The Divine Treasure Hunt—Part 4 – Steve Orr

The Sacred Inner Sanctum of Your Soul:

I’ve got good news and bad news…

The good news is that all your hard work has paid off. You found the treasure and you’re sailing for safer shores. You have a large cupful of gold dust; you pour some into your palms to admire its beauty. It’s spellbinding. It brings bliss, you celebrate your victory. Your treasure glimmers for a moment. Then, out of nowhere comes a rogue wave. It jars the treasure out of hands and you watch helplessly as it slowly sinks to the bottom of the sea.

The inner sanctum of your soul is your most sacred place. You must treat it with tender loving-kindness.

Be careful with whom you share this sacred place. Too often, people are “looking for love in all the wrong places.” These are the easy places, like those that serve up alcohol, lust, sex, money, toys, and a long list of diversions and escapes that not only do not work, they harden our hearts.

Healthy relationships with family and friends is a good source for heart-to-heart sharing, and having a soulmate to navigate the ups and downs of life is a most precious treasure not to be taken for granted.

By law, a professional therapist must not share your deepest secrets and heartaches. Sometimes, physiological issues need medical attention. While therapists have a place, they are not God.

Broken people helping broken people can be good, but it has its limits. No matter how deeply someone loves you or how much they want to help, the deepest spiritual matters of our hearts may need someone closer than your soulmate and/or closest friend sitting next to you. The inner sanctum of your heart is where the entire Trinitarian Godhead dwells. Your spiritual reality is that God is closer to you than a heartbeat.

Maybe I’m a naive idealist, but I think that when we leave religion behind and enter into an authentic, personal relationship with Christ Jesus, we can avoid lots of heartache.

No matter where we find ourselves, it’s never too late to enter into our own personal Holy of Holies in divine communion with the Lover of our soul. After all the trials of heartache, inescapable joy is sure to come. Soon, you will find yourself bursting with uncontrollable laughter and happiness. This is your destiny as God planned before the day you were born. Enjoy the roller-coaster ride of life!

To do this, we must go to the source of life-giving water and love that never fails to refresh.

Invite Jesus into the inner sanctum of your soul. Let him into your most private place. He is the Good Shepherd of your heart. Show him your hurts. Hiding from these hurts hasn’t helped, has it? The baggage is just too heavy, so let Jesus take on the load.

Give all your hurts over to Jesus completely. Expose the dark things you’ve been hiding from and bring them into the Light. You can trust Jesus, because “In him is light, and his life is the light of all humankind” (John 1:4). Jesus’ burden is light. When you give your burdens to him you will find a new spring in your step.

As we come to understand the unconditional love of our Heavenly Father, it’s easy to share anything and everything with him. You cannot fool God, but sometimes, we fool ourselves by believing the lies we tell ourselves. Maybe we like our little stories that put us in a good light. And sometimes, in a fog of negativity, we believe the lies that say we are no good, despite the many Scriptures that say otherwise. Or maybe we believe the lies that say someone else is no good, despite the many Scriptures that say otherwise.

Adam and Eve could not hide from God, and neither can you. Why would you want to? Figuratively speaking, we can be a comfortably naked and UN-ashamed child before our Heavenly Father Who loves us with his crazy kind of love.

This brings back a vivid memory stored away deep in my heart. It was a warm summer day, a sprinkler was on in the backyard. I went out to move it only to discover that both of my young daughters had shed all their clothes and were laughing and having fun running around the sprinkler. Moving the sprinkler could wait. I took a seat in a lawn chair and experienced all the fun as our loving Heavenly Father was looking into the garden he made for us with great delight.

As you turn all your hurts over to God, one day, you may look back and discover by surprise that somehow the hurt is gone; all that remains is a scar. Like kids showing off their scars, saying, “Look! This is what happened to me. But it doesn’t hurt anymore!” Then Jesus will show you how both his and your scars have been transformed into badges of honor. Wear them proudly.

Your Beauty-and-the-Beast transformation is near. With the inescapable love of God, everything that was ugly will be transformed into something most beautiful. When this happens, someday, you may even want to courageously go to your closest friends and loved ones and share your story; it may inspire and strengthen the bonds of love for one another.

This transformation cannot happen until you let go of all your hurts. Give all the hurts of the past over to Jesus. Do not put that burden on others. Instead, trust Jesus with your hurts, give them all to him, then let them go!! Let Jesus be the healer of your wounded heart. Jesus and Jesus alone is able to give you all the love you need. He wants to set you free. “He who the Son sets free is free indeed!”

Thoughts for meditation:

“Above all else, guard your hearts, for from it flows the wellsprings of life.” (Prov 4:23)

“Do not be overly righteous, Nor be overly wise: Why should you destroy yourself?” (Eccl 7:16)

Christ is our righteousness (1 Cor:1:30). Let Jesus be at home in your heart. Do not hesitate to ask him for help.

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Steve Orr writes to us from Montana. After working in the mecca of technology, Steve traded the rat race of Silicon Valley for the adventures of High Tech in Big Sky Country. Steve has an MBA with experience in accounting, finance, technology, and management. He occasionally writes a little software code, but mostly he likes writing about Matters of the Heart.

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