Just about 10 years ago I had an incredible and Holy Invitation delivered right to the doorstep of my heart. It happened at a time when I least expected it. For years I had been subscribing to a pretty substantial intake of junk mail and my soul was eating it up. Completely unaware of who and what I was allowing to “name” me, I had indulged in filling up my self worth based on the culture’s definition of me, other’s definitions of who I was, and a completely incorrect understanding of the deep love of God. I had unknowingly subscribed to “American Culture, Media and Our Self- Love Affair: A guide to loving yourself to feeling significant”, “People Pleasers Anonymous: What everyone thinks about you and says about you defines who you are”, “Christian Behavior Modification Plan #9854: How to earn God’s Love”. Upon my invitation to experience a Soul Transformation in the most empty and desolate places of my inner being, I can now see that this invitation was the groundbreaking work of God.   If I accepted His invitation, He would absolutely and with the deepest love that I still cannot even fathom, till up the hard ground of my heart.

In Hebrew the word for heart is the word lebab. When pronounced it sounds like “labob”. It’s kind of a funny word to our English ears, but with a beautiful meaning. It is the very epicenter, of who we are, and the seat or the chair of our mind and our emotions. It’s an extremely prominent theme written about and threaded through the entire Bible. The heart is precisely what God desires the very most. Many people in the Hebrew culture still to this day recite this, the Shema, daily from Deuteronomy 6:4. “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be written on your hearts.”  And oh how I pray to make this the way I live my life each and every day.

Distinctly and clearly, I heard Jesus knock on the door to my heart and ask me for just that. He desired access and permission to sit in the chair, the throne room of my heart-the very center of my being. He longed for me to unsubscribe to the ridiculous amount of junk mail I had been filling my soul with for far too long. Because He had inscribed my name on the very palms of His hand, He now longed for me to receive the names He had inscribed into my heart the moment I first chose to believe in Him, which was at the ripe old age of 6. He had accomplished all of that on the cross at Calvary. In my lack of understanding, and my lack of seeking really, I had never received these truths into my Spirit, and He so desperately longed to reveal them to me.

The invitation from Jesus came at what appeared to be an inopportune time. Nothing in my life was going just exactly how I had planned it. My unmet expectations in relationships, my brokenness, my sin, and all of my frustrations in my own performance had just collided with the intake of what I was feeding my soul. But in this giant collision that I saw as a catastrophic mess, Jesus saw as His perfect timing. His ways are so unlike our ways.

All of the empty subscriptions I had been feeding my soul had deceptively and slowly placed false names all over me. They were much like the name tags we wear at group events to let others know who we are. But I was completely covered from head to toe in name tags and my mind was convinced they defined who I was.

For too long in my walk with Jesus I had worn headphones that lulled my spirit to sleep with the tunes of our self-loving culture. I weighed my own worth through society’s definition of beauty, success, and greatness. My cultural name tags read something like this…Hello my name is…I am the perfect pinterest mom, I am the college degree I earned or didn’t earn…I am what dress size I wear…I am my success…I am my career. I am fit or not so…fit. It had been a really great looking trap the enemy had set up for me. It came through every newsfeed, many a friendly conversation, and across all airwaves in both Christian circles and the secular realm, and my headset was tuned in to each and every station.

The nametags I wore because of what other people thought of me or my own expectations for myself were pretty sticky. Striving to make everyone around me happy was something I did so well. And throughout my life the words people spoke and the way they received me clouded my vision like a wrong prescription for glasses will do. And when I failed my own test of how I expected myself to perform that name tag seemed to stick like glue. As I looked down these were a few of the labels stuck all over me: Hello my name is…I am not good enough, I am not smart enough, I am not funny enough, I am too pious, I am weak, I am worthless, I have no value…the names go on and on, and I believed every one of them. Pretty soon all I could see was what others told me they saw. I needed a new prescription for my eyewear. And Jesus longed to do just that and show me His vision of me.

My spiritual legs were getting tired too. I was trying to behave my way in to His love.  As I raced to this event, and that event I easily picked up a couple of those labels that said, Hello my name is: I am working hard to be Holy, I am good today because I didn’t do this, I failed today because I did do that, I am my sin, I am my works. I had no idea that these name tags were the very ones the Pharisees had proudly worn.

In my desperation, and plea for relief from circumstantial chaos, I cried out for freedom, and freedom knocked on my door. It was Jesus.  He was, and still is and  will always be the answer.  At the sound of His knock, I looked down at all the name tags. My clothes were littered with all kinds of sticky, paper name tags, and my mind had been convinced that all those names defined the center of my being. And then “I am” offered me the sweetest invitation to step into my identity as the daughter of Jesus Christ. And slowly through the power of His Word and the whisper of His Holy Spirit, amidst the chaos of my life circumstances, a God-given hunger was birthed in me to seek His truth.

He invited me into a deep and intimate relationship with Him. My headphones that played the tunes of self-love and significance began to sound like static. He cleared my vision and upgraded my eyewear to show me how He saw me, and as my vision came in to focus with His, He took my breath away with His love. In the quiet and stillness of His love I would discover there is absolutely no point in spinning my wheels to get Him to love me.  The marathon of performance-based love was over.

And to this day He is still transforming my soul and revealing His truth to me.  As my will agrees to align my heart to the truth, I invite Jesus to sit right in the center of my inner being. His Spirit works in tandem with mine allowing Him access to be enthroned upon my heart.  He begins to reveal to me the names He had inscribed upon my heart the moment I first believed. You see once my mind and heart recognized that I had it all wrong, only then could God set things right.

Jesus, this very day I invite you to sit in the throne room of my heart and the very center of my being.  I allow you access into all of my brokenness, my lack of understanding, my sin, my yuck.  Please reveal more of the sticky and deceptive labels that are stuck like glue.  I am yours Jesus.  I belong to you-your very name is engraved upon my heart.  I have a new identity in you, and what you say about me is who I choose to believe that I am.  May I fill my mind with your truth and may I hunger and thirst for your righteousness.  Just as you did to the Israelites, may you humble me again, and cause me to hunger for more of you May I live on every word that comes out of your mouth sweet Jesus.  Satisfy my heart and soul.

See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me.  Isaiah 49:16

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is–his good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12:2

He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. Deuteronomy 8:3

God blesses those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.Matthew 5:6