What can take a dying man, and raise him up to life again?

God is so amazing. for the longest time I was asking god,

"Lord, why is it so hard for me to accept your love?”


I want to accept his love, but everytime I hear that he loves me, I always cringe inside and shrink away. When he tells me that I have a pure heart, that he loves my voice, or that I am lovely, that he is proud of me... I have such a hard time accepting what he says... I almost want to deny that it is true (or I actually do). This feeling of rejection is partially imparted or self-instructed because I feel unworthy to be loved, that I shouldn’t be loved and that there is nothing about me that God should love. All I can see is my sin and the ugliness, the darkness inside of me—and knowing the chaos of iniquities inside my heart convinces me that I cannot be loved, that I should not be loved. When I see my sin unfold in my life, I do not come to god—I hide away from shame because I do not want to be loved. The magnitude of my sins overwhelms me to the point where I am drowning without cognizantly recognizing that there is air to breathe where the surface of the water breaks. For a time I had been aware that I was making my sins to be too great, and making the cross to be way too little... but I didn’t know how I could change that and fully live the truth of the gospel out.


I had been asking the Lord that question for quite a while now... and he had been revealing the answer to me little by little, never giving me the full revelation behind my question. A few things he had told me was—I had lost the child-likeness I had before where I would trust and believe whatever he would tell me. I have lost the longing expectancy I used to have for him as the bride waits for the bridegroom, even fallen out of love with him, my eyes no longer fully set on Him and Him alone...
one night he told me,

Joyce you want to love others and you want to love me more, but how can you do either when you do not let me love you first?

I was broken.
how Lord?? How do I let you love me god?


I know I build a lot of walls around my heart...because my heart is so inclined to want to be loved—and because I am fully aware of this—I try to harden my heart so I wont always feel the need to be loved. consequently, hardening my heart in that way and rejecting love and wanting to feel independent from anyone or anything also hardens my heart from the ultimate Lover, the one who lavishes so freely. I cant really pinpoint specific points in my life where my heart was hurt, but perhaps I also hold offense towards God as well?

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whatever the reason, this past weekend God showed me why he didn’t fully reveal to me why the condition of my heart was that way. But he came to me in such quiet humbleness, in sweet tenderness, in loving kindness and told me that it was not up to me to change myself... he told me that he would to give me new garments to wear, that I didn’t need to live in the identity of the old that I had been clinging on to. He gave me the solution, he didn’t point more to the problem. He didn’t accuse me, didn’t charge me for rejecting his love, didn’t even resent me for wanting other things, didn’t even give me the full blown in-your-face anaylsis of the hardened condition of my heart and why I cant accept his love. No... all he told me was that He would give me a deeper revelation of the Lamb, the lamb that was slain for my iniquities.

He reconfigured and realigned my identity in him... that I AM his beloved, I am his princess. He took off my rags of unworthiness and sorrow and clothed me from head to toe in glistening white garments of praise and purity. I may still not know why I had such a hardened heart, but I am convinced that the Creator of heaven and Earth can take any heart of stone and melt it so that it becomes a heart of flesh.