Changing a heart

It's a slow process, changing a heart like mine. Nevertheless, I become ever more aware how God is changing me. I said in my last entry that, "thankfulness" was going to be my topic for the next season. I'm not sure how long this "season" is going to last. I'm also not interested in getting it over with as quickly as possible. The fruit of being thankful is self evident. Why would I ever want to hurry this along? 

The hardest part for me is to discover thankfulness in areas of my life, where I could only feel bitterness before. Areas where I totally felt abandoned by God. Upon speaking with God about these feelings of abandonment, I found him to be more than comforting. It's strange, but I've recently been realizing that I've only been coming to God with things that I think he wants to hear from me. I would try and force myself to love him more than I do. Force myself to praise him more than I want to. After approaching him about my double sided heart and telling him what I really felt, I was quickly touched and wooed into a deeper intimacy with him.

Truly God is great and doesn't leave us alone in our need. It is my mistake, getting so caught up in my own correct piety, which keeps me from intimacy with the God who requires candor and not self-chastisement. At times, the mercy of God is so tangible, I feel carried by a cloud. But the times of loneliness and the moments of temptation, which tease me to stray from simple mindedness, funny as it were, are the times and places in which the Lord is most real to me. It didn't use to be that way. But in the last days, while keeping thankfulness in my mind, I have been encouraged and taught in this regard.