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Barriers: A Weary Heart

Published on December 2, 2021

Last updated on January 21, 2023

The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person, out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

Luke 6:45 ESV

Does your heart feel worn out? Tired? On battery saver mode? Are words flying out of your mouth that you wish you could reel back in? Or do you not even care anymore because you’re just…done?

If our hearts are tired, weary, worn out, or depleted, we’ve “lost heart.” Have you lost heart?

Welcome. You’re in good company.

When scripture uses “heart” like in the passage above, it can be understood to mean our wants, desires, passions and motivations.

To begin a helpful conversation about being heart-weary, I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge that a weary heart is real, difficult, and even debilitating. I see you. I know what it feels like. To challenge an already weary heart is a tall order. It can seem like asking too much.

Yet, it is what we’re going to lean into in this post. Because it is good for us, and moving through it will lighten the burden we are trying to carry and restore our weary hearts to brightness and vitality.

I encourage you to read through to the end of this post. If it still seems like asking too much, if you can’t find hope in these words, that’s okay. Be where you are for as long as you need to be there. You’re still welcome here while you’re in that place, and when you’re ready to move out of it, too.

Our starting point

For each of these next few posts on weariness, we will reference Mark 12:30 in the Bible.  The context for this passage is after Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem during the celebration of the Feast of Booths.  He has already flipped over the commerce tables in the temple courts and made some powerful religious dudes really upset.  In order to discredit Jesus, they sent some of their posse to challenge him with tricky questions in an attempt to trap him into saying something that justified arresting or condemning him.

One of these is a scribe who asked Jesus to judge what God’s greatest commandment is to his people.  Here is our verse:

Jesus replied, “This is the most important: ‘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 mind and with all your strength.’

Mark 12:30

The passage referenced by Jesus, here, is from Deuteronomy 6:4-5. It declares the monotheistic (one God) faith of the Jews and is included in their daily prayers to this day. The fact that Jesus states it in our New Testament is important for his followers today, whether they be of Jewish lineage or not. There is still one God, and we seek to love him completely with all that we are and all that we have within us.

Love the one God with all our heart.
Love the one God with all our soul.
Love the one God with all our mind.
Love the one God with all our strength.

It is these four areas of completely loving God that we will explore in this series of articles on weariness. We will come at it from a perspective of wanting to love God more in each of these ways, but with barriers of weariness that get in our way.

Today, we begin with the heart.

What makes a heart weary?

There are many, many references in the Bible for “heart,” but for the purpose of our discussion, I find the wisdom book of Proverbs to be a great place to begin in understanding what makes a heart weary. If you’re not yet familiar with Proverbs, it is a collection of wisdom sayings, most of which were collected by King Solomon (the last human king of the united nation of Israel, and son of the notorious King David). Solomon spent much of his life observing mankind and participating to the fullness of all the world had to offer so that he could discern the way the world works and wisely lead his people.

We get the benefit of gleaning from his recorded wisdom in this collection. Here are a few of his proverbs that speak to what wearies the heart of a person. Perhaps some of these are what burden you today. Pause after you read each one. Click the verse link and read the verses. Ask yourself if these are where your weariness comes from.

Ooo, that’s messy. That’s my mess. So what about you? What makes your heart so weary right now?

What makes a heart glad?

Looking through Proverbs again, in many of these same verses, Solomon records for us what enlivens a heart and relieves its weariness. Pause as you move through this list as well. Do you sense a deep longing for any of these? Where do you suppose the satisfaction of those comes from?

What do these all have in common? A heart set on the Lord finds abundance, not weariness.

A prayer for our weary hearts

Let’s take a beat here and pray through the above lists. Let’s ask the one God to reveal to us where these are making our hearts weary. Let’s accept his graciousness and mercy to us in that he would help us to see what we cannot see on our own, and to help us turn in his direction with our wants, passions, and motivations.

Lord God, may your holy presence be with us now. You see our hearts more deeply and completely than we can ever see them. You know what it is that makes ours weary. Show us. Teach us.

Where there is anxiety, a disruption of our systems of life, help us to see it for what it is and stand up by your power in the midst of it. Stabilize us, Lord. Bring us friends to encourage us in your truth.

In the areas where we have hoped for what has not yet come, even for that which may never be coming, wrap your arms around us and remind us to hope in you. That you are not only here with us now, but the hope of your coming again is sure. Remind us that your hope for us is greater than our own hope for us.  Let us latch on to that true hope.

Where we are bitter, vengeful, and unforgiving, show us the truth of it so that we can learn to release our tight hold and let you work out what should be, rather that our own trying to orchestrate and control. Remind us that the hurts we suffer are not hidden from your sight. Remind us that you care for those wounds if we will let them lay open to your healing.

In the ways that we are so sad, so beaten down, so lost in the abyss of our despair, sit with us in our ashes and draw out what is there so that we can know we are seen by you. Fully known by you. Loved by you. Send us others to be our companions and bear us up in our lowliness.

In the places of our hearts where we think highly of ourselves or too highly of others and we are jealous, envious, arrogant, and driven by our desire for what we believe we deserve, help us to learn a more accurate view. Your view of us and of the people around us.  Help us to see our appropriate worth and value and those we consider our neighbors, both enemies and friends.

And in the places of our hearts that are still immature and developing, help us to see our foolishness so that we may turn to your wisdom and not lose heart in our failure to be all that we dream we should be. Help us to increase in our reverence for who you truly are as we know you increasingly more. Help us to discipline ourselves under your guiding hand so that we may live wisely and freely joyful.

Where others have deceived, taken advantage of, and betrayed us, heal our whipping scars, remind us of yours and that you understand our plight and you know the good way through.

Help us to see what you want for our hearts. These hearts you love. Help us to believe that you desire these hearts you've made in us to be free from weariness.  Help us trust that there is room there for loving you. That we truly can release all the other loves and be truly full in loving you with our whole hearts.

By the holy sacrificial blood of Jesus, 
Amen

Let’s get practical

So if we know a heart set on the Lord is glad, and a heart set on lifeless pursuits becomes weary, it stands to reason that the closer we move our hearts to the Lord, the less weary and more complete we will become. How do we do that?

Identify what we have our heart set on

Using the lists above, take some time to write out which of those your heart is fixed on. Maybe talk it out with a friend if writing isn’t your way of processing. But get it out of yourself and into the light so you can see it for what it really is. In your processing, take those objects of your heart-love and follow them out to the very end of where they lead.

Do they truly satisfy? If not, is a change warranted? Just like we explored in our discussion of time obligations, it’s time to let that stuff go and make room for what is truly good for us and takes us in the direction we want to go.

Let the old crumble

When the nation of Israel, as recorded in scripture, found themselves in a situation where their hearts were not turned toward the Lord, and they reached a point where they actually cared about it, they responded by knocking down the false gods, or idols, they’d been giving their hearts to. These were their heart-loves that weren’t proving worthy of their love. Only God proved worthy.

We have to do the same with those things we’ve made more important in our hearts than God, because just as he proved worthy for them, he is also worthy for us.

But that’s work!
Yep. It is, Sister.

But it’s good, freeing, satisfying work. It’s work that brings life. It doesn’t make sense, that we should take our weary hearts and go do some more work with them, does it? But I promise you, it’s far more life-giving than you think.

No discipline [training, not punishment] seems enjoyable at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore, strengthen your tired hands and weakened knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be dislocated but healed instead.

Hebrews 12:11-13, CSB, comments mine

Peaceful fruit!! My weary heart needs that. Does yours?

Just like paying the redemption price for our time, there’s sacrifice and cost involved here. Our hearts have become attached to things that aren’t good for us in the long run. And even though we may see what’s good for us and believe it’s good for us, those heartstrings are strong and, depending on how long our hearts have been set on the object of our desires, they can be quite thick.

I have this plant that grows in the beds around my house. At first, it was a cool little plant with dark green leaves and red-purple stems. Once a year it made little black-colored berries and it was nice enough. I pulled a few of them out pretty easily when they were around two feet tall to make room for an herb garden.

Then came a year when the weather was crummy and my body with dwarfism limited my ability to get out there and do the physical work. The growing season passed, and then another six months. Those plants grew and flourished under my negligence and the abundant Chattanooga rain and sunshine. They eventually grew taller than the roof of my house. And they made babies. And those babies grew, too.

About a month ago, those plants, which I discovered are named pokeweeds, grew so tall they could no longer support their own weight. In a heavy rain storm, they toppled right over into my side yard. It was time for them to go.

I mustered up the willpower one Saturday when it was dry and not too hot or cold and tried to pull them up. Only the babies came up. I called my humungous teenage son and high school football player to come pull them. With all his strength, he couldn’t get those suckers to budge. Eventually, we had to resort to the ax.

Yep. Like you use to fell a tree.

And with the ax, we were able to chop them down with a good amount of effort. With a few of them, we were able to pull hard enough with both our body weights (around 315lbs total) to get the big fat taproot out of the soil. The rest we cut to ground level and called it a day. A hard, exhausting, day.

Why are we talking about pokeweeds?

I use this illustration because letting the old heart-loves crumble will be for each of us like my battle with the pokeweeds. And we’re going to have to work hard to get those old ways out of there. And some days we’re going to feel light fighting with the ax and pulling out those deep-set taproots. And some days we’re just gonna call it a day, knowing those roots are still in there and probably going to sprout again next time the rain comes.

We had piles of pulled and hacked up pokeweeds in the side yard of my house. And we were worn plum out. But we still needed to get the pieces back to the burn pile or else those little berries would plant more pokeweeds all over the yard. It took team work and some pep-talking and some promise of rewards to get all that cleared away.

Letting the old heart-loves crumble is like that too. You can’t leave the debris lying around to resurrect new versions of the same old heart-draining desire. And it takes more than just you and your willpower to get it done.

The heart is deceitful above all things. (Jeremiah 17:9) Don’t depend on your desires to always be right. Depend on them to be going in an unhelpful direction more than they’re going in a helpful one. Build a community of gardeners to help you dig up those difficult weeds and help you spot the little ones when they spring up in the next fertile growing season.

New heart-love

So what’s going to replace those old crumbled and cleared-away foci of our wants, desires, passions, and motivations?

Bible study? Maybe.
Prayer? Could be.
Going to Church services? Might be.
Engaging in a religious ritual? Possibly.
Fighting for justice? Could see it.

caution:

It’s easy for us to jump into more things to be doing and calling it loving Jesus more. And perhaps these and others are a means of that for us. But I want to caution us here that loving the one God with our whole heart isn’t about the religious actions we take. They’re helpful as pathways to getting ourselves to a place of deeper relationship with him, but they’re not the point.

Loving God with our whole heart means we desire him. It means we want him. It means we are passionate for/toward him. It means we are motivated by him. Not knowledge of him in the way we know who a celebrity is, but knowing him. Personally. The whole wonderful lovingness and all the too many words that describe the limitless facets of who he is.

That is the loving he’s requiring of his people (and enabling us to accomplish). For our every desire to be about him. Not “doing” for him. Not “being” for him. Simply, him.

And in him, is where the weary heart is gone, my friend. A heart that is completely loving the Lord God, the one God, is never weary. It is always full of his life and his joy and his unrelenting ability.

He never tires. He is never weary.

Weary heart, take this with you:

When your heart is weary, remember that giving your whole heart completely to the one God is where your weariness is replaced with abundance. When your heart is weary, it is set on that which does not and cannot satisfy your desires and passions and longings. You must move away, destroy even, those objects of your desires and exchange their death for the life of setting your heart on God. Not doing for God, or being for God, but on God, himself. It is there that your heart will be truly glad. It is there, also, that you will find a community of others who are also members of the family, the people of the one God, and who will invite you to walk beside them and they you as we all seek together to Love God with our whole, complete, entire hearts.

May your heart find abundance in Christ,

Signature image, Angela

Published inArticlesBarriers to Spiritual Investment Series

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