Jeremiah 17:9-10

"The heart is more deceitful than all else
  And is desperately sick;
  Who can understand it?

"I, the LORD, search the heart,
  I test the mind,
  Even to give to each man according to his ways,
  According to the results of his deeds."

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One of the things that I've been struggling with this past week is really, truly spending time alone with God. Quiet time is God's time -- a time to be in awe of His greatness; to fear Him in view of His righteousness and my sinfulness; to reflect on all that He has done; to rest in His mercies; to re-establish trust in His promises; to learn more and be rebuked by Him; to find joy and bask in His love.

Quiet time is time to be spent with HIM.......
...and yet, last week, my mind so often wandered to what to share from my QTs that would encourage you girls, rather than being focused on God. Oh man. My heart! The sinfulness!!! The first and greatest commandment is to love God with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my mind -- but my mind kept wandering from Him during His time.

I'm not blaming any of you for my struggle; this is not any of your faults. This all stems from my deceitful and desperately sick heart. Who can understand it? I can't...and it's MY heart!

I'm constantly amazed by how my heart can twist something good into something bad. To all intents and purposes, loving all of you and trying to be a good sister is a pretty good thing -- in fact, it's the second greatest commandment. To all intents and purposes, encouraging all of you is also a pretty good thing. But replacing God, who should be first and foremost in my life, with anything is sin. Also, if I were to be completely honest with myself, I kept on getting distracted because I was proud in my ability to share something inspiring and had a desire to show off. So COMPLETELY ridiculous, right? Completely ridiculous.

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God knows my heart.

If I think about the righteousness of God and the hypocrisies of my heart...that GOD knows my heart is really frightening. God can judge my heart for what it TRULY is and deal His wrath accordingly. He can knock me dead and send me to hell; it's what I deserve. Instead of doing that though, He sent Jesus Christ and gave the wrath intended for me to His Son. So incomprehensible. But so amazing.

In my struggle with this sin, I've experienced God's power and faithfulness. Whenever I've been distracted while doing QTs, I've been commanding Satan to get away from me and asking God to help me focus just on Him. Today, I had such an amazing time. I don't know of anyone who works so hard to know me, making up for all my inadequacies just so that I can come to Him. I was scared of sharing QTs anymore because of my deceitful heart, but ionno...my deceitful heart is nothing compared to the power and grace of God. My fear is becoming a less crippling fear. I can't help but love all y'all anyhow. You girls have been so encouraging!