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👆PLAY👆to listen as you read along 

When you think about haunting, what are some thoughts that first come to mind? Spooky? Eerie? Ghostly? How about darkness? When I think about haunting, darkness is what first comes to my mind.

The most basic definition of darkness is the absence of light. Darkness and dark places also conjure up fear.

Let’s look at a haunted house for instance. What makes a haunted house scary? It’s darkness itself, isn’t it? It’s also the hidden “stuff” that causes you to fear the unseen. But, what if the lights are turned on while you’re in a haunted house, doesn’t that minimize the fear? Yeah. And why is that? Because what you can see you do not fear. Or, if no lights are turned on and you get too scared you have the choice to leave the haunted house.

Not so with a haunted heart.

A haunted heart is a heart that’s darkened by issues that you dare not let anyone see or know about, the issues you struggle with alone and silently that turn your heart lifeless. A lifeless heart is one that is cold, bitter, unforgiving, impenetrable; it loves less but expects more; it’s devoid of God—what the Bible calls a stony heart.

David (King of ancient Israel) recorded it like this in Psalm 55: he says, “My heart is sore-pained.… Oh, if I had wings like a dove I would fly away and be at peace”. But when the haunting is in your heart, there’s no flying away is there?! And, unlike you can with a haunted house, you cannot run or fly away from a haunted heart because you take the haunting with you.

In essence, you’re not at home in your own heart.

Much of what haunts our hearts comes from guilt, hopelessness, offense, sorrow, or threats. Did you get that?

G.H.O.S.Ts.

Yes. A lifeless heart is a heart haunted by “ghosts”.

Often times we define haunted heart experiences based on the current circumstance like: a breakup; the breaking of your one beautiful heart; the loss of a job or a bad diagnosis or a rejection so intense you think you won’t wake the next day; or it could be from an emotional breakdown.

However, when we define where we’re at emotionally, physically or spiritually by circumstances, then we are only dealing with fruit—what is evident and tangible, what can be seen and touched.

What we need to be addressing instead is root. The cause of a cold, stony, ghost-haunted heart is it’s separation from its life-love source—God.

So God offers an exchange to bring our hearts back to Him. He says:

God wants to bring our lifeless hearts back to life through a gift by which we were granted righteousness at Christ’s expense. Did you get that?

G.R.A.C.E.

God wants to take away the “ghosts” and replace them with His grace and restore our hearts to being warm, loving, sensitive, and tender toward Him and our fellow human beings.

Shabbat Shalom. May you find the peace that comes from a heart renewed in Christ Jesus, and to be at home in your own heart.

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Thank you for journeying along.

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In creative solidarity, Dee