Sin and the Heart

This may surprise you, but I am a sinner. Yes, I belong to Jesus, He has saved me and redeemed me and continues every day to transform me into His image. He has done so much work in my life where sin is concerned. But like every other human being, I was born with a sinful nature and sinful desires. They may be different from the things that tug at you, but sin is a real and present danger for me.
How do we handle our bent toward sin? The Bible has some great advice for us. Here are a few suggestions:
Recognize sin for what it is and don’t make excuses or exceptions for it. (Psalm 51:3-4)
Keep God’s Word close – in your hands, in your mind, and in your heart. (Psalm 119:11)
Keep God closer. (James 4:7-8)
Keep sin-triggers at a distance. Don’t put yourself in positions you know will pull you into sin – whether places, events, movies, T.V. shows, websites, or even people. Take the way out. (1 Corinthians 10:13)
Repent when you do sin. (Acts 3:19).
Pray.
Repeat as often as necessary.
The prayer I find myself returning to again and again is: “Lord, cause me to love you so much that sin has no appeal to me.” I came to that prayer while meditating on Psalm 37:4 “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desire of your heart.” I realized that if God is my delight, then I will desire only Him – and that is a desire He is more than willing to fulfill.
Because it is all a matter of the heart. When the Bible speaks of the heart it is not talking about emotions but of intention. The heart is “the seat of the thoughts, passions, desires, appetites, affections, purposes, and endeavors.” The heart is under our control. It is affected by what we indulge in – whether sin or righteousness. If God is the delight and desire of my heart, I will take no delight in sin and will instead be repulsed by it.
Yes, I have a long way to go, but this is my heart’s desire. Will it be yours too, Beloved? if you love God with all your heart there is no room in your heart to love sin.

The Sovereign Will of God

Sometimes God gives me the devotional early in the morning – sometimes even in my sleep. The message and Scripture are firmly planted in my heart. And sometimes I have to hunt around in my Bible a little before the Spirit highlights something. Today is one of those days.
This morning one verse jumped out at me – and the truth is, it has been jumping out at me for several weeks, but I didn’t realize this was the word until today. Maybe this is just the right time for this message for someone. Maybe me.
In the last chapter of Job’s saga, after 129 statements of His power and authority over creation, the Lord takes a breath, and Job, in humility says, “I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted” (Job 42:2). I felt a nudge from the Spirit but I kept searching. A few pages over another verse sprang to life: “There is no wisdom, no insight, no plan that can succeed against the Lord” (Prov. 21:30). And it all came together.
This is the word today: The Lord God is sovereign. What Job and Solomon said is that God has absolute authority over all things in heaven and earth, including human lives and human history. Yes, we have free will, but God has authority even still. I can’t explain how it works, but I know it does. And what God wills, man cannot break. Oh sure, we can run away or fight Him, but Jonah will tell you, in the end, His plan will prevail.
I count that as great news because God’s will is “good, pleasing, and perfect” (Rom 12:2) and His plan is “to give you hope and a future” (Jer 29:11). Here is where God’s sovereignty comforts me. God has a plan for my life, and satan and people are trying to stand in the way. But God. God will win the day. God will bring His plan to fruition. I know this because the enemy has tried to destroy God’s work in me, but the Lord has rescued me time after time and set me back in His will.
I don’t know who else needs this word today, but God clearly wanted you to hear it – He is the sovereign Lord of heaven and earth – and your life. Receive it and believe it, Beloved. If you are in Christ, everything He declares for your life will succeed. His plan cannot be thwarted.

Acts: The End?

As we bring the book of Acts to a close, Paul and company wash ashore on the island of Malta. They are met with kindness and a warm fire. Paul, gathering firewood, is bitten by a viper, an extremely venomous snake. This is certain death, but Paul shakes the snake from his hand and has no ill effects from the bite. The islanders were amazed and assumed that Paul was a god. The chief official of the island gets word of the miraculous event and welcomes the refugees to his estate. Paul heals the man’s father who was gravely ill and the people send them on their way, refreshed and replenished.
With favorable winds behind them, they continue their journey and the promise of Paul’s Lord is fulfilled. Paul/Saul was chosen to carry the name of Jesus to the Gentile world, including Gentile kings and emperors (9:15). He was reminded of his calling while in prison: “Take courage! As you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify about me in Rome. (23:11). And again during the storm at sea: “Do not be afraid, Paul. You must stand trial before Caesar” (27:24). Finally promise became reality: “And so we came to Rome” (Acts 28:14).
Luke’s account in Acts does not take us into the Roman palace, but we learn that Paul indeed testified in Rome – He declared his innocence – and the gospel. He was allowed a rare measure of freedom and “Boldly and without hindrance, preached the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ” (28:31).
The entire book of Acts is about the power of the Holy Spirit, the sovereignty and providence of God, and the bold and devoted men and women who dedicated – and surrendered – their lives to the gospel of Jesus Christ. You and I are living in the continuing story of Acts. The work of the church is ongoing. We are granted the same Holy Spirit and have the same sovereign God guiding and guarding our steps. What is missing? Why do we not see the results they saw? Because we are not as bold and devoted to the Man, the mission, and the ministry of the gospel.
What will it take for us? The first-century church grew in spite of – or perhaps because of – persecution. The church today will grow stronger and deeper under the same conditions. It is coming. But this is not a reason for fear. It is a reason for preparation. It’s time Beloved. Get your armor on and stand up, stand up for Jesus.

Do You Believe God?

Lately, whenever I “thumb through” my Bible the pages tend to fall open at the same spot – Psalm 106, just as they did this morning. As I read, two verses stand out – like a divine highlighter has marked them. I asked the Lord what He is saying and the Spirit said simply, “Believe.” And God’s message becomes crystal clear.
This Psalm is a “Salvation History” a retelling of Israel’s story – but from God’s perspective. The first verse reads:
“They believed His promises and sang His praises” (v. 12).
This is immediately after their rescue from Egypt through the dry bed of the Red Sea. Pharoah and his entire army were wiped out and they were safe at last. Their faith was on the mountaintop. For a moment.
Across the page the other verse sits in silent judgment:
“They did not believe His promise [and] they grumbled” (v. 24).
Do you see the juxtaposition? Do you see what the Spirit was saying? Everything hinges on believing God. Not just believing in God, as my grammar check says, but believing God. When we believe God, our hearts are filled with praise. When we believe God is who He says He is our spiritual eyes are open and we can see Him in His beauty and glory. And we cannot help but praise Him.
But when we do not believe God, our hearts are filled with bitterness and our spiritual eyes are darkened. We can only see our misery and all we want to do is grumble. Jesus said “Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matt 12:34). If your mouth is full of grumbling, your heart is full of . . . well, I think you can figure that out yourself.
Believe me when I say I’m not pointing fingers or calling anyone out. God sent this word to me first because I’ve seen the condition of my heart lately, and it is not pretty. My belief tank is getting low. So how do I believe God again?
I “take captive every thought and bring [my mind] into submission to Christ” (2 Cor 10:5)
I “renew my mind” by thinking about what is “true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, or praiseworthy” (Rom 12:2; Phil 4:8).
I “set my mind on what the Spirit desires” which is “life and peace” (Rom 8:5,6).
And I stop grumbling and start praising.
Beloved, do you believe God? Do your words show it? What will you do about it?

One Day

I have lived so much of my life for “one day.” One day I will have enough time to . . . One day I can afford . . . One day I can retire and . . . One day I will have . . . One day I will go . . . One day I won’t have to . . . But it seems that one day keeps getting pushed farther and farther away. It can be so discouraging if our hearts are focused on this life and this world that is here now and gone tomorrow. But there is another “one day” that brings me hope and peace and Joy. It is an eternal day and it makes these temporal days easier to bear.
One day I will look in the face of Jesus and I will see that everything I believed was true.
He is good.
He lived a perfect, sinless life.
He is the King of heaven and earth.
He loves me.
He calmed storms around me and in me.
He overcame darkness and evil.
He met my every need.
He made the blind see.
He made the deaf hear.
He made the mute speak.
He made the lame walk.
He made the sick well.
And He made the broken whole.
He ran to meet me on the road back to Him.
He carried me when I couldn’t take another step.
He held me when my heart was breaking.
He raised the dead to life.
He called and anointed me.
He gave me rest.
He brought peace in the middle of chaos.
He brought Joy when I was brokenhearted.
He is everything He claimed to be.
He not only gave me hope but He was my hope.
He made a way when I couldn’t see any way.
He turned this filthy sinner into a spotless saint.
He is the Christ, the Son of the living God.
He prays for me.
He died for me.
He rose from the grave.
He is with me to the end.
And when the end comes, I’ll be with Him forever. And my faith will be proven right.
“For now I see through a glass darkly: but then shall I see face to face. Now I know in part: but then shall I know even as I am known.” (1 Cor. 13:12)
Today I see by faith, and that is enough for me.

Holy Light

“The lamp (light showing the way of truth) of the LORD searches (examines, tracks down) the spirit (breath, life) of a man; it searches out his inmost being (heart, chamber, bedroom, the most intimate part of the heart),” Proverbs 20:27.
When I am searching for something important – keys, wallet, phone – I turn on every available light and look throughout the room. I move things that might be covering up what I’m seeking. I may call for help in my search. I go back to where I’ve already looked, just in case I missed it the first time. I check every corner, hunt through drawers, closets, and shelves, and keep searching with a light in my hand until I find it. The presence of light makes it possible to see what might be hidden. (The older I get the more often I have to go through this routine.)
God has a holy light, a brilliant, powerful light that illumines every corner and crevice of our lives. When we read His Word, He shines that spotlight on you and me, searching our hearts and minds, our thoughts and intentions, our desires and passions, and our actions. At the same time, His Spirit moves everything we use to cover up our sin. He looks far deeper than we even know exists, to the most intimate levels of our being, to the place where He finds the truth about us. His purpose is to locate and root out everything in us that does not meet the perfect standard for His children. This is the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:11).
I need this holy light of truth to examine my life, to track down everything in me that is not conforming to the image of Christ. I need God to search out every offensive way in me (Psalm 139:24). In the deepest part of my heart, there are passions and desires and fears and selfishness – that need to be crucified to Christ Jesus (Col. 3:5; Gal. 5:24) if I am to truly love Him and be a vessel for His glory. I want to be fully open to the Spirit’s examination. I want Him to freely roam throughout my heart, mind, and body and expose me to the core. That is frightening, but it will release me from the bonds of my flesh and the world. Beloved, will you let the Word and the Spirit do a sanctifying work in you?

How to Behave Like a Christian

Okay friends, I hear you. Yes, I’ve said that God isn’t after behavior modification, but then I said that behavior matters. Yet the harder we try to behave like a Christian, the more we stumble. It feels like an impossible scenario. And it is. So how do we do this Christian thing?
Colossians 3 has some excellent advice for us – in fact, in my Bible (NIV) this section is entitled, “Rules for Holy Living.” Paul gives the key right up front: “Set your heart on things above” (v. 1) and “Set your mind on things above” (v. 2). In Scripture both the heart and the mind center around our thoughts. “Set your heart” means “to seek by thinking, meditating, and reasoning.” Likewise, “set your mind” means “to direct one’s mind to a thing.” Our behavior starts with our thoughts.
The heart, in the original Greek, is “the seat of thoughts, passions, desires, appetites, affections . . .” and the mind is the locus of “considering and judging.” The first key is to recognize that we determine our thoughts. We choose what we meditate on and allow to take up valuable space in our hearts and minds. Granted, our thoughts can be triggered by outside forces – advertisers count on that. And lest we forget, the mind is the devil’s favorite playground. But you and I determine what stays in our minds.
One verse I claim often is to “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Cor 10:5). How? By setting our thoughts on things above. By grabbing that errant thought and taking it to Jesus and letting His Spirit direct us rightly. Which brings me to the most crucial point in our quest for living the Christian life – the presence and work of the Holy Spirit. Paul said, “Those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires” (Rom 8:6). That is the conjoining of our minds with the Holy Spirit. Then we will be “controlled by the Spirit . . . [that] lives in us” (v. 9). And that is the complete surrender of our lives to the Spirit of Christ.
Beloved, what you think about, what you give your heart and mind to, what you pursue with your emotions are all under your control. But when you submit your mind and heart to the Holy Spirit He takes control. He leads you in the ways of Christ. That is how you and I live holy, godly lives. That’s how the impossible becomes possible.

Crazy-Quilt Life

I have two verses that are especially meaningful to me and they speak of the same thing.
Psalm 16:11: You have made known to me the path of life; You will fill me with Joy in Your presence, with eternal pleasures at Your right hand.
Psalm 119:105: Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.
Did you see it? Path. A path in both contexts means a well-worn passageway. It is that trail or road that others have used before. These paths in Psalms tell me two things I need to know.
A path is there because it has been proven to get you where you need to go. A path would not exist if it got the traveler lost. A path says that others have been this way successfully. One person does not make a path. But many feet do. It is like an unseen guide calling out, “Follow me! I’ve been this way before and I know it is trustworthy.”
A path also implies a destination. Aimless wandering does not make a path. A path says there is something at the end that matters. There is a reason to follow the path. There is someplace you need to go. There is someone you need to see or something you need to do down the road. Many others have gone this way because they also had a purpose in their travels.
This speaks to me because my life seems like a lot of aimless wandering. I never imagined that I had a purpose or that there was a grand plan for me. I took whatever came to me and never tried to connect any dots to see if there was some direction or reason in any of it. Or if there was Someone behind it all. Even after I became a Christian, I assumed that I was to just do the best I could with the cards I was dealt and hopefully not mess up too badly before I could get to heaven.
Then I read a quote by Marilyn Meberg who said, “[You are] not on a haphazard course of [your] own poor choosing.” I cannot tell you how much that comforted and encouraged me. Yes, I have made many, many mistakes – some doozies. I have suffered the consequences – painful, hard, scarring consequences. But even in my stumbles, God has been working. I need to know that. I’ll bet you do too. Beloved, even a crazy-quilt life comes together to produce something beautiful. Stay on the path and watch God stitch.

Before and After

Some time ago I ran across some old photos of myself. I laid them out in the progression of ages from about 3 to my high school years, watching myself grow taller, with a variety of hairstyles and some very strange fashion sense. I saw something else. Somewhere between 10 and 18, the girl in those photos took on a dark demeanor and I remembered my past – things that had been done to me, and things I did to myself. Glancing up into the mirror on my dresser, I thought about how much I physically looked like the girl in the pictures, but I no longer recognized those dark eyes. I heard a whisper in my heart, “That is because that’s not who you are anymore. Then you were a victim and a rebel. Now you are Mine.”
In Ephesians 5:8, Paul wrote, “You were once darkness . . .” Then he gives the contrast: “. . . but now you are light in the Lord.” He was using words to paint a before and after portrait.
One of Satan’s favorite ploys is to assault us with our past, to tell us that we will always be who we were and there is no point in trying to resist those old familiar sins. “You know deep down, you still want it. You haven’t changed. You are bound to your past. You are bound to your sin.” But if you belong to Jesus Christ, you are free from your past. You are a child of light, purified from all your sins (1 John 1: 7). Where you were once held captive to sin, you are now bound up in God’s love. You have the power to say no to sin.
In Philippians 3:13, Paul gave the secret to walking in our new identity: “One thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on…” We can forget what is behind us because “as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. (Ps 103:12)”
Beloved, I want so much for you to understand that because Jesus Christ has completely removed all your transgressions; you are a new creation in Christ, no longer bound to a painful, sinful past or those dark desires. You have light in your eyes, and God’s love shines on your face. Because you are not who you once were. Now you are His.

What is the Desire of Your Heart?

“This, then, is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven . . .'” (Matthew 6:9)
Somewhere in my life, I got the message that God, being sovereign and all, was going to do what He was going to do without any commentary from me. He had a plan and it would be enacted. I had no say in the matter. He wanted no arguments or suggestions from me. From that, prayer became a dry, rote practice. And from that, prayer became a moot point. I mean, what could I say that would make any difference at all? And “unanswered” prayers reinforced that warped theology.
Then I looked more deeply into the idea of prayer and I realized the point of prayer isn’t changing God’s mind or gaining His approval for my desires. It is about changing my heart and aligning my desires with God’s desires so that He can answer my prayers affirmatively. In a sense, I am still subject to God’s sovereignty, but through prayer, it is not begrudging God’s plan but rather submitting Joyfully to it. And that changes everything about prayer for me.
Consider this – we all love Psalm 37:4: “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” We claim that frequently for all sorts of desires. I took it to heart through seven years of infertility. If I delight in the Lord, He will give me a baby. And I wanted a baby so much that I forced myself to be “happy, happy, happy” in God. But that is not the point of this verse at all. Like me, we tend to misunderstand the first part of the verse in the rush to get to the second part.
But the heart of this verse is – well – your heart. It is not delighting yourself in the Lord to get what you want. It is delighting yourself in the Lord so that He is your heart’s desire. And He will give you what you want – Himself. God is not about giving you everything you want. He is about giving you everything He wants for you. His presence, His peace, His Joy, His righteousness, His glory, and His home.
If your heart longs for God, your prayers will reflect His heart which loves you beyond measure and has a “good, pleasing, and perfect will for you” (Rom 12:2). When God is the desire of your heart, Beloved, you will have your heart’s desire.