Moreover the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live. (Deuteronomy 30:6)
Circumcision is a sign of covenant with God. And it’s not just physical. It’s spiritual. It’s a commitment to God that we will live a life that obeys and honors Him. It’s not something we can do for ourselves. It’s something that God does. We have a part in it. We yield. We acknowledge His authority in our lives. We trust Him to use us for His plan and purpose. We yield our desires to His desires.
God gets rid of the access. When we trust Him to do so, He gets rid of what we don’t need. We can’t see the finished product along the way. It’s like cutting a heart out of paper. We learned when we were young to fold the paper in half and cut it in an ice cream-shaped pattern, then open it up to reveal an even heart. With enough practice, you could create fairly uniform hearts, over and over. Or you could vary the cuts and create tall thin hearts or short wide hearts. The cuts you made determined the heart you had as a result.
The same is true with the cuts God makes. As He circumcises our hearts, He knows the result He wants. He know how we will be most beautiful. He knows what perfection looks like in His will. We can’t program it. We can’t order the shape we want, then hand the scissors over to God and demand that He create just what we want. Yielding to Him means letting Him cut away what needs to be cut away in order to reveal the beautiful within. And it’s not the beauty that we decide and define. It’s the beauty He sees and knows.
God doesn’t circumcise our hearts with one swift cut. It’s a process. He certainly could make it one cut if He preferred. He could prune out everything that’s unnecessary, but He cares about revealing His will throughout our lives. That means not just at the end when the final cut has been made and the scissors are put down but every tiny snip and trim along the way.
Loving God is living life for Him. And that’s a journey. It’s yielding to Him, not just in a one-time decision but through a process. We’re not just paper hearts. We’re living, breathing, growing people, and when our hearts are devoted to God, we trust Him to shape them, pause them, and grow them in whatever way He knows is needed not just for the now but for the forever.
Sometimes our hearts quicken in anticipation; other times they quicken because of fear or anxiety. Sometimes our hearts are burdened with guilt; other times they are burdened with compassion. Sometimes our hearts feel so full we think they will explode in their fullness; other times they feel as if they’ll explode because we’re expending much more effort than we think we ever should or could. But God knows.
God knows what will condition us for the next situation or relationship. He knows what causes too much pain to bear and how to help us leave it behind. He knows what causes us so much pain we think we cannot bear it, but because He knows we can when we rely on Him, He allows it to stay. We grow not just because He gets rid of something but sometimes because He keeps it in our lives.
I want God to circumcise my heart because it’s a sign of His promise. I want to live out the journey with Him. I want to live it out for Him and through Him. I don’t want to trust my own use of the scissors or the shape of heart I think looks the best. I want whatever He wants.
What about you?
Dear God, mold my heart into Your heart. I trust You to create in me a pure heart that longs after and serves You. I don’t have the perspective to weed through my life and determine what stays and what goes, but You do. I’m giving the scissors and my trust to You.