"Theory must always give way to practical application, otherwise all of our 'head knowledge' becomes wasted and worthless grey matter. Can we turn our focus for just a moment to the Inner Court of our heart transformation? I would like us to magnify that court right now so that we are not looking at the beginning or end of our spiritual journey, but just at the present, the here and now.
It is in the Inner Court where God allows us to see just how dark and sinful our hearts really are, and can be. This court is a place of illumination. Once in the Inner Court, once we have taken a good 'look around' at what is really hidden there, we often find that the sins, the gods, and the idols we find inside of us are so many that they are overwhelming to us. We know that we are to be busy building our hearts into a proper and pure home for the Lord by sweeping out all that He would not enjoy. Just like the Israelites of Haggai's day (that we looked at in Chapter 6 of Spiritual Healing), we know that we are to 'rebuilt' our sin-scarred hearts, which is the temple, the Tabernacle of the Holy Spirit. But again, just like the Israelites, we typically respond just as they did, don't we? We put satisfying the desires of our own flesh ahead of the priority of cleaning out those very flesh-sins found in our hearts.
We follow after our own priorities, and we leave our sin-filled hearts in disrepair, desolate, and open to destruction while we continue living flesh-ruled lives. Our breaches, fractures, and sins remain. Our walk with the Lord and our very lives do not even remotely resemble the life of Christ! We continually go our merry way, prioritizing everything else in life except our walk with Jesus and a desire to achieve a holy and pure lifestyle. Following in the footsteps of the Israelites, our wrong priorities lead us straight to the obvious consequences, and some of them will be severe. Our ministry for the Lord becomes fruitless, barren, and even non-existent. In the end, when we do not concentrate on obediently living the commandments and repenting of our sins and idols, our lives reveal that our hearts have not been transformed. Such transformation only takes place when we have been walking intimately with the Savior."
Tomorrow I will be continuing in this vain, by sharing a quote from Joanna Weaver's Having A Mary Heart In A Martha World. Her personal testimony might help you more clearly see what you are doing that is keeping you from that very intimacy.
No comments:
Post a Comment