Guard Your Heart

Today I had a conversation with a man who was struggling to understand his fairly new bride. He has a genuine heart to love her, to meet her needs and to grow their relationship in the Lord. Yet he is constantly faced with the feeling that he is insensitive and does everything wrong because she “has a logical argument for everything that makes complete sense.” The problem is, logic that is based on feelings is not really logic at all. It can result in a justification for those feelings that makes sense, but if it is not based on fact, on truth, then it is not really logic. Feelings change. Truth does not.

We have all been given, or possibly given to others, the advice to “just follow your heart.” That is stupid advice! Really. It is. Jeremiah 17:9 (NIV) says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?”  That is truth. Our hearts, which are more often than not controlled by our feelings, lie to us. They lie! They tell us that our perception of a person or situation is true because we see it that way. But our perception is skewed by our experiences, our desires, our self-esteem, and a hundred other possible things. We cannot trust our hearts to tell us the truth, let alone lead us in the right path.

So why, then, does the Lord tell us repeatedly that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength? If we can’t trust our hearts, if they lie to us, how can we use this flawed instrument to love the Lord? Well, as Proverbs 4:23 (NLT) says, we must “Guard [our hearts] above all else, for it determines the course of [our lives].” A heart that is well guarded can be a precious instrument for the Lord and His service.

How do we do that? The Word of God is a protection for our naturally evil-bent hearts. Psalm 119:11 says, “I have hidden your Word in my heart that I might not sin against you.” In fact, I would recommend reading all of Psalm 119. Over and over it tells us that God’s Word is a protection, a guide, a light, a fortress for our hearts. That is because truth, God’s truth, helps us to see and respond to the world and the people in it in a way that is based on reality, not feelings or perception.

So often people see God’s Word as a limiting force. But the truth is, it gives us freedom-freedom from wrong choices, from the consequences of sin, from broken relationships, from those things that would seek to steal our joy. Psalm 119:32 says, “I run in the path of your commands, for you have set my heart free.” Picture that! Think about how it would feel to live your life free of all the sin, the feelings, the misunderstandings, the broken relationships that burden you. Get into the Word of God. ALL of it! We can’t pick and choose what we want to believe and expect to be free. We believe all of His Word, or we believe none of it. Read it. Know it. Let it guard your heart. And then love Him at full speed!

Grasp What You Have!

Many of my thoughts lately have revolved around the prayers Paul prayed for the churches he loved. Prayers like these:

"I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know Him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you might know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and His incomparably great power for us who believe." (Ephesians 1:17-19a)

"I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge-that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." (Ephesians 3:16-19)

"And this is my prayer; that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ-to the glory and praise of God." (Philippians 1:9-11)

"For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of His will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding." (Colossians 1:9)

Paul's prayers for those he loved were always that they would grasp what they already had! God had done it all. He had given it all. All they had to do was believe it and walk in it. Paul continues in Colossians 1:10-12 to explain why he is praying these things for his friends, "And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please Him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work , growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to His glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light."

My friends, we are exactly the same. We need nothing more than what we already have. we simply need to believe what God has said, what He has already given and promised. When we are able to truly believe, and true belief always results in action that backs it up, our lives will reflect the goodness, blessing, power, endurance, patience, faithfulness and holiness of God. We will look more and more like Him every day. And the world will want what we have. Because we HAVE every spiritual blessing in Christ-EVERYTHING that we need for life and godliness. Grasp it! Believe it! Walk in it! It is yours.

Mental Image: Jesus is a Vacuum

Tonight at church George Guthrie gave a presentation about his time in Israel. Jadon was fascinated that someone he knows got to walk and teach in the same places Jesus did. On the way home, he was asking me about when the temple curtain was torn in two from top to bottom. He asked me why that was such a big deal. I told him that it was because it was a very thick, very tall curtain. It would be impossible for a person to tear it from top to bottom. God tore the curtain that had covered the Most Holy Place and kept it accessible to only one person who had to follow a bunch of rules before he could go in only once a year. Also, it tore when Jesus died, because it is only because of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross that we all have access to God.

Jadon has heard all of that before, but George's presentation somehow made it all more real to him tonight. He thought for a little while and then said, "It's like it's because we are just human and we can't be perfect, so Jesus HAD to be perfect so He could suck up all of our sins. Then, when they are all inside of Him, we can be clean enough to come to God."

I think there will always be a little mental picture of Jesus as a vacuum cleaner in my mind from this point on. The theology of an 11 year old :)

The (Not-So-) Little Battles Come First

Whenever I write a lesson on a Bible story I know well, I spend a lot more time in prayer. Not that every lesson doesn't require much prayer. But it's easy to be so familiar with a story that there is a danger of overlooking the new lessons the Lord may want to teach you. Because of this, I have been obsessed with and seeking God through the story of David and Goliath. Here's what I learned: The preparation David went through while tending sheep and worshiping God and serving the king went well beyond developing his physical ability to fight battles and lead people.

There were multiple mental and emotional battles David had to overcome before he could fight the physical battle against Goliath, and all of the other wars that would follow in the coming years. The first was his insignificance to his father. Not only did his father not think to include him in the anointing ceremony when Samuel came to town (1 Sam. 16:11), he also had no expectation that David could do any good on the battlefield. Jesse simply gave David the jobs of delivering supplies to his brothers and bringing back a report from the battle. Easy. No challenge. Something a young shepherd could handle. Low expectations.

He also had to overcome the jealousy and derision of his brothers. When he got to the battle lines and heard Goliath's challenge, the challenge that had been repeated for forty days, he naturally started asking questions. His brothers responded with anger and lies about David's character. This is a common response when people are jealous or feel threatened. Remember, David's brothers were there when he was anointed king, and they were part of the army that was afraid to fight this giant of a man. Instead of running home to dad, David simply turns his attention to those who would answer his questions.

King Saul's first reaction to David's offer to fight Goliath was to point out what David had lacking in size and stature. He even tried to put his own armor on David to increase his chances of success. Yet David stood confidently in his trust in the Lord and turned down the armor of a king who was willing to surrender his protection to a sure loser rather than step up and fight the battle himself.

Goliath, the enemy of God and Israel, scoffed at him and was offended that this army he threatened every day would send out this scrawny little shepherd by to fight him. Yet David looked him in the eye and accepted the challenge. Nobody who defied his God would scare him away from the job at hand.

Finally, the battle that strikes me the most because it hits closest to my heart, is that David was invisible. He was doing everything the Lord had given him to do, and he was doing it well. People valued the jobs he did, and they enjoyed to results, yet they didn't see David as a person with value in himself. He had been going back and forth between the sheep and King Saul, playing his harp, calming the king's heart, and even becoming one of his armor bearers. He had a face-to-face conversation with Saul about Goliath. Yet, after David had stood in faith and confidence in the Lord and defeated the giant, Saul had to ask who he was, who his father was. We can look back at chapter 16 and see that he had already been given that information. He had benefited from David's service. Yet he never SAW him. David was invisible.

But he was not insignificant, invisible, or too little to God. The God that knew David's heart knew there was no conceit or wickedness there. He knew that David stood in confidence only because he trusted in his God, in his relationship with God, and in the strength that only God provides, knowing that he could not win this battle on his own. He knew that David credited Him with all of his success and protection to this point, both from the lion and the bear as well as his promotion to the king's service. He also knew that David's anger against Goliath was a righteous defense of God's character. And God came through in a mighty way.

If David had given into any of those "little" battles of the mind and heart, he would not have stepped forward in faith. He would not have been privileged to see God work a miracle in battle and prove Himself to the army of Israel and their enemies. And he would not have played a part in the whole amazing thing. Whatever the battle you are facing today (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual), remember that every one of them prepares you for something bigger. If you can stand firm in truth and righteousness in the little things, you will be prepared t do the same for anything. David didn't just have a heart after God's heart in worship. His heart was bent to God's in battle as well. Is yours?