Shortly after I came to faith, my Sunday school teacher said he was reading a little booklet entitled, My Heart—Christ’s Home.¹ It is a beautiful allegory of how Jesus knocks at the door of our heart; when we open the door, He comes in to make a home.² I experienced mystery when I invited Jesus into my heart. I could not define the mystery until later when my formal spiritual formation began, but initially there was a definite awareness of the beginning stages of transformation as Jesus took up residence within me. The booklet was helpful, because my male mind naturally compartmentalizes, and it was easy for me to envision my heart like a house filled with different rooms. As I begin this new year, I am once again asking myself, “Am I making a place in my heart for Jesus?”

I would have to say that my heart was a house after I came to faith during my mid-teens. But a house a home does not make. Over the years, Jesus has been making my heart His home. The extreme makeover has been and continues to be an ongoing process that I do not always understand. While I am pleased when a house remodeling project is complete, I do not like living in the mess. In my spiritual journey, it would seem remodeling is the norm rather than the exception. If the mess has not been created as the consequence of my choice to sin, then I know I need to relax and trust that God has a greater plan than I can imagine for His purpose, which will in the end be for my welfare.

C. S. Lewis says it best in Mere Christianity when he borrows a parable from his mentor, George MacDonald:

Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of—throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.³

I had no idea I was in for such a reconstruction. For a number of years, I restricted Jesus to the cozy little living room of my heart, where I thought He might be content to occupy a comfy overstuffed chair by the fireplace. I was somewhat satisfied doing my own thing, living a double life. I was shamefully arrogant about having correct religious answers, but I did not always act according to my theology. I had a dirty little secret. There was one locked room in the house of my heart that I kept secured for me only. It was a dark room that projected sinful images to my mind. I had a horribly unhealthy fantasy life that warred against and attempted to annihilate my true imagination.

As I plant my feet into a new year, I am ready for another chapter of the continuing saga of my spiritual extreme makeover. Jesus says, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”⁴ I did not realize when I came to faith that the goal to which God was guiding me is absolute perfection. I am the only one who can prevent Him from taking me to that goal. I have a history of being a driven perfectionist. A number of years ago, I began understanding that my drive for perfection was rooted in pride to “be in control.” In essence, it is a rebellion against God - a throwback from the old Adamic unregenerate nature to want to be God. When I truly repented, there was an interior shift of further healing as I allowed God to embrace me. I thought trying to be perfect was a good thing. I do not think, however, Jesus is saying that my self-centered narcissistic drive to be perfect was a good thing.

In this verse about being perfect, I think Jesus means that God wants to make us perfect if we will let Him, and He will not stop until the job is completed. Obviously, that will not happen in this life, but He means to get as far as possible before death. On the day we came to faith, God started something in our lives that He means to finish. No power in the universe can stop Him, but us.⁵ We have a free will and if we choose, we can shove Him away. But if we do not, He will finish the job and make us perfect.

I want Him to finish the job. I want God’s type of perfect, a goal far greater in every sense than the contrived perfection I had aimed for. Rather than the cottage C.S. Lewis envisioned or the comfy fireside easy chair far from my locked, secretive life, in this new year, I want to invite God to do what He pleases with the house of my soul. I will daily make a place in my heart for Jesus. I will trust Him to remodel as necessary with my welfare at heart and lean on my faith in Him to care for me. My prayer for each of us is that we would desire to know God more intimately and trust Him more thoroughly as He undertakes the extreme makeover of us all.

¹ Robert Boyd Munger, My Heart—Christ’s Home (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, Revised edition 1986).
² Revelation 3:20
³ C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1943, 1945, 1952), 160.
⁴ Matthew 5:48
⁵ Philippians 1:6

January 2008