WEEK FOUR - DAY FOUR - GUARD YOUR HEART!

 "Were they ashamed because of the abomination they have done?  They were not even ashamed at all.  They did not even know how to blush."  Jeremiah 6:15

I think this is one of the things that bothers me most about our current society. We've lost all sense of shame.  There's nothing that's out of bounds any more, nothing that causes our very sophisticated and cosmopolitan world to blush---how terribly naive and gauche that would appear!  We're way past that!

Oh aren't we though!  My Daddy went to heaven in 1990 and if he were to suddenly appear in my living room and start scrolling through TV, he would be aghast!  Between the language and the sexual portrayals that are on any time through the day or night, he would be convinced that we had all lost our ever-loving minds and had abandoned any kind of even half-hearted obedience to God!  We have allowed ourselves to gradually, over a not-so-long period of time, become completely desensitized to things that we should not be watching or listening to.  Music, movies, books all contribute to our desensitization; and for young people, I believe video games to be the biggest culprit, immersing them in lifelike situations that are ultra-violent and immoral.  

God's desire for us is to live PURE lives, free of filth and corruption.  Proverbs 4:23 says, "Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life."  We MUST start being intentional about what is going into our eyes and our ears.  For what goes in, will come out.  We should desire our outflow to be full of life and truth, but when we immerse ourselves in environments of immorality we are not going to get those kinds of outpourings.  In Jeremiah 9:3-9 Jeremiah describes the people of Judah as liars, evil doers, who do not know God.  They can't trust each other because they are all so full of malice and deceit, "they have taught their tongue to speak lies; they weary themselves committing iniquity."  Wouldn't you hate it if those things were said about you?  These are the attributes that angered God and caused Him to bring destruction against them.  

But the people of Judah didn't start out that way - they became that way because they didn't guard their hearts!  They didn't put up shields against the idolatory of their neighboring nations or against the self-sufficiency that had developed, causing them to break away from their dependency on the God who had rescued them and who had brought them to their promised land.  Their minds had wandered far from that God and had allowed their hearts to be compromised.

Where are our minds?  Where do our thoughts linger longest?  For our minds are the gateways to our hearts.  Where our minds take us is where our hearts will follow.  If we're dwelling on fantasies that take us away from reality, if we're spending unnecessary time contemplating our criticisms of others, if we're replaying scenes in our heads of hurtful words said to us and preparing the best-ever comeback ready to zing the next time we're given an opportunity to use it, then we're setting ourselves up for hearts that are covetous, critical, mean-spirited and altogether unlovely!  And if we're thinking of things that are immoral, lustful, or dishonorable, then we're preparing our hearts to follow with no ability to be shamed, let alone cheeks that remember how to blush.

When we are instructed to "take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ"  we are being told to take the first step in guarding our very fragile hearts.  My heart is guarded by the guarding of my thought life.  

And then we come to our words - one of the most bothersome verses in the Bible for a talker like me is Matthew 12:36, "I tell you that on the day of judgment people will have to account for every careless word they speak."  If we have allowed our hearts to become corrupt, then our mouths will follow suit.  As we read in Luke 6:45 "A good man produces good out of the good storeroom of his heart. An evil man produces evil out of the evil storeroom, for his mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart."  So while the mind guards the heart, the heart guards the mouth.  Profanity, gossip, disrespect, angry words are not reflective of the hearts that we are to have as Christ-followers.  If we find out mouths spewing words that do not reflect what we say is in our heart, we may need a good heart check!  Again, we need to keep a sensitivity to language and the words that we hear coming out of our mouths.  

So let's keep a little naivety, let's retain our ability to blush.  If we've gone too far and seen and heard too much, let's pray for God to allow our hearts to return to ones that are shocked by things that should shock, to be ashamed of things that should still be shameful.  

Oh Lord, cleanse us.  Remove from us everything that we have allowed to contaminate our hearts and strengthen us to recognize everything that is harmful to our hearts so that we don't allow it into our minds.  Remind us of Your call to us to lives of holiness and purity...for our good and for Your honor!

WEEK FOUR - DAY THREE - WHERE DO BROKEN HEARTS GO?

Broken hearts!   When we feel that our hearts have been split in two, life seems like it just can't go on.  Broken hearts can be caused by loss of love, loss of life or by the loss of a future we thought was secure...everything can change in a split second and our hearts can just feel so completely shattered.  Jeremiah was telling the people of Judah that their hearts were about to be broken - they were going to experience all of those losses at the same time - their families would be split apart, some taken into captivity, some killed and their homeland desecrated.  Their futures were going to be anything but what they had thought they would be.  Jeremiah is already broken-hearted because he knows, by the word of God speaking to Him, that all these things will take place without the peoples' repentance and he can't get them to pay attention to him.  He tells them to put on sackcloth and mourn for what they are about to lose, mourn with "a lamentation most bitter.  For suddenly the destroyer will come upon us."

I often say, "it's a good thing we don't know what's coming" because we would never be able to enjoy the present for dread of what we knew was coming in the future.  Because, no matter how much we would like to deny it, our lives here on earth all hold trials and hard times that we must make our way through.  Jeremiah had the sometimes unfortunate gift of prophecy, of knowing what was just around the corner for his country and his fellow Judeans.  And he told them to mourn.  

When our hearts are broken over one of life's tragedies, it is most appropriate for us to mourn as well.  We mourn and we grieve, and as believers in the God of the broken-hearted, we cry out to God for the comfort that only He can provide to His children.  Or that's what we should do.  So often we try to, as I said above, make our way through stoically, on our own.  The people of Judah didn't turn to God and mourn - they turned to every other source of comfort or assurance they could think of:  idols, political alliances with godless nations, or, what is often my go-to, ignoring the issue and hoping it will go away.  

BUT GOD offers us so much more.  Jesus assured us that we would have troubles here on earth, but He followed that problematic assurance with another that is so powerfully positive, "But take heart, I have overcome the world."  Only our Heavenly Father can make a promise like that.   Only our Heavenly Father can heal our broken hearts and start the process of recovery, and even, though we don't like to think of this when we're in the depths of grief, grow us through the process.  I have learned that hard times WILL come, to everyone, believers and non-believers alike.  But I have resolved that I will refuse to go through a hard time and waste that period of time when God is so ready to grow me in ways that I could not experience in any other way.  Don't waste it, you're going to go through it one way or another, so don't waste it, let God use it to it's absolute maximum value - that's the way I have found to endure the pain of broken heartedness.  

This process is the refining and cleansing that we covered in today's lesson.  God uses these hard times to show us the dregs that we have been allowing to accumulate in our heart.  To use that time when our hearts are broken wide open to get rid of the sludge and buildup clogging our spiritual blood vessels and to make us people of deeper character, wiser and more discerning in our diet of what we are allowing to come into us and into our very souls.  His goal is that we will come out of our dark valleys with more faith, a deeper trust and a more complete understanding of His immeasurable love for us.

So when you are broken hearted, mourn, and mourn well.  Grieve and cry and ask God to hear you - He has promised that you know,  Psalm 34:18 "The LORD is near to the brokenhearted; He saves those crushed in spirit."  HE saves us...He is waiting to hear us cry out to Him with our broken hearts.  Psalm 50:15 "Then call on Me when you are in trouble, and I will rescue you, and you will give Me glory."  This is what He wants us to do - this is where the broken hearted go.  This is where we are healed.

WEEK FOUR - DAY TWO - BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION VS. HEART CHANGE

 Well, that's always fun!  Just as I was finishing up the post for this day's summary, I lost it!  Completely!  It was there, and then it wasn't!  I always wonder when that happens, and it doesn't happen very often at all, if there was something that I had stated that didn't need to be published...?  If so, then I am thankful for the protection afforded me; if not, I'm a little aggravated in the time wasted!  But, you can be sure I'm going to review my words very carefully as I write and ask for Holy Spirit guidance to protect me as I go...I'll try to remember some of what I previously wrote, but I know it will be different, and that's ok too!

So....what is the difference between behavior modification and true heart change?   For one thing, behavior modification can be self-driven and self-accomplished.  We all can decide in our minds that we are going to start, or quit, a certain behavior and in a certain percentage of attempts, we may actually succeed in doing so...on our own, in our own strength.  But who can change their heart by themselves?  Even using a physical heart transplant as a comparison, who is able to do that on their own?  When pills have failed and nothing else will suffice...no, if we need a heart transplant we're going to require a highly skilled surgical team - we want the best in the field!  We certainly can't attempt it on our own!  

Well our spiritual hearts are even more delicate, and if we're going to ask for them to be changed, we certainly want the best there is to handle that procedure.  The best would be the One who actually knew our heart inside and out, without even reading our history.  We could trust Him with our heart, couldn't we?  That's what God asks of us....give Him our hearts.  Let Him do the transplant for us...all He needs from us is that consent form....submission.   That's where the people of Judah were having such a hard time.  They just could not get to the point of giving it all up.  And what was God asking of them to give up?  Lives of split devotion to Him and to idols; lives of split loyalty to their nation and to the countries around them; lives of self-centeredness and self-worship.  Why couldn't they see that their hearts had grown stone cold and they needed to be changed?  In Jeremiah 25:3, Jeremiah says that he has called to them on God's behalf for 23 years!  Twenty-three years and they still were refusing his message and call to repentance.  How long do we make God call to us to get us to see that we are in need of a heart change?  How long before we put our hearts totally in His hands to lead us in His ways without resistance.

I think a good summation is something I heard once, we spend way too much time pondering what we should be DO-ing for God, rather than considering the person we should be BE-ing for Him.  God is much more interested in who we are at our core level than the outward acts that we do.  But again, we can't just decide to BE that kind of person.  We'd love to be able to just take a pill and transform ourselves into whom God wants us to be.  But it is only through God's molding and shaping that we will start becoming a person reflective of His Spirit.  When we present our hearts to God to mold and shape and keep soft, He then is going to grow us into becoming a person who reflects His Spirit and the fruit of His Spirit will be evident in our lives...love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  If we're having a hard time seeing those things evident in our lives, it may be time for a heart-checkup.  We may need a restart.

That makes me think of when a heart has gotten out of beat and the cardiologist has to restart the heart so that it will again have a proper rhythm....I think that's what God asks of us sometimes.  We may have given our hearts to Him a long time ago, and so thankful that we have done that, what a critical step in our walk with Him.  But we cannot think of that first profession of faith, that first surrender as our last progression in our walk.   When we do that, I think we put ourselves in danger of getting out of sync with the heartbeat of God.  Our hearts need to be continually monitored and evaluated; we need to continually present our hearts to God for His examination.  Just as the cardiologist has to restart a heart that has developed arrhythmia, our hearts may develop a spiritual arrhythmia when they are beating according to the tempo of the world - beating along with the drums of materialism and greed, bigotry and hate, sarcasm and cruel tongues.  When God calls out to us that we need a restart, boy do we need to get in to His heart clinic as fast as we can!  The longer we put it off, well, you know how that goes!

So if you're wanting behavior modification, hey, there's a ton of great books out there on how to change just about any part of you that needs changing!  But if you need a heart change....well I know the best in the field, in fact He's the only One in the field....and, as a matter of fact, He just happened to write the best-seller of all time!

WEEK FOUR - DAY ONE - HEART EVALUATION

 Our theme for this week is "Staying Spiritually Sensitive - Heart Issues", and our memory verses are so incredibly important for us to remember: Jeremiah 17:9-10 "The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked.  Who really knows how bad it is?  But I, the LORD, search all hearts and examine secret motives.  I give all people their due rewards according to what their actions deserve."

The world would have us believe that we're all pretty good people, that we all, deep down, have good hearts.  But God's Word tells us differently - it says that our hearts are deceitful and wicked, desperately wicked.  How can that be?  How can people made in God's image have such a corrupted inner being?  How can I have such a rotten heart beating away inside of me?  While we tend to think of ourselves as "pretty good", how many of us would want to share with others the very worst thing we've ever done?  For that matter, how many would want to share the minor bad things that we did just today?  Our hearts tell us all kinds of things about ourself that just aren't true.  According to Scripture, "follow your heart" is probably the worst advice we can give someone.  

Romans 5:12 tells us "Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, in this way death spread to all men, because all sinned."  This is how we all became rotten-hearted...sin.  The sin of one spread throughout humanity into the sin of all.  The sin of elevating self above all else, the sin of feeding our deceitful hearts with everything it tells us we deserve.  Even that sin of doing such wonderfully noted acts of kindness for all the wrong motives.  Our sinful hearts are deceitful and manipulative...but God knows them inside and out.  He knows our hearts much, much better than we ourselves do.

That is why the Psalmist pleads with the Lord, "Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my concerns. See if there is any offensive way in me; lead me in the everlasting way."  Psalm 139:23-24.  David knows that God is the One who can reveal to him where he is off, where his heart is needing correction.  THIS is the verse that we can share with David when we are truly ready for our hearts to be evaluated and for God to start showing us changes that we need to make.

The rest of today's lesson was very personal and had good tools to ask yourself about your heart - how would you describe your heart attitude toward your spouse, your children, others in your extended family, co-workers, friends, church family and finally...how would you describe your heart attitude toward Jesus, your Savior?  

Really spend time thinking about that and then pray with David, and with me, "Search me, God, know me, test me, tell me where I'm wrong, and lead me.  Break my heart if it needs breaking, just let my heart reflect Yours.  Let me be as tender and loving to others as You have been to me.  Even those that I don't understand.  Let me pour out my heart to You, for You are my safe place, You are my refuge.  Take this heart of stone that is driven toward self and make it soft to Your touch.  I surrender...my heart is in Your hands."

WEEK THREE - DAY FIVE - KEEP ASKING! - AND WEEKLY RECAP

When my son was a toddler, he was very inquisitive and had a mind that wanted answers.  He would ask how things worked (he's now a mechanical engineer) and why things happened like they did.  He would follow one why with another.  My father, who was a great and godly man that we all adored, would try to come up with all the answers for my little Robert.  He would patiently try to explain, as well as he could, to a 4-year old so that his young, questioning mind would continue to ponder things.  One day when Daddy had tried to explain another question and Robert was not tracking with his explanation and it had gone on long enough that even curious Robert was no longer interested, he said, "Grandpa, you can just say you don't know...that's what my daddy does."  That was not an answer that we used much in my prideful, German family...we always had an answer! 

Well, God is much like my daddy in that He is always patient and always ready for our questions, one right after the other.  But unlike my daddy, our Father always has the right and perfect answer.  We don't have to be afraid to come to God with our questions and/or our doubts.  Doubts can prompt us to dig deeper to find resolution, and digging deeper is always good.  "When we have doubt, it should lead us to think, study and ask questions."  

God invites Jeremiah to inquire of Him...He not only invites him to, He urges him to and promises reward.  Our memory verse this week is Jeremiah 33:3,  "Ask me and I will tell you remarkable secrets you do not know about things to come."   We need to keep the verse in context and remember this is God's invitation to Jeremiah, but we also know that James tells us in his epistle, "If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and He will give it to you.  He will not rebuke you for asking.  But when you ask Him, be sure that your faith is in God alone."  So while the specific promise is from God to Jeremiah, the principle is carried forward to all of us as God's children.  He is ready to give us answers.  He is ready to share His wisdom with us.  Ask, ask and ask again.  If something in His Word isn't clear to you, ask the Holy Spirit for revelation.  Dig deeper in Biblical word study and cross referencing.  And ask again.  Albert Einstein once said, "It is not that I'm so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer."  Stay with the questions until God brings you His answer.

We wonder why our prayer time isn't what it should be...could it be that we're not asking enough?  Or for the right things?  Prayers for our earthly needs and protection are certainly warranted, but they shouldn't be the central focus of our prayer life.  When you study what Jesus prayed for (John 17) and what the apostles prayed for (2 Corinthians 13:7-9, Jude 1:24-25) it most often isn't for anything of this world.  It's prayers for the sustenance of their faith and for the faith of others, it's for open eyes and ears of the people they are addressing, it's to live lives of glory to God...it's asking for revelation to move out of our temporal vision and into eternal vision, where we begin to see the true Kingdom of God.  

So let's ask, and ask and keep asking...we'll never get an "I don't know".  We may hear, "Let me show you" as God takes our hand and guides us in His Word and in His providence to His true and perfect answers.  Faith in Him - He IS eternal truth.

So, we wrapped up Week Three!  We now are halfway through!  Can you believe that?  Our theme this week was listening.  Have we learned what an important part of our spiritual discipline listening is?  It is vital to our relationship with God.  I loved how Melissa Spoelstra illustrated this when she pointed out that we would never go into a room where our spouse was, tell him everything we need from them for the coming week, and turn around without waiting for any kind of response.  That would NOT be relationship-positive!  We can't treat our relationship with God in that way either...using our prayer life to dump out all of our needs, worries and concerns, and then roll over and turn out the light without allowing God any time to take our words and speak back to us His words of assurance.  Assurance that He hears us and that He is already at work on our behalf.  Listen to Him through the Words of Scripture, again assuring us that He is our good, good Father.  And as our good Father, there will be times He has words of discipline for us, and we must take time to listen to these all important words as well...even though sometimes hard to swallow, we must pay attention so that we can keep our lives in line with God's design.  As C. S. Lewis said, "We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive."  This is especially true when applied to our spiritual lives.  And there are times when God, in His wonderful mercy, has to shout to us, "You're going the wrong way!" (Sometimes followed by "again".)

So our last lesson of the week is ask, ask, ask and the overriding theme of the week is listen, listen, listen!   Why would we ask and then not bother to listen?  But boy have I been guilty of that!  Let's resolve to ask AND listen AND to know our God better through both tools.   Let's be ready to have Him show us remarkable and amazing things and, going back to our first week's memory verse, start making His words our delight!  

In His Amazing Love,

Janice