Sometimes I Feel Like a Nut

May God grant you out of the rich treasury of His glory to be strengthened and reinforced with mighty power in the INNER man by the Holy Spirit. Ephesians 3:16

Hope never disappoints, for God's love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit Who has been given to us. Romans 5:5

Mixer Questions:

1. List as many types of nuts as you can think of.*
2. List as many ways as you can think of that people are like nuts.

*Press here to link for nutty answers.

The team who comes up with the most nut-varieties wins a mini-bag of pistacios to take home.

We'll use the next list to kick-off the discussion we're addressing tonight: How are people like nuts? Can you draw ANY spiritual parallels?

Do not become discouraged. Though our outer man in decaying and wasting away, yet our inner self is being renewed day after day. II Corinthians 4:16

Take a few minutes to crack some different types of nuts. There is a difference: some crack easily using just finger pressure; others require more work; some are downright difficult to open.

So with us. We each have a shell over our heart. God provided it to protect us, but some of us have come to use it as a place to hide.

There is one Person from Whom we can never hide our hearts.

Psalm 139 tells us that God knows our thoughts and understands everything about us, no matter what. The thickest shell cannot hide our hearts from God; but they can keep Him from helping us. He LONGS to be in our heart with us.

Before coming to God, "...the heart is deceptive above all things and desparately wicked." Jeremiah 17:9

When God moves in, He gives us "...a new heart to know Him, that He is the Lord; and we become His people, and He becomes our God--when we turn to Him with our whole heart." Jeremiah 24:7

Shell-thickness management involves keeping ourselves free from known sin. When we sin (fail God in any way), we need to confess (agree with God about it) and turn from it.

I John 1:9 promises that "...if we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

By praying Psalm 139:23 often, we will never again develop a thick and hard-to-crack shell with God:

"Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."

As a man is in his heart, so is he. Psalms 23:7