It's funny how things fall apart over time.

The title is not meant to be for the sake of humour that things fall apart, rather just to trigger some thought. I'm sitting in my bed not feeling top notch at the moment with some strange undiagnosed pains in my lower back. So as I face the inevitability of getting older and my body needing extra attention in some facets, I am reminded of the truth that eminates from the reality of decay. No I don't think I'm old or that my body is somehow falling apart, but the fact of the matter is, you don't get younger, you get older.
The unfortunate result of a fallen world is that decay happens, there's really no way around it in the physical world. But parallels can be drawn from this to the spiritual decay that occurs when one's heart isn't right with God.
The fool returns to his folly, but the fool also fails to learn from other's mistakes as well. There's decay that happens within the heart if those things are allowed to happen. God makes it pretty clear that if we just pay attention to what He says then the road to freedom is found. Christ didn't die so that his followers would be stuck in their own destruction, he died and rose again to free us from our own patterns of desctruction.
I need to be reminded of this all the time because too often I've been the fool, choosing not to obey God's commands and in a sense accepting the reprocusions of my own destructive actions. Pride is a deeply rooted issue that affects far more of us than any of us would like to admit.
The book I've been reading is called "It Came From Within" by Andy Stanley. In it he discusses the four main enemies of a healthy heart in the life of a believer. Guilt, anger, greed and jealousy are those enemies. As I read, I am faced with the frightening reality that those are very real oppositions of my own heart and I've allowed them to take root and at times to be strong holds preventing me from experiencing Christ as He longs for me to.
As a pastor, it feels like there's some unsaid pressure on me to portray a put-together life without any kind of struggles or difficulties and I just can't live that way. I can't pretend like I don't sin, like I don't have things that need to be worked on and ultimately removed from my life. Pride is one of those things, at times guilt has had it's way with me, anger and jealousy reach to the surface on occasion as well. Those are all indications that when I become of aware of those issues I need to confess them and release them to the healer who will ultimately heal my heart and guard me from those things. But, if left unchecked those things can be allowed to take deeper root and will cause that decay that our earthly bodies are destined for.
I don't want that to happen over and over again, I want to be freed from the pride that holds me, from the guilt and anger that I've experienced and the jealousy that has no place.
Maybe some of those things aren't as prevelant in my heart as they are in others, but even if there's a trace of them, I want nothing to do with them.
The bottom line is, I'm broken, I need to be fixed, and I don't want to even try to put across some fake persona that say "I'm fine". Just some thoughts for this evening.