Prayer
Before you read, I invite you to pray this prayer based on Psalm 119:170 & 171.
Lord, hear me as I call to You:
Teach me Your decrees,
deliver me from sin, as You have promised,
and cause my lips and my life to overflow with Your praise,
Amen.
Briefly prepare your heart in silence, and ask the Holy Spirit to awaken your awareness to the voice of God, coming to you through His Word.
Reading
In an era when outward observance of rules and regulations was everything, Jesus and His teaching were revolutionary. Rather than focussing on the outward observance of religious cleanliness rules created by the rabbis, Jesus turned His attention to what really mattered. The state of the human heart!
Instead of caring so much about whether their diet was kosher, or whether their hands had been ceremonially washed three times under water poured from the right, ceremonially clean jug, Jesus taught His disciples to pay attention to their hearts. That was the crux of “true religion”.
According to Jesus, the state of the human heart will determine whether the words we speak and the way we live are “clean” and pleasing in the sight of God. Our words and actions are inevitable fruits of the state of our hearts. When we find ourselves acting in ways that are out of step with the character and holiness of God, that is a sign that our hearts are not pure.
Charles Spurgeon classically wrote:
“‘Murders’ begin not with the dagger, but with the malice of the soul. ‘Adulteries and fornications’ are first gloated over in the heart before they are enacted by the body. The heart is the cage from whence these unclean birds fly forth.”
The solution to the outward signs of heart-impurity is not to try harder to make changes to our outward behaviour. The answer is to press deeper into one’s personal relationship with Jesus, to genuinely repent of one’s sinful hearts and to seek His heart-transforming power! Only Jesus can bring His resurrection power to bear on our hearts and change them from selfish to selfless, from lustful to loving, from greedy to generous, from murderous to merciful, from deceptive to truthful, from cruel to kind. Only Jesus can truly save and transform the human heart!
Contemplation
Please take time to ponder what Jesus has commanded us. Turn these declarations over in your mind. Keep them in mind throughout the day and live in step with Your King, Jesus.
As a disciple of Jesus Christ,
- I will watch my life for signs of heart-impurity.
- I will repent of all known sin and seek Jesus for the heart-transformation that only He can work in me.
Lord Jesus, deliver me from sin, as You have promised,
change me from the inside out,
and cause my lips and my life to overflow with purity and praise!
Amen.
Dave's Diary 
Leave a comment