‘Above all else, guard your heart, for from it flow the springs of life.’
(Proverbs 4:23) The heart of the matter is… your heart! The angel said of Jesus that he would ‘save people from their sins.’ (Mt 1:21) Sometimes sin is the last thing on our mind, but it must be addressed on a personal level, or our faith means nothing. We’re told in Titus 1:16, ‘They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good.’ Many a ‘religious’ man throughout history – a church-goer, a tither – has been ‘detestable, disobedient, and unfit for doing anything good.’ Why? Because of hypocrisy, which Jesus warned about often. (Luke 12:1) Because he/she did not actually ‘repent’ of their sin before the Lord, ‘… in spirit and truth.’ (John 4:24) People came to Jesus, looking for this or that ‘thing’ they might do, for spiritual or religious credit. But Jesus would address the heart. Like with the ‘rich young ruler’ in Mark 10. Jesus loved him (stated explicitly and poignantly in verse 21). But nonetheless Jesus could see that wealth was in the way of his relationship with God. There was a heart issue deep down, and the heart is what Jesus came to claim. So he called this man not only to sell his possessions, but to give away the money he made from the sales. Not to give more to church, not to be more generous, but to actually get rid of it once for all. When sin is in the mix, Jesus calls for us to ‘repent’, and make sacrifices to rid ourselves of the sin – no matter the value of the commodity. Jesus did not always address money issues with people. But he always addressed the personal issue of sin in people’s lives – money or envy or immorality. No matter how poor or victimized a person had been, Jesus asked them to make a ‘heart’ commitment to turn away from sin in their lives. This is called repentance. Two accounts of this ‘call’ of Christ that strike me deeply, are found in John 5:1-14, and John 8:1-11. You can read these when you have a few minutes… The key point here, my friends, is that the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth, ‘sees’ and cares about the heart. He bled and died for the heart of people, their soul. We need to live this, and we need to share this. There is no healing between a person and God, without repentance and faith. There is no healing of the land without integrity in the secret places of the heart and activity of man. (Mt 6:4,6,18) ‘No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.’ (1 John 3:6) ‘Does he who fashioned the ear not hear? Does he who formed the eye not see?’ (Psalm 94:9)
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AuthorPeter Walker. Archives
March 2022
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