite book, I came across the following that spoke to my very being; “A.W. Tozer said a long time ago, ‘Culture is putting out the light in men and women’s souls.’ He was right. Dullness is more than a religious issue, it is a cultural issue. Our entire culture has become dull. Dullness is the absence of the light of our souls. Look around. We have lost the sparkle in our eyes, the passion in our marriages, the meaning in our work, the joy of our faith.” *

I was struck by the news that a NYC police officer was assassinated in her police cruiser for no other reason except she was a cop. A cop just doing her job and now there are three children without a mom. Today as I write this her funeral is taking place and nothing has changed.

 How many young people are going to have to be murdered in the inner city of Chicago before real honest action is taken? Action not motivated by a political agenda, but to bring restoration, sanity and self-respect back to the culture. The author was right, our culture has become dull, so dull in fact we’ve become stupid.

We are seemingly dull to right and wrong, love and hate, law and order…dull to goodness and embracing madness. Lawlessness being driven by entitlement seems to be the mantra of the day. The breeders of this hate never have real answers, just more hate and more division. There is no room for real discussion, only name calling. Truth is not important…agenda is. And it is precious people who are being used as pawns in a selfish, deadly game.

There was a prophet in the Old Testament name Jeremiah. He was not popular because the words God spoke through him went against the culture. He said this, “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?” (Jeremiah 17:9 nlt) God let His people know that their hearts had become hard to His ways and they turned away from Him and had focused on themselves. Being lead by their deceptive hearts they found themselves in ruin.  But that is not the end of the story, God also said this, ¹⁴ “if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” (2 Chron 7:14)  Guess what? They did and He did!  Yes the nation humbled itself, turned from their wicked ways and God healed their land.  

Please take a look around you, we need healing and we need it bad. Could the old expression be true? “The heart of the matter is a matter of the heart.”

Joe

* Dangerous Wonder  Mike Yaconelli, p 24