God's Windex

Pin It Originally: How To Add a Pinterest (Pin it) Button to your Blog/Website http://cs-doon.blogspot.com/#ixzz1ryXJUBEC

Many evil kings in both Israel and Judah had led their people in spiritual harlotry.  In the land God had given them they openly practiced idolatry and sin.  In the city in which God said HIS name would dwell, foreign gods were worshiped.  In His holy temple altars to other gods had been set up for the worship of the people, and the land was littered with the altars of false worship on the high places.  King after king followed in the evil path, each one seemingly outdoing the previous evil worship practices.  Then along came King Josiah.

Josiah was a man whose heart was pure.  Having been shown a book of God's Law, he realized how angry God must have been with the unfaithful hearts of so many generations.  His repentant heart caused him to rip his clothes and weep before the Lord for the atrocious sins of the people. Then he set his heart and mind to reform Jerusalem, the priesthood, the temple practices, and the hearts of his people.  God, knowing all that was in Josiah's heart, saw that his heart was tender and humble.

A heart that is pure and crystal clear, rid of the sins that want to hide there in the darkness, is a heart that God can write on.  When God writes on a heart, the heart is transformed from doing evil (practicing disobedience) to doing what is right in His sight (practicing obedience).  

A pure heart can be seen by the unsaved.  It is pure motives, love and compassion, that inspire truly pure actions.  God uses pure-hearted people to help those who are unbelievers "see" Him.  But all too often our words, our attitudes, and our actions (or lack thereof) show the hypocrisy of our lives.

Bit by painful bit, our hearts have to be surrendered to God, so that He has control of our hearts.  And when we have surrendered ourselves to Him, to do as HE pleases, the joy of obeying His commands will follow.  

How clear and shiny is your heart?  Windex, anyone?

Who Do You Serve?

Pin It Originally: How To Add a Pinterest (Pin it) Button to your Blog/Website http://cs-doon.blogspot.com/#ixzz1ryXJUBEC

 Have you noticed that I seem to use a lot of pictures of hearts?  It is not because I like them so much.  It is because my message always seems to involve the heart!  And today is no different.

You also often will read in my blog the comparison between our Christian lives today and the lives of the Israelites of the Old Testament.  That is because we are not very different in that area as well.  Today we will look at yet another glimpse of ourselves.


Israel had gone through many kings.  They had all been evil kings who followed in the ways of wickedness.  None of them walked in the commandments that God had given them to follow.  And they led their people astray--from King Rehoboam to King Hoshea.  When God had had enough of their idolatry, He set in motion His plan for Assyria to capture Israel and take them into captivity.  God's list of reasons for allowing Israel to be taken out of their country into bondage is listed in 2 Kings 17: 7-18.  It is a lengthy list, and when read carefully we can see how Israel clearly hurt the heart of God.


But God would not be content to leave His land empty.  He might remove the people, but He would never allow HIMSELF to be removed from the Promised Land.  After the land had been filled with Assyrian people, God caused the king of Assyria to send in one priest to teach them of the "god" of that land--yes, the One True God!  So one priest was allowed to move back to Bethel to teach the people now living in the land.


But here was the problem, and it is our problem today.  The people, while they had learned to fear God, also made gods of their own!  And there were many different gods represented! (2 Kings 17: 29-31)


Verse 29 says, "But every nation still made gods of its own," and verse 32 says, "They also feared the LORD."  Now what is wrong with this picture?  Their hearts were DIVIDED!

And that is precisely our problem today.  While we have believed in Jesus, been baptized, serve in our churches, bring our tithes, pray, and read our Bibles, we still follow after the other gods of our hearts.  Our hearts are just as DIVIDED!  We look to, bow down before, serve unashamedly, and make sacrifices to those things that have a greater priority in our lives.  

God is asking for your whole heart, undivided and unable to be divided from here after.  He jealously seeks it all!  When He looks into your heart today, what will He see?  Will it be your humble submission to Him in all things, or just those areas that you are willing to surrender to Him?  Will you listen and follow God to an undivided heart or will you continue to close your ears and live as you wish?  Verse 41 says, "So while these nations feared the LORD, they also served their idols; their children likewise and their grandchildren, as their fathers did, so they do to this day."


We fear the LORD, but who do we serve?

Seeking Answers

Pin It Originally: How To Add a Pinterest (Pin it) Button to your Blog/Website http://cs-doon.blogspot.com/#ixzz1ryXJUBEC

King Ahaziah was the son of Ahab, and he ruled in the Northern Kingdom called Israel in the days when Israel was divided.  His father Ahab, and the kings that preceded him, walked in evil ways and did not follow after the LORD.  When Ahab died, and his son Ahaziah ruled in his place.  Shortly after taking the throne Ahaziah fell through the lattice of the upper level of the home in which he was staying.  Being severely wounded and failing in his health, Ahaziah wanted to know the answer to just one question:  "Will I recover from this?"  We too have many such questions in our lives, don't we?

God understands that we have questions.  Our questions are designed to bring us to Him!  When the answers seem far off and confusing, we sometimes lose sight of the facts that God is there, He has the answers, and He desires for us to come and tell Him what our questions are.  It is true that while all the previously mentioned facts are factual, we are certainly not guaranteed that God will tell us what He is thinking and planning and doing when it comes to our lives.  But He certainly does want us to turn to Him and ask our questions of Him, talking to Him about all that is on our hearts and in our minds.

You may be asking right now, "Did Ahaziah ask God whether he would recover from his fall and the illness that followed?"  Second Kings 1 tells us that he did not.  King Ahaziah sought instead to get his answers from a false god named Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron.  Does that name sound familar?  Beelzebub is another name for the devil! Elijah the prophet was led to the men who were going to Baal-zebub to ascertain the answer to the question.  An angel of the Lord directed Elijah to say this to these men:

"Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are going to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron?" 

These messengers returned (quite quickly, I presume) to their king Ahaziah, and told him what Elijah had said.   Ahaziah did not like the message that Elijah sent back.  So he continued in his plan to find a different answer from Elijah that resulted in the deaths of two of Ahaziah's captains and 100 of his militia.  And eventually his own death.

While reading this story today, I was struck by one single thought.  Am I behaving like Ahaziah, seeking the answers from everywhere from anyone but from God?  How many times have I run to safe places of hiding, to counselors with easy and appealing solutions, to my own thoughts and opinions and guesses as to what the answer might be, and to the false gods such as the internet, friends, and family who might be more prone to "tickle my ears?"  How many times has God looked down from the heavenlies, just waiting for me to turn my face toward His, and witnessed me run away from Him?  

God would have been right, in those moments of idolatry,  to send me a messenger who would say to me the same thing that was said to Ahaziah, "Is it because there is no God who dwells within you, as well as dwelling in Heaven, that you are going to inquire an answer from your own thoughts or your gods?"

God wants His children to trust only in Him.  He is the answer, even if He keeps us guessing for awhile.  Who or what do you run to when you have a question about your life?  Is God your last choice?

God's Priority Checklist

Pin It Originally: How To Add a Pinterest (Pin it) Button to your Blog/Website http://cs-doon.blogspot.com/#ixzz1ryXJUBEC

Do you have a checklist?  Did you know that God does?  In many places in the Word we are able to see what God considers priorities for our lives.  Today, continuing in the Old Testament, we will see His short checklist in the words of Elijah to the widow of Zarephath.  Let's pick up the story found in I Kings 17.

A terrible drought had come upon the land.  God instructed Elijah to go to Zarephath, and there a woman would take care of him.  The moment he came through the gate of the city, he saw a woman gathering sticks.  He called to her to bring him a drink of water and some bread.  Ashamed that she could not fully oblige him, the woman told Elijah that she only had a little flour and a little oil.  Her plan was to return home and make a small loaf of bread and share it with her son.  She was sure that it would be their last meal. 

Then Elijah, the man of God, spoke life into saying this to her, "Do not fear; go, do as you have said, but make me a little bread cake from it first and bring it out to me, and afterward you may make one for yourself and for your son."

Now I don't know about you, but that would rub me the wrong way.  Why would I use my last flour and oil to make a little bread for a stranger, leaving very little left for me and my only son? Usually, our flesh keeps us from wanting to put others first.  Yet, the woman was obedient, likely because of what Elijah said next:  "For thus says the Lord God of Israel, 'The bowl of flour shall not be exhausted, nor shall the jar of oil be empty, until the day that the Lord send rain on the face of the earth.' "

Setting our flesh aside for a moment, let me ask you this.  Did you catch the priority "checklist" in the Scripture?  If you didn't, then here it is:  First . . . and Afterward.  It kind of want to hide from us, but there it is; simple, yet profound.  Elijah asked the woman to take care of what belonged to God first.  In this case, it was him, the messenger of God's words.  And then afterward, she would be taken care of until the end of the drought and famine.  This is God's blessing on the obedience she displayed.  She would have flour and oil without end!  Food to satisfy her hunger!

Is God's priority checklist any different for us?  Of course not!  He is unchanging!  Do you hear Him calling to you saying, "Take care of what is Mine first, and then afterward you will be taken care of with My unlimited supply."  How often we turn the priority list upside down!  We want God's unlimited supply so we can give something back to Him.  If our supply is limited, we declare that we have nothing left to give!

Your Divided Heart

Pin It Originally: How To Add a Pinterest (Pin it) Button to your Blog/Website http://cs-doon.blogspot.com/#ixzz1ryXJUBEC

Solomon was not like his father David.  God looked down at David's heart and saw a man who was seeking after His heart.  While Solomon started well, in that at the beginning of his reign he humbled himself before the Lord and asked the Him to bless him with wisdom to rule over Israel, he began to walk in disobedience to the commands of God.

Solomon's sin is easily seen by comparing Deuteronomy 17: 14-20 (God's commandments for the ruling king) and I Kings 11: 1-13.  In the passage of Deuteronomy God precisely states 4 principles that His kings should follow:  Do not multiply horses (trusting in military power), do not multiply wives (looking to them instead of God), and do not greatly increase you silver and gold (trusting therefore in  their material blessing).  

Then God spoke of the desired spiritual walk of the King of Israel.  He was to write himself a copy of the entire Law (so that he might trust in the Lord and His word, hiding it in his heart).  He was to keep God's word with him, read it every day, learn to fear God from it, carefully obeying its commands.  By doing these things the king would keep his heart humble, and therefore not turn away from God and the power of His words.  (Hmmm. . .sounds like what the Spirit suggests to us as well.  But we don't have to write our copy of His word; we just have to pick up one of the many copies laying around our house!)

Solomon knew the commands of God, yet he chose to marry a foreign woman, and then marry 699 more!  Solomon chose the sin of having the love of many women over obedience to the God of his fathers.  And the result had drastic consequences on Solomon's spiritual walk.  They turned his heart away, to follow after their gods.  The heart that once sought the Lord in everything so that he could walk in the ways of God now was torn in two, divided between his wives' gods and the One True God.  Because of his sin Israel would now become a picture of Solomon's heart--it too would be divided.  God's precious land would be divided between the north and the south.  The commands of God were given; Solomon turned away from them; he lived a life of overlooking the sin in his heart; he and all of Israel suffered the consequences of his sin.  Solomon surely did not have the heart of his father.

But it is so easy to read this account and think to ourselves, "How could he have been so wickedly disobedient to God?"  The answer lies in our own divided hearts.  We, too, claim to love God, and yet our lives reveal our other "lovers."  We are just as guilty of idolatry as Solomon was.  But the gods we worship are not called Ashtoreth, Milcom, Chemosh, or Molech.  Our gods have the names of Adultery and Other Sexual Sin, Materialism, Cheating and Lying, Money, Prestige, Popularity, Gossiping, Self-sufficiency, Self-absorption, and the list is endless.  We like to believe that ours are not nearly as bad as theirs, so we continue to justify our attitudes and behaviors, our words and our thoughts, even though we know that God's commands to us in the Bible are against all of them.  

God is looking for men and women who are seeking His heart, through surrender to Him and obedience to His word.  He is looking for those whose hearts are not torn between this world and the next world.  He still desires for His children to be wholly devoted to Him as David was, not just partially devoted to Him as Solomon was.  Our hearts are in need of mending.  Our hearts are desperate for spiritual healing.  Are you willing to assess your own heart and see the gods that sit on its mantle?  Are you willing to surrender them to the Lord in a repentance that turns away from them, never to return to them?  Are you willing to follow His commands by the power of the Spirit within you?  If you are, and you take action, you are truly saying this:

"Teach me Your way, O Lord; I will walk in Your truth; UNITE MY HEART to fear Your name."  (Psalm 86:11)

 

Remedy For a Sin-broken Heart

Pin It Originally: How To Add a Pinterest (Pin it) Button to your Blog/Website http://cs-doon.blogspot.com/#ixzz1ryXJUBEC

Solomon had just finished his beautiful, powerful prayer to God as he dedicated the newly built temple.  He concluded with a call to all of Israel to devote themselves, their hearts, to the Lord by walking faithfully in all of His commandments.  By setting the Ark of the Covenant in the new Holy of Holies, God would then be able to say, "My eyes and My heart will be there perpetually."  

Solomon's connection between the Ark of the Covenant where God dwelt then, and our hearts where God dwells now is critically important to us today.  It is in our heart, the core of our being, that the Holy Spirit perpetually dwells.  He is the eyes who watch everything we think, do, and say.  He is the very heart  of God in us.  And what is the "heart of God?"  It is the very life of Christ.  That is what the Holy Spirit represents in the life of the believer.

Though we have the life of Christ living in us, we so often try to do every spiritual thing in our own power.  We use our strengths and our sheer will-power to try and overcome sin.  We want desperately to walk faithfully in the commands God gives us to live by, and fail miserably with each attempt.  We so often life in a sin-confess-try again cycle, and usually never realize that this is simply a dog chasing its tail.  We go round and round and round, but we never really get anywhere.

So what is the secret, then, to having an unbroken heart, a heart healed of its sinful ways that obeys the Lord's commands?  Zechariah the prophet speaks loudly the key to having an unbroken heart.  "Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit," says the Lord. (4:6).

The healing of the continual sin in your heart will not come by might ("I am trying hard to handle this.  I failed yesterday, but I will try harder today."), nor will it come from your strength and power  ("I am strong; I can get through this; I did yesterday, so I will today as well.").  The spiritual healing of your heart, the very removal of fleshly gods, idols, and sins,  will happen because of your working at it.  God requires one thing from you to become an obedient child who walks in His pure and righteous ways.  He requires your surrender to the Spirit.  Your transformed heart, changing from broken to unbroken, from sin-stained to holy, is the work of the Spirit.  This work happens from the inside out by the Spirit, not from the outside in by your striving flesh!

In every 12 step program, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, the transforming work begins with these 3 principles:  I can't; You can; go ahead!  Do you hear the surrender of such a prayer?  This should be our constant prayer!  Why not begin right now to apply the truth of Zechariah 4:6.  It will sound a something like this:

"Holy Spirit, you have a job to do in my heart, but You require me to seek Your work in me from a place of humility and surrender.  I am struggling with committing the sin of _______.  I have tried to stop and have failed miserably.  I know that my flesh cannot transform my heart.  Only You can.  So I come to You today, with my flesh crucified and my spirit crying out to You.  'I can't get this done in me!  But I know that You can!  So please go ahead!'  I surrender to Your work in me."

By using the "Post Comment" button below, why not report back what the Spirit is doing in you as an encouragement to the other readers of this blog!  And while you are at it, click on the "follow" button to the right!

Wisdom of the Heart

Pin It Originally: How To Add a Pinterest (Pin it) Button to your Blog/Website http://cs-doon.blogspot.com/#ixzz1ryXJUBEC

Recently on Facebook I have seen this question circulating on my friends' statuses:  What would you do if you knew you would utterly succeed in it?  It is a good question to ponder, but we all know that in this life we are not promised utter success.  It did remind me, however, of a statement God once said to a king who was no more than a child.  The Almighty said this to Solomon:  "Ask what you wish Me to give you."  What would we ask God to give us if we knew we would surely get it?  What would you have asked for if you were a mere child?

Solomon responded to God by first conveying both his gratitude and thankfulness for the love that He had shown his father, David.  Solomon knew that he sat on the throne that very day because the LORD God had directed it in response to a promise that He had made David.  God kept His promise because David had walked with Him with a righteous heart.  David lived his life with a God-ward heart, though he stumbled and fell many times.  The promise God made to David was this:  He would always have a blood relative on the throne.  David had just died, but not before appointing Solomon, his son, to succeed him. 

Next, Solomon recognized his own insignificance in and of himself, referring to himself as a "little child" who did not know the "ins and outs" of reigning over a kingdom of millions.  By such a reply, Solomon was humbling himself before the Lord of All and submitting himself to Him as he recognized his own inability to hand his life alone.

Finally, Solomon responded to the implied question, "What do you desire from Me?"  His answer sounded nothing like the responses from the little children I have known.  He didn't ask for fancy gifts or fame and fortune.  Solomon asked for wisdom to be great judge of the people, being able to know the difference between good and evil.  Solomon was asking for wisdom that came from inside of him, from his heart.  He longed to be a "man after God's heart," even as his father David was.

Today, I am asking God for the same thing.  This wisdom of the heart is not reserved back by God for kings only.  This precious gift is reserved for the children of the King as well.  Every fiber of my being longs for the wisdom and discernment that will choose correctly between what is evil and what is good, between the ways of the flesh and the ways of the Spirit of Christ who lives in me.  Solomon received this gift from the hand of God.  So has every believer.  The Holy Spirit is wisdom and discernment.  I need only to thank the Lord for His awesome gift to me and surrender to Him in a humility that knows I am incapable of achieving it on my own.  Will you join me in praying this prayer today?  God is saying to all of us, "Ask what you wish Me to give you."

Lord God, how thankful I am that You have made promises to me that You intend to keep.  You have seen that my heart is turned toward You.  You know the desire of my heart to walk in all of Your ways by obeying Your commands.  But I am still so much like Your little child who does not always know how to walk in You, and out of my wrong thoughts, words, and actions.  I surrender myself to You, knowing that I cannot walk in the Spirit in my power.  I need the Holy Spirit's power to accomplish this, and thus please Your heart.  By the power of Him who dwells within me, grant me knowledge and wisdom and discernment to guide me on Your paths today.  Amen!  And so be it according to Your will for me.