Day 222, Year 1

Adjusting Your Heart

“Every valley shall be filled And every mountain and hill brought low; The crooked places shall be made straight And the rough ways smooth.” (Luke 3:5 NKJV)

Obviously, today’s verse refers to the invisible work of leveling and repairing roads in the human hearts and spirits. Indeed, many people are hampered from knowing and believing in Jesus due to inappropriate low self-esteem, pride, crookedness, distortion, etc., caused by their family or upbringing problems. To truly repent and accept Jesus, we usually need to confront our inner issues, including all kinds of unevenness. Inappropriate self-humiliation includes how people feel unworthy of God’s grace and reject Jesus’ help or salvation. These people often have a mindset of acquiring, pursuing, and/or enjoying personal fulfillment, making it difficult for them to receive His grace. Even if they accept God, they do so with a deal-making mindset. As a result, He becomes their business partner rather than their Lord.

Attitudes such as pride and arrogance can be inherited and spread around, from person to person. “Mountain and hill” in today’s verse are to be humbled. The phrase “bring low” is tapeinoo, which means “to make low, or to humble.” This means that the pride of believers is to be torn down. Regardless of how much wealth, great achievements, wisdom, etc., people boast about, all these things can hinder them from believing in Jesus and should be removed from their hearts. For example, when people brag about their wisdom or cleverness, could they also pursue more divine wisdom? It is difficult because they don’t have the humility to seek His wisdom. Humility to believers is to bring us low or fill in all the hollows in our lives so that the work of Jesus can come smoothly to our hearts. “The rough ways smooth” in the verse can be understood as the obstacles that hinder the Lord’s words from reaching the deepest part of the human heart, being removed. Thus, the path for the Lord to enter our hearts and minds needs to be leveled of any ruggedness.

Wickedness can easily distort uprightness in people. To have strong faith in Jesus, we should ask for His help to make each of our crooked places straight with His grace. We should see the Lord’s rewards as more important than all the worldly gains or affirmation from others. Besides, some people’s hearts are like firmly locked secret rooms, making it difficult for God’s Word to enter the deepest part of their hearts. So, He wants us to unlock and remove the wrong filters, latches, and barriers so that the Word of God can reach the innermost part of our lives.

Reflection questions:

1) Do you have a crooked, wrong feeling of unworthiness that needs the Lord’s help to rectify? What are the more fundamental or rooted issues that need to be dealt with by His help?

2) Do you have God’s integrity and righteousness in your heart to contain His words? If you are lacking anything, how could you repent so that God’s uprightness will come to you more?