Give your wounded, shrapnel filled, dirty heart to Jesus

At some point in our lives, someone probably tells us that we should give our heart to Jesus or God. For some that is repeating a sinner's prayer, for some it is being baptized. Regardless, for those who truly want to follow Jesus, at some point, we tell Him that we are giving Him our heart, our mind, our soul, and our life. We ask Him to be our Lord and Savior, to forgive us for our sins, and to heal our wounded spirits.

Often I have thought of this gesture of giving my heart over to God as some kind of noble act where I hand him this beautiful beating heart, entrusting Him to take better care of it than me or anyone else. But the older I get, the more I realize the gesture looks more clumsy than noble and the heart looks anything but beautiful.

I imagine as I pull this beating bloody heart out of my chest that it's not bright, but dark, not red, but black, not healthy, but sick, not strong, but weak. It is badly bruised, for it has taken a lot of beating. It has scrapes and cuts and those wounds have become infected and are blistering and oozing with disease. Even worse, there are pieces of shrapnel filling the heart.

The heart is dying when we painfully rip open our chest to give it to Jesus. We are giving Him a precious gift, but a gift no one would ever want. No one, that is, but the lover of our soul who gave us life and seeks so desperately to redeem us. No surgeon on earth could heal our war weary heart. Only the Great Physician with His special, healing touch can do that.

But here's the thing, He doesn't heal it all at once. He heals it as we open ourselves up to be healed. Each piece of shrapnel has a painful memory attached. Maybe that piece is attached to the memory of someone who bullied you as a child. Maybe that piece is attached to the memory of a teacher who treated you unfairly. Maybe that piece is attached to an abusive relationship. Maybe that piece is attached to the memory of someone you treated badly.

When Jesus goes to remove each piece of shrapnel, that memory is going to come up. And with each painful memory, He forces us to face it. We then have the choice, to surrender it to the Great Physician and experience the pain until the shrapnel is gone and the wound healed and we come out of it with our heart more healed and a stronger, healthier person, or we can tell Him no, and resist His attempts to remove the shrapnel. But as long as it remains, it poisons our very soul.

Even after we give Him our heart, it is possible for us to grab it back and allow more wounds to hurt it. We do not give our heart to Jesus just once, but continually as we realize we have taken it back and that we need to give it to Him again if we are to be healed.

Even if we live a long life, our heart may never be fully healed. Full healing will not come until we trade our mortal flesh for immortal. As long as we are alive on this earth, as followers of Christ, we must always be handing our wounded, shrapnel filled, dirty heart to Jesus, the only one who can heal the wounds this world inflicts upon it.

It may not look beautiful, but it is. It is a beautiful mess of God's redeeming love at work in our messy lives, and it is beautiful.