Guarding Our Heart

The new movie “Avengers: Age of Ultron” is about a team of super heroes who are defending the earth from a highly advanced artificial intelligence named Ultron and his robot armies who are out to exterminate the human race.  In the final climactic scene of the movie, all 8 Avengers are in a united explosive effort to prevent Ultron from accessing a detonator that would release a meteor to earth and destroy humanity.  The Avengers use all their strength and abilities to valiantly defend the source of what would be the destruction of humanity.

We have an enemy who is making every effort to gain access to our heart and destroy us.  1 Peter 5:8 says, “be watchful.  (Our) adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.  Resist him”.  Satan’s point of attack in our lives is our heart.  If Satan’s target is our heart then what are we supposed to do?

READ: Proverbs 4:23

Since we have an ENEMY who wants to DESTROY us, our heart must be valiantly DEFENDED!  Just like the Avengers put every effort into defending the detonator from their enemy, we must put every effort into defending our heart from our enemy.  The words “keep” and “vigilance” combine to communicate the idea of being a watchman on guard defending a fortress against an enemy.  This is no casual security guard or a mall cop, but a soldier at war. What are some ways Satan tries to access our heart that we must defend?

We must valiantly defend our heart with our EARS (Proverbs 17:4) – Do you remember hearing a cuss word for the first time?  It’s always a bit unnerving when your child comes home from school and tells you about what they “heard” at school whether a cuss word, a crude joke, or a lie.  It’s unnerving because any evil that we hear has the potential of taking root in our heart.  Why?  Because hearing about wickedness and mischief awakens our sin nature.  According to Proverbs 17:4, an evildoer “listens” to wickedness and a liar “gives ear” to a mischievous tongue.  Our sin nature’s ears are “tuned in” to evil.  Our choices of what we allow our ears to hear in music, conversation, and media is one way to defend our hearts from Satan’s attack. When we choose to hit the “mute” button on wickedness and evil the sin nature of our heart is deafened.

We must valiantly defend our heart with our EYES (Ps 101:3) – The word “worthless” means wicked or morally objectionable.  We are bombarded by “worthless” images in our world today.  Our culture gives us unlimited access to graphic violent, crude, sexual, and perverted visual content.  Psalm 101:3 says that we must choose to “blind” ourselves to anything “worthless” by not intentionally putting anything wicked or evil in front of our eyes.  Our choices of what we allow are eyes to look at in magazines, movies, and internet sites is another way to defend our hearts from Satan’s attack.

We must valiantly defend our heart with our MIND (Phil 4:8; 2 Cor. 10:5) – “Get your mind out of the gutter”.  That’s a phrase that we hear when our thinking is evil or wicked.  There are simply thoughts we must not allow to enter or stay in our minds.  Philippians 4:8 provides us with a standard for what we should allow to enter into and stay in our minds, “whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellence, or worthy of praise.”  2 Cor. 10:5 tells us what to do with any other wandering thought that enters into our mind, we are to, “take every thought captive to obey Christ.”  Any and every thought that wanders through our mind must captured and brought (or dragged) into the presence of Christ.  It is Christ, then, who makes the decision as to whether the thought is allowed to stay or go.  If a thought is something that Jesus would want us to think about, keep it, if a thought is not something that Jesus would want us to think about, reject it . . . that way it never has a chance to impact our heart!

CONCLUSION
Are we on watch valiantly defending our heart against Satan?  If not, we are like superheroes who sit idly by and do nothing to defend ourselves against the enemy.  Our hearts need guarding.  If we are not watchful with our ears, our eyes, and our minds, Satan WILL enter unhindered and devour our heart and our entire life with it.  It’s time to be watchful, resist him, and guard the most important part of who we are . . . our heart!

God's Word in Our Heart

Rules are important.  There are rules in almost every aspect of life.  Without rules athletic competitions, classrooms, and entire societies would be in constant chaos and disorder.  Rules set the standard for actions and behaviors that are expected and acceptable in any given environment.  There are consequences for not playing by the rules or living according to the law.  God’s Word is the “rule book” for life.  In God’s Word we are given God’s standards of what is right and what is wrong.  Whenever we live according to God’s rules, life works, and whenever we don’t live according to God’s rules, life does not work.

The Old Testament law is made up of hundreds of relational, social, and civil “rules”.  The most well-known of these rules are the 10 commandments.  According to Jewish tradition there are 613 “rules” or commandments in the law including 248 “positive” commandments, things that we are to do, and 365 “negative” commandments, things that we are not to do.  God gave all of these rules that we might know how to live in right relationship with Him and each other.

Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible, 176 individual verses.  Psalm 119 refers to God’s Word 165 times with 8 different words including law (25), testimony (23), way (4), precept (21), statute (22), commandment (23), rule (17), and word (30).  It’s overwhelmingly obvious that Psalm 119 is a poetic prayer of heart desiring God and wanting to be saturated with God’s Word.  A PASSIONATE HEART for God’s Word creates a PASSIONATE HEART for God!  How does our passion for God’s Word inspire our passion for God?

Psalm 119:1-16

A passionate heart for God’s Word PRAISES God (Psalm 119:7) – Whether privately or corporately, praising God is an appropriate response to what we learn about who God is and what He has done through His Word.  The word “praise” means to express gratitude or thanksgiving.  Therefore, to praise God means expressing our gratefulness and thankfulness to God.  As God reveals more of Himself to us through His Word our desire to praise Him will grow.  As God reveals more of what He has done for us through His Word our desire to praise Him will increase.  As God reveals more of how we are to live to us through His Word our desire to praise Him will abound.  Spending time in God’s Word is marked by a life of praise for God!

A passionate heart for God’s Word SEEKS God (Psalm 119:10) – Life is a journey, and rules are like a highly visible, well-lit path that leads us in the right direction.  Going off the path makes the journey hard and dangerous.  Staying on the path makes the journey easy and safe.  A well-marked path is necessary in life in order to keep us from wandering off into the dark wilderness.  Where do we find such a path for the journey of life?   Psalm 119:105 says, “your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path”.  In the journey of life, God’s Word provides us with an illuminated next step.  When we seek God’s Word we are ultimately seeking God’s guidance, direction, and will for each and every step on the path of our life.

A passionate heart for God’s Word does not SIN against God (Psalm 119:11) – In Matthew 6:45 Jesus said “the good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good.”  How do we store an ever increasing amount of good treasure in our hearts?  By filling it up with God’s Word!  When we store God’s Word, His rules, His statutes, His precepts, His laws, His commandments, in our hearts we will produce the fruit of righteousness and eliminate the bad fruit of sin.  The best way to eliminate sin from our life is not to try harder to not sin, but rather to fill our hearts to the point of overflowing with God’s Word!

CONCLUSION
Psalm 119:111 says, “Your testimonies are my heritage forever, for they are the joy of my heart.”  Spending time with God by reading His Word should be one of the greatest joys of our heart.  It is not a joy because we learn new rules to obey or disobey, but because it brings us closer to the One who revealed Himself to us.  Where do we experience joy in life?  Is it in taking all the right turns on the path of life?  Or is it in relating with the One who is walking along the path of life with us?  May our passion for God’s Word ignite a passion for God Himself!

Good in Our Heart

Apples, oranges, bananas, grapes, watermelon, cantaloupe, etc.  There is a wide variety of fruit, and yet they all have one thing in common, they are meant to be enjoyed!  Our families taste buds enjoys strawberries more than any other fruit.  Unlike many foods that our children complain and grumble about, when strawberries are brought to the table everyone makes their excitement known.  God desires for us to bear fruit with our lives for the blessing and enjoyment of others as well.  The fruit of our lives will either leave a sweet or rotten taste in the mouths of others.  What type of fruit is your life producing?

READ: Luke 6:43-45

Although we are all born “bad apples”, it is possible for the fruit of our lives to change. A transformed heart where the Spirit of God dwells has a new supernatural ability to produce good fruit.  With God living inside of us we have a good heart, and a GOOD heart produces GOOD fruit!  Galatians 5:22 says, “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control.”  When God dwells inside our hearts, when He is our treasure, our lives will overflow with righteousness that is designed for others to taste and enjoy.  What types of good fruit comes out of our lives as a result of having a good heart?  

READ: 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17

Paul prays that God would establish the Thessalonian’s hearts.  The word “establish” means to cause someone to become stronger in the sense of being more firm or unchanging.  It’s like anchoring a fence post in the ground with cement so that it can’t move.  God is at work establishing our hearts for two specific purposes . . .

A God-established heart produces good WORKS (2 Thes. 2:17) – Most of us are not fans of work.  Work is exhausting, boring, tedious, and hard.  And yet, God create us to work (Gen. 2:15).  One significant purpose of our lives is doing work that not only benefits us but others as well.  Bearing the fruit of good works is hard, and yet, God is the one who gives us the strength to do this work day after day after day.  Titus 3:8, 14 says that we are to, “devote (ourselves) to good works. These things are excellent and profitable for people . . . so as to help cases of urgent need, and not be unfruitful”.  Our lives produce good fruit when we do something that profits someone else. Our lives produce good fruit when do something to helps satisfy a need in someone else’s life.  Such good works require the hard work of self-sacrifice, unselfishness, and humility, but the God who dwells in our heart will give us all the strength and endurance we need to do them and continue doing them!

A God-established heart produces good WORDS (2 Thes. 2:17) – According to James 3:10 our tongue has unlimited potential to bless or curse others. We all know and understand that our words set the tone of our relationships with others.  Bearing the fruit of good words will bring encouragement, inspiration, and joy to those who hear.  Ephesians 4:29 says, “let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.”  In any and every situation we are in, we must be careful to use our words for the purpose of building others up and never tearing them down.  God wants to speak good through you into the lives of others, He can’t do it when our words are rotten.

CONCLUSION
Luke 8:15 says, “as for that in the good soil, they are those who, heart the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience.”   Those whose hearts have received the word of God, those whom have received a spiritual heart transplant, those in whom the Spirit of God dwells, will bear good fruit with their lives.  It will be natural outgrowth of who we are.  In Christ, we are no longer bad trees who can only bear bad fruit, we are good trees who bear good fruit.  Goodness is one of the marks of a changed life.  And the fruit of a changed life will have a deep impact on the lives of all those around them.  What good godly fruit are you bearing in life that puts your good heart on display?

God Dwells In Our Heart

My wife Marianne and I adopted our daughter Sarah from Guatemala.  Sarah was born to a single mother who did not have the physical or financial stability to raise her.  Her mother gave her up and she was placed in an orphanage called Eagle’s Nest after she was born in Solola, Guatemala.  She lived at Eagle’s Nest for 10 months before we were able to bring her home July of 2008.  Before Sarah was adopted, she was in the vulnerable position of being without the provision and protection of a mother or father.  If we had not pursued and adopted Sarah, she would not have been part of a family and vulnerable to much suffering and difficulty.

READ: Galatians 4:3-7

God dwells inside the hearts of all those who are His ADOPTED children!  Aren’t all human beings God’s children?  The answer is NO!  By sin, we all have chosen to walk out on our Creator’s provision and protection and made ourselves spiritual orphans; helpless, hopeless, and vulnerable to the wrath of God.  Ephesians 2:1-2 says, “(we) were dead in our trespasses and sins, . . . and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”  While in such vulnerable circumstances, it was not us who pursued God, it was God who pursued us by sending His Son to redeem us from slavery to sin and adopt us into His family.  What happens to those who have been adopted as God’s children? 

God’s adopted children are given the Holy Spirt by which we are able to call God “FATHER” (Gal. 4:6) – Sarah has been in our home now for 7 years.  During those years she has come to think and know of us as dad and mom.  When she wants to talk to us, tell us something, or get our attention she calls us “mommy” and “daddy”.  Does that make any sense?  Why would she do that?  She thinks of us, looks at us, and calls us father and mother because we pursued her at the most vulnerable moment in her life and adopted her and made her a permanent member of our family.  As a result of our adoption of Sarah, she has a sure place in her heart by which she knows us as her mother and father.  At the moment when we were most vulnerable, God sent His Son Jesus Christ for the purpose of adopting us and making us a permanent member of His family.  As a result of our adoption by God, we are given the Holy Spirit by which we have the supernatural desire and ability to know that God is our Father and we are His children!

God’s adopted children are HEIRS to the same INHERITANCE as His Son Jesus Christ (Gal. 4:7) – Sarah is privileged to the best of everything Marianne and I possess.  She is ours and we will give to her every material and spiritual blessing that we are capable of as parents.  Each and every one of our children, because of their relationship with us as our sons and daughters have special rights to everything that Marianne and I possess.  Whatever inheritance that Marianne and I have to give is reserved for OUR heirs who are OUR children.  Jesus Christ is God’s Son and therefore an heir, and we too, as adopted sons and daughters of God are heirs as well.  Romans 8:17 says, “the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs-heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.”  According to 1 Peter 1:4 as heirs we have hope in an eternal inheritance that is “imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept for (us) in heaven!”

CONCLUSION
In Ephesians 3:14-19 Paul prays that, “according to the riches of (God’s) glory He may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith . . . to comprehend . . . what is the breadth and the length and the height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.”  When we are adopted, we know we are loved!  When God is our Father, we will have a strong sense inside of us that we are important and valuable, no longer hopeless, helpless, and vulnerable.  Have you accepted God's invitation to adopt you into His family?  Do you KNOW beyond a shadow of a doubt that God loves you and that He is your Heavenly Father?  If not, it’s time to put your faith in Jesus Christ and become a child of God!

God Transforms Our Heart

My wife Marianne has an uncle who was born with a life threatening heart condition that doctors didn’t believe would allow him to live past 2 years old.  At the age of 48 he received a heart transplant.  As a result of someone’s death, Marianne’s uncle’s diseased heart was replaced with a new healthy heart and he is still alive today at the age of 71.  It was a new heart that allowed Marianne’s uncle to avoid death and experience life.

We all have an eternal-life threatening heart condition called sin.  Our only hope to escape death is a supernatural heart transplant.  We need someone to die in order that we might obtain a new spiritually and eternally healthy heart.  The good news is that God is a spiritual cardiologist!  Nearly 600 years before Jesus was born God made His spiritual surgical plans known through the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel to the nation of Israel.

READ: Jeremiah 31:31, 33; Ezekiel 36:26-27

God transforms our lives by removing our OLD heart and giving us a NEW heart!  The new covenant God promised to us through the prophets was nothing less than a spiritual heart transplant!  Jesus Christ, who loved and obeyed God perfectly, exchanged His perfect heart for our sinful heart when He died on the cross.  How do we get a spiritual heart transplant and what happens when we get a new heart?  In describing the post heart transplant of the Corinthians who had believed in Jesus Christ Paul wrote in . . .

READ:  2 Corinthians 3:3-18

God transforms us by putting His SPIRIT in our heart (2 Cor. 3:3, 6, 8) – Have you ever struggled with wanting to do what God wanted you to do?  What about wanting to want to do what God wants you to do?  By placing His Spirit into our hearts God miraculously replaces our old sinful wants and desire with His wants and desires.  It is God’s Spirit dwelling inside our hearts that gives us new thoughts, new attitudes, new intentions, new motivations, new words, and new actions.  Without God’s Spirit in our hearts, we will continue in a life of unforgiven sin.  This transformation happens, “when one turns to the Lord”.  At the moment we repent of the sin in our heart and put faith in Jesus Christ, God does His surgical work of removing our diseased heart of sin through forgiveness and putting His Spirit into our hearts.

God transforms us into the GLORY of the image of JESUS CHRIST (2 Cor. 3:16-18) – Just as a dimmer switch can increase the brightness of a lightbulb in order to illuminate a room, God is working in our hearts to increase the “brightness” of His image in our lives in order to illuminate the world.  Amazingly, the “brightness” of our lives has the divine potential to be greater than the sun.  How?  Romans 8:28 says that, “those whom He foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son”.  Our maximum brightness are the very thoughts, attitudes, intentions, motivations, words, and actions of Jesus Christ Himself!  As a result of giving us a new heart, little by little, one characteristic at a time, God gradually increases the brightness of Christlikeness that comes out of lives.   In ever increasing amounts, our lives should reflect more and more of the thoughts, attitudes, words, and actions of Jesus Christ.  

CONCLUSION
2 Corinthians 4:6 says, “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”   The God of the universe, who created light, wants the light of His glory to dwell inside of us. Without Him in our lives, we have no other choice but to be darkness.  A transformed heart starts with a belief in the light of Jesus Christ (John 1:1-5, 9-14). Have you allowed the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ to shine in your life?  God’s glory shone most brightly through Jesus Christ on the cross.  The reason Jesus died was to forgive our sins, but also so that God could transplant His righteous heart for our sinful heart so that we might shine like the Son (pun intended)!

Evil in Our Heart

A couple years ago my kids and I tried to grow a few vegetables in a small 4 foot by 4 foot raised garden bed.  It was more for the experience than the expectation that we might get anything out of it, but we wanted to give it a shot, so we planted some carrots and green beans. We had no idea what we were doing, but the one thing that we understood and got right is that when we put a carrot seed in the ground, it was supposed to produce a carrot, and it did. When we put a green bean seed in the ground, it was supposed to produce a green bean, and it did.  This simple principle of God’s created world is true of the “fruit” that comes out of our lives as well.  

READ: Luke 6:43-45

Just as the fruit produced by a tree proves the type of tree it is, what comes out of our LIVES proves what is in our HEART!  A facebook friend recently posted a quote from Anne Frank which says, "In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart."  While I think we would all love for this to be true, evidenced by all of our behavior, it is not.  The Bible is pretty clear that we are all born bad apples!  Romans 3:23 says, “all have sinned, and fallen short of the glory of God.”  Ecclesiastes 9:3 says, “the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live.”  No matter how good we would like to think we are, we are all a bad tree.  How do we know if there is evil in our heart?

An EVIL heart is going to produce EVIL behavior (Luke 6:43) – A detective investigates a crime in order to compile evidence to determine the truth about something. Without solid evidence no one could be considered guilty of a crime.  If a detective wanted to discover the truth of what is in our hearts, where would he investigate?  According to God’s Word he would look at the words and actions that come out of our lives.  Matthew 15:18 and Mark 7:21-22 combine to make quite a list of evil behaviors Jesus says give evidence of the evil that resides in our hearts, “out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander . . . coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, pride.”  Based on the facts of this evidence, we are all guilty of having evil and sin in our hearts.  It appears that the opposite of what Anne Frank thinks is true, in spite of any good things we might do, the Bible gives clear evidence that people are really bad at heart.  Just like a seed planted grows into a plant or fruit, the evil that is planted in our hearts grows into evil attitudes, words, and actions!  

Our behavior is evil because we TREASURE it in our hearts (Luke 6:45) – Marianne and I have a small safe in our house where we store a few of our most important and valuable belongings.  The safe protects these important and valuable belongings from being stolen or damaged.  Matthew 6:21 says, “for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  Our heart is the place where we store and protect the things that we “treasure” in life because of their importance and value.  The sad truth is that instead of storing good, we all store evil and sin in our hearts.  Whether words, attitudes, or actions, sin comes out of our lives because we have got it locked up tight in the safe place of our heart.  Whether we are willing to admit it or not, we enjoy our sin, many times deceiving ourselves into thinking that our happiness depends on it.  And so, we store it deep down in our hearts, often times where no one else can see.  God designed us to treasure Him and His commands, but sadly, we treasure our sin and evil even more.

CONCLUSION

Hebrews 3:12 says, “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.”   Our hearts will remain evil as long as there is any unbelief in Jesus Christ.  No amount of good words, attitudes, or actions will make our heart good.  We can even do more good than evil in our lives, but that does not make our hearts good.  God desires a good heart, one that is completely empty of sin and evil.  The only way to obtain a good heart is to give God the key to our heart, confess our sin to Him, and put faith in Jesus Christ for forgiveness.  Have you removed the evil from within your heart through belief in Jesus Christ?

God Tests the Heart

What is the hardest test you’ve ever taken?  The hardest tests I remember taking were in a college class called History of the Restoration Movement.  The tests always involved lots of facts, dates, and more information than I could ever fit into my brain at one time.  Nobody likes taking a test.  Taking a test requires lots of study and hard work.  Taking a test is nerve wracking.  As hard and time consuming test taking is, they are necessary in order to display whether we genuinely have learned whatever information we were expected to put in our mind.  Without taking a test there is no way of knowing whether we understand and grasp the information we have been taught.  When it comes down to it, test taking proves or disproves what we know.

Just as a teacher tests our minds in order to prove what we know, God TESTS our heart in order to PROVE who the REAL us is!  Proverbs 17:3 says, “the crucible is for silver, the furnace is for gold, and the Lord tests hearts.”  The intense heat of a crucible or a furnace is applied to precious metals in order to burn away and eliminate any impurities, anything that is NOT silver or gold.  God takes the human heart through a similar process to eliminate what is not intended to be there and see if the love and obedience He designed to be there genuinely exists there.  When it comes down to it, testing is God’s way of authenticating who we are.  How and why does God test our heart?

READ:  Deuteronomy 8:1-20

God tests our heart by bringing HUMBLING circumstances into our life (Deut. 8:2-3) – God applied “heat” to the lives of the people of Israel by leading them away from their prosperity in Egypt and leaving them hungry in the wilderness.  Their “hunger” was a humbling circumstance intended to expose the reality of their dependence, or lack of dependence, on God.  The Israelites were not to depend on bread, but rather the word of God!  God leads us into humbling times of sadness, disappointment, struggle, trial, frustration, sickness, and even persecution for the purpose of seeing whether our belief in and our dependence on Him is real.  We pass the test if we go through these times without grumbling, complaining, or blaming God, and instead patiently loving, trusting, depending, and remaining obedient to Him.

God tests our heart by DISCIPLINING us (Deut. 8:5) – Disciplining my children is never fun.  Whether I apply discipline through training or instruction or enforce consequences or punishment, disciple is painful.  And yet, discipline is for my children’s good.  Discipline involves creating undesirable circumstances in order to discourage them from doing something foolish or wrong.  Just like I discipline my children, God disciplines us!  God applies the “heat” of discipline in our lives in order to give us the opportunity to eliminate foolishness and sin from our hearts.  Discipline is a gracious and merciful effort on God’s part to inspire repentance and change.

God tests our heart so that we REMEMBER and not FORGET His provision (Deut. 8:2, 11, *14, 18-19) – When is it most easy to forget that God is all we ever really need to be satisfied?  When our lives are easy, comfortable, healthy, and enjoyable.  Humbling circumstances and discipline provide important opportunities for us to “remember” God and not “forget” Him.  Whether we are rich or poor, healthy or sick, happy or sad, loved or lonely, we must remember that with God in our lives, we have all we need in life to be satisfied.  God allows these opportunities sometimes (and for many, often) in order to remind us that HE is all we should ever really want or need!  Difficult circumstances should not push us further away from God, but closer to Him.

CONCLUSION
Psalm 26:2 says, “prove me, O Lord, and try me; test my heart and my mind.”   This is a dangerous prayer but a necessary prayer.  We must be willing to go through times of testing in order for our love and obedience for God to be proved genuine.  It is through testing that not only does God proves the genuineness of our heart for Him, but we get to see the genuineness of our own heart.  Be ready, in His time and in His way, God will test our heart to prove that our love and obedience toward Him is real.  This is one test we do not want to fail!