YOUR HEART & GOD
How's your heart in relationship to God? Do you feel it's close to Him? Do you feel it's fervent toward Him? Do you just give Him the minimum hour or so in church every week, then nothing? Or maybe you only go to Him in the middle of the week for emergencies? Maybe you know someone who doesn't even think He exists, and call themselves an atheist. There are all kinds of conditions of the heart that either offend or displease God, and others that make Him pleased. Let's see what we can find in the bible...
Gen. 6:5 - 6 has a displeasing side of man's heart. Man was so wicked with every imagination of the thoughts of his heart, continually on evil, that God was actually sorry He made man. Fortunately for us Noah found grace in His sight! As we know of the rest of the story, Noah and his family were the only ones to survive God's wrath. Even in the days of Jeremiah, the Lord spoke through His prophet in Jer. 17:9 - 10 and said, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings." So between the other side of the flood and the days of Jeremiah, God made note that man's condition of his heart did not change, that it was desperately wicked. But let a man or woman find control over such a heart, receive help from Him to change it, from Christ Jesus, our Mediator, and believe they will receive it. He is faithful in His time; trust Him with all your heart! For as verse 10 alludes to, better to receive the judgment of the saved, than that of one lost!
The Lord, through Moses, instructed the Israelites how to please Him in Deut. 11:13 -14, 18. He wanted them to obey His commandments, and love Him with all their hearts and souls, and told them He would reward them with rain in due season, good harvests, wine, and even to take care of their cattle's need for grass! So here we learn that God equates obedience with love, and rewards it with good things for those who comply.
Consider Hannah in 1 Sam. 2:1 - 10, 21; the woman sang a song of rejoicing in the Lord's holiness, knowledge, power, and judgment, and how did God respond? He rewarded her that she no longer was barren, but bore three sons and two daughters, using her as an example for fervent prayer, obedience, worship, and devotion to family. Her heart was in the right place with him, and He rewarded her well, didn't He?
Then there is to be considered the house of Eli and his sons in 1 Sam. 2:22 - 36. The Lord God knew the heart of Eli, that he was aware of what his sons were doing dishonoring God with the women of the congregation and in other such matters, and while Eli told his sons that they were of no good report and told them to stop, he made no further moves against his sons for their behavior which dishonored the Lord, and in this he proved to God that his heart was more for his sons than the Lord, and for this sin, the punishment was foretold to Eli by the prophet who told him that his priestly family would come to destruction. Oh, how God tries the hearts of men! (Ps. 7:9)
1 Sam. 7:3 has Samuel pleading with Israel; And Samuel spake unto all the house of Israel, saying, "If ye do return unto the Lord with all your hearts, then put away the strange gods and Ashtaroth from among you, and prepare your hearts unto the Lord, and serve him only: and He will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines." The bible is full of the Lord's counsel; if we are out of step with it, our punishment may be "a season long", or take up a period of time. If our heart is not with the Lord, and we have made something a false god in His place, then our punishment is just, as the Lord is just. However, if we return to the Lord, come to our senses, and put God back in His rightful place in our hearts, then He will forgive and may deliver us from our punishment, just as He did in this instance. Heb. 12:5 - 8 says this of God's punishment when we let our hearts stray; "And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, my son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of Him: For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons." So in 1 Sam. 7:4, the children of Israel put away the Canaanite fertility gods and goddesses, and wisely so. Then the Lord kept the Philistines away from the Israelites all the days of Samuel! So we, too, may be rewarded for repentance and returning our hearts to His rightful ownership.
Oh, the qualities and colors of the heart; Ps. 51:10 has David asking God for a clean heart. You see, he had committed adultery with Bath-sheba, and worse, he had her husband killed to protect him and her from being found out by Uriah of her pregnancy to David, and about a year had gone by before David finally caved in and confessed to God. Not that God didn't know already, for we know of His omniscience. But the way it works is that our loving Father is waiting for us when we commit sins to confess to Him, to admit that we agree we made a mistake, committed a transgression, and then He displays His great mercy and forgives us our sin to His glory! If we find ourselves in a sin we seem hardpressed to get rid of, it is good to be like David and confess it to God, and ask Jesus to help us be rid of repeating it! Then the renewal of a right spirit will be within us.
Ps. 138:1 has David praising God with his whole heart. He challenges the reliability in false gods, pagan idols, in putting God in all his praise. Oh, that we should always have this type of heart each and every time God answers prayer. Consider the ten lepers of Luke 17:12 - 19: "And as He entered into a certain village, there met Him ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off: And they lifted up their voices, and said, 'Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.' And when He saw them, He said unto them, ‘Go shew yourselves unto the priests.’ And it came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed. And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, And fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks: and he was a Samaritan. And Jesus answering said, 'Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine? There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger.’ And He said unto him, ‘Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole.'" See how the leper, and yet a Samaritan, gave his heart to God with thanks for His mercy? I have thanked Him so much after Remy's total recovery from her brain aneurysm, and even after her first surgery, because she lived by His grace!
How different are the types of hearts that there are! Ps. 147:3 has it, "He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds." Is your heart broken, and do you go to Him for healing? A death in the family, especially someone close, and even some friends are closer than family! David also wrote in Ps. 51:17, "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise." If one's heart is humbled by guilt, and penitent for sin(s) committed, God faithfully forgives and heals the heart, that it might fly once more in songs of praise to Him!
Ps. 3:5 has written, "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding." Among Christians this is famous for meaning that God is in control. Know the old "fall back and I'll catch you" game? With Christ, that's for real! The devil may attack you with anything, even what you see in black and white, trying to drive a wedge between you and God. Ponder James 1:2 - 7; "My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord." The devil uses diverse temptations where our understanding doesn't make sense nor matter. Job knew that. He lost his children and all he owned, and on top of that, he got a bad case of the boils. Neither his wife nor his friends knew what was happening to him, and all they could offer him was bad advice, and yet, his faith never waivered through his bad season of temptation to "curse God and die", and the Lord rewarded him in the end. In Job's case, the devil afflicted the material things he had, but keep an open mind that the devil can attack on a mental level; only trust with all your heart indeed in Jesus!
There is a kind of heart that is very difficult to attain, but blessed is he that has it; 1 Kings 8:60 - 61 says, "That all the people of the earth may know that the Lord is God, and that there is none else. Let your heart therefore be perfect with the Lord our God, to walk in his statutes, and to keep his commandments, as at this day." Marvelous is the person who attains this at an early age, because the bible is a large tome, and many are His commandments, laws, policies and statutes. Not only must the individual ambitious to attain this state memorize all His wants of us, but they must also apply all to their daily life. It is unquestionable I have a heart for Jesus, but perfect I am not. For I indeed stumble as to my imperfections, although I pray daily, at least once each day, if not more, that He guide me and protect me.
Jer. 29:13 - 14 also addresses a matter of the heart that applied to Israel in his day, but also still applies to us today. "And ye shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall search for Me with all your heart. And I will be found of you', saith the Lord: 'and I will turn away your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations, and from all the places whither I have driven you', saith the Lord; 'and I will bring you again into the place whence I caused you to be carried away captive." Often an unbeliever finds themselves captive of their worldly troubles, and they are enough that they cannot bear them. At that time, they can call on Him, an Advocate whom they can trust, and search for Him with all their heart, and He will be found of them!
Can one imagine that the heart can be unclean more so than the hands? Matt. 15:18 - 20 has it, "But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man." As was written at the beginning of this message, so it remains, from the Old Testament into the New. The heart of a wicked person is dirty down to the soul! How good for them that we are encouraged, yea, even commanded, to pray for them, that they might find God (or is it the other way around?), and wash them clean in the blood of our Savior, Christ Jesus!
In Matt. 22:36 - 38 God made the heart with a duty to perform, according to Jesus' partial quotation of the Shema (Deut. 6:5); "...Jesus said unto him, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind...'" Luke 10:25 - 28 has a similar version of the same thing. Those of us who are saved and know Christ as our Savior attempt this as best we can, and isn't that all He can ask, knowing our imperfections? So many of us didn't start out this way, but blessed are they who end up this way! As each of us come to realize this, "...Thy will be done on earth..." becomes the reality He meant it to be!
To love the Lord with all your heart is to obey Him, and He asks you to believe with all your heart to righteousness in Rom. 10:1 - 11.
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