The Bible mentions the heart many times throughout its pages. We are familiar with its use in places like Matthew 22:37 where it says: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart.” Or Psalm 51: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” Or from the sermon on the mount: “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.”
In today’s Sunday Spice let’s take a quick look at the heart and bring into consideration the depth of integrity that should characterize our innermost being.
It would be safe to say that the heart represents the center of our emotions. John 14 says: “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me.”
The heart is also the center of our intellect. Mark 2 states: “And immediately Jesus, perceiving in His spirit that they thus questioned within themselves, said to them, ‘Why do you question these things in your hearts?’” Another version says: “Why do you reason these things in your heart?”
The heart also represents the seat of our will and our decision-making processes. Daniel 1 reveals: “But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s delicacies . . .”
In essence, the heart serves as the command center of our lives. Prov. 4 counsels us to: “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.”
There are also warnings given us as well concerning the heart. Jeremiah 17 says: “the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick, who can understand it.” Or from the words of Jesus in Matt 15: “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.”
It is obvious that there exist conflicts in our heart that are constantly tempting us toward compromise, double-mindedness, and duplicity. It is therefore vital that we seek God for the strength and the grace to maintain our integrity of heart. What does this entail? This means we must integrate God’s word and God’s ways into the middle of our emotions; into the center of our intellect; and into the seat of our decision-making processes.
Purity of heart does not mean we are sinless but the more we seek to integrate God, His Son, His Word, and His Wisdom into our lives we can find ourselves sinning less. This is because the keeping power of God is in place to empower our daily living right down to our behavior patterns and conversation. This is confirmed by one very powerful verse in Psalm 119: “I have stored up Your Word in my heart, that I might not sin against You.”
Integrity of heart means that we are integrated and united with God. Integration might be understood as your hand finding its place inside a glove. God provides the grace for our heart to cooperate with Him, and adapt our born-again self to His standards. In that context we find the blessedness; the happiness, that Jesus referenced in the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed or happy are the pure in heart for they shall see God.”
This is not a call to join a monastery or to disconnect from humanity and the temptations that exist in real life. It is, instead, a call to diligently study to show ourselves approved and to realize that we are “set apart” to walk in His ways (what the Bible calls sanctification). It is also a call to an overcoming lifestyle, where we are not always defeated by sin and compromise (or even unpredictable circumstances) but are able at the end of a given day to say we found strength in God to win our battles; to become what the apostle Paul called “more than conquerors through him who loved us.”
James in chapter five said to: “Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.” Establish means to make stable, to strengthen, to make firm. We need to establish our hearts just to live in this world, of course. But James makes the establishing of our hearts a priority in the context of a different perspective. That perspective is that the Lord’s coming is at hand.
More than ever before, the return of the Lord is at the ready. Our hearts should be at the ready as well. This means that during the time we have left we intentionally open ourselves to the transformation worked in us by His Holy Spirit, seek to renew our minds in accordance with His Word, and give Him the honor that is due His Name in conversation, conduct, and worship.
As our hearts, minds, and lives integrate with our God the fruit of such integrity starts to become a part of who we are in our truest identity. And this fruit also becomes a reality to our personal experience. These are the results of hand-in-glove, heart-in-God integration.
I’m Tammy Reneé, and this is Sunday Spice. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed are the people who take refuge in Him!
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