Cleaning Heart: Is It On Your To-Do List?

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Ever sat in your mess for so long that it just became normal? Then, when you found out that you had company coming over unexpectedly your “okay” home was suddenly seen for what it was: a disaster!

Most of us try to keep our homes from getting to a crisis point. We do dishes, sweep the floors, and take the trash out on a (slightly more than) as-needed-basis. Our homes may not be spotless, but they’re comfortable when we keep up with our to-do lists.

Our hearts are the same way.

We go through our days accumulating “stuff” in our hearts. Our feelings, thoughts, memories, attitudes, and so on build up. The stuff of this world and of our flesh isn’t neat, tidy, or glamorous. It’s not too hard for our hearts to get messy.

Our hearts get loaded up with a lot of stuff that we even need to have for a short time. Feelings like anger or doubt are natural and have a purpose. Bad attitudes often develop in reaction to circumstances that we have to face. Our harsh thoughts and feelings of bitterness can help us to be discerning.

That doesn’t mean that all the gunk in our hearts is right. It also doesn’t mean that the stuff we’re supposed to let the necessary stuff sit and stew after it has run its course.

Take, for example, the Bible’s commands concerning anger. “Be angry and do not sin.” It’s not wrong to be angry –God gets mad. But, at what point is our anger sinful? When it accumulates in our hearts to overthrow other commandments, like wishing evil on people or taking revenge, our anger has begun to rot. “Leave room for God’s wrath” we read.  

For there to be room in our hearts for the Lord’s wrath (or the Lord’s hope, patience, or compassion) we have to do the work of cleaning heart.

Like our homes, we have to be aware of what comes in (can you say no muddy shoes?!) as well as what we do with what we have going on in there. Scripture outlines the way to sort out what's inside:

1. Acknowledge the Mess

Cleaning with your eyes closed doesn’t go so well. Neither does cleaning in the dark. It may be difficult to face what’s in your heart, but you need to. “But everything exposed by the light becomes visible--and everything that is illuminated becomes a light.”

2. Repent of What’s Gone Bad

What happens in your heart may or may not trickle out before you get to cleaning house. Either way, the Lord sees it. A sin in the heart is still a sin. Get rid of it, surrender it to the Lord in repentance.

As Acts 3:19 puts it: “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.” Out with the junk, make room for His refreshing.

3. Get Washed

And then go further than choosing to “remove your dark deeds like dirty clothes.” “Put on the shining armor of right living.” Get clean and live accordingly. There is no need to wait, to dwell on the dirt, or to mourn the gunk that’s been removed: “You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.”

That’s it. Praise the Lord that He is the One who “creates in us a clean heart.”

Isn’t that amazing? Our Lord goes before us to make us able to be confident before God (despite all the junk in our hearts.) The Holy Spirit lives in us, making room in these dusty, dirty hearts. 

We are free to live comfortably, knowing our hope is in Him even when our hearts are downright disgusting. And we’re free to be washed –inside out- anytime, anywhere.

Is going to the Lord for a cleaning of your heart on your to-do list today?

This post is being shared on: #TestimonyTuesday, #RaRaLinkup, Intentionally Pursuing, and Titus2sday.

At a Price: The Relationship Between Love and Freedom

“Why do the innocent suffer? Because of love. God designed love to be based on our free will. He didn’t want to be loved out of fear, or out of compliance. He wanted to be loved out of gratitude. But love has a price tag. If love is free, then a lover is free to be unloving. Otherwise love is forced. Because we are free to be unloving, many of us have been run over…” –Pg. 71. Safe People by Cloud and Townsend

Love and freedom are inextricably connected. The two are interdependent.

Without love, you cannot experience true freedom. Without freedom, love isn’t love.

That’s the way God designed it, and the implications are many:

What Love Gives Us: Freedom

• ·         Because He loved us, we are free

“The truth will set you free.” But what is the truth? “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). The truth is revealed by the loving character and actions of our Lord. That’s how He gives us freedom.

• ·         His love gives us the freedom to truly love others

1 John 4:19 says it concisely: “we love because he first loved us.” The love we have to give, in and of ourselves, is limited by our sinful nature. Our natural love is flawed and distorted. But the love of God, instilled in us and flowing through us by the Spirit –that’s perfect. In Christ, we are free to truly love others as He intends, in His timing, as His children.

• ·         The love of God frees us to be who He made us to be

Sin, as exemplified by Satan’s temptation tactics, tells us that who we are isn’t enough and that we can change who we are in order to be like God. We’re enslaved by the sinful conviction that we must take the place of God in our lives. When we ground our hearts in the love of Christ, we find that we can be who we are and that His grace is sufficient (2 Corinthians 12:9).

What Love Costs: Freedom

• ·         For God, love meant giving up freedom temporarily

In the person of Christ, God “Himself bore our sins” (1 Peter 2:24). The Lord who created everything and lives forever died for you and me before rising again. He “gave Himself up,” temporarily surrendering His freedom and rightful place. And He did that because of His great love for us.  

• ·         Loving God means becoming a slave to righteousness

When Christ died and rose again, we were redeemed. Each of us was “bought with a price; do not become slaves of human beings” (1 Corinthians 7:23). Instead, your freedom means being a “slave to righteousness” (Romans 6:18). When you love the Lord, you surrender your will and your freedom to Him that you may gratefully serve Him as an expression and a natural result of your love.

• ·         Emulating His love requires that we allow others their freedom

The Lord’s love sacrifice’s self. Those who love the Lord plead “take this cup if you are willing” and obey when the answer is “no” (Luke 22:42). Often encumbrances on our freedom are the result of loving others as the Lord does.

Consider the fruit of the Spirit. Those fruits aren’t conditional on those you love behaving how you would like them to. To love like the Lord, you set aside your freedom to sinfully manipulate others or to seek personal gain, and you emulate Godly love (patiently, gently, meekly) as others use their freedom (even in ways you don’t like)!

Such Stubborn Hearts!

We have such stubborn hearts! I was so reminded of this when reading Jeremiah 40-44.

Here's the setting:

God's people have been captured and taken to Babylon. It's been long coming. The Lord is using Babylon as a weapon to punish His people for their wickedness.

The Lord's prophet Jeremiah is left behind, along with a remnant to tend the land. This remnant of God's people are being governed by Gedaliah, one of their own, appointed by the Babylonians. Another guy decided to seize control, turmoil ensued. Both Gedaliah and the usurper are killed in the process. Johanan is now the ruler, and he wants to save the people.

Recognizing (finally!) that God is who He says He is and that Jeremiah is in line with the Lord, Johanan and the people ask Jeremiah to pray for them. They want him to ask God if they should flee the land in fear of Babylon or stay where the Babylonians left them and trust him. The people say -yes, they say- that regardless of the Lord's response, they will obey Him. His might has been displayed, they know it's useless to disobey Him.

So, God replies after ten days through Jeremiah. He wants them to stay in the promised land where they were left. God promises to deliver and protect His remnant.

What do they do?

The same people who just said they'd obey God regardless of His response (and His response was in their favor!) flee. They flee because they are afraid of Babylon. Moreso, they flee because they decide that Jeremiah is trying to trick them.

This is how stubborn our hearts are! We witness the Lord's work, we go to God and surrender, we vow to obey Him and perhaps we mean it. But as He responds we don't trust His Word. We twist it, defiling it with worldly assumptions, and we still do things our own way.

If you keep reading, or read any of Scripture leading up to these passages, you'll find more of the same. God works on behalf of His people, they recognize Him and proclaim their allegiance. Then, their stubborn hearts follow temptations, trust in deception, and fear immediate threats rather than the promises of the Lord.

And this isn't just the story of the Israelites. This is each of us.

How often do we go to God with a question and get impatient when He doesn't give an immediate answer?

How often to do we doubt His responses, choosing to fear the potential of evil deceit than to trust those who seek Him will not be left wanting?

How often do we surrender to Him and then go our own way anyway, with some excuse or another?

Our hearts are so stubborn! And God knows that.

Scripture tells us that the Lord's target is our heart. He knows it to be our personhood and the center of all of our operations because He made it (Proverbs 4:23). When the Spirit transforms us, in starts in our hearts (Ezekiel 36:26). It is on our hearts, not on tablets of stone, that the Spirit writes the truth (2 Corinthians 3:3).

David knew a lot about the heart and how stubborn it can be. His prayer can be our prayer, because Lord knows we need to surrender first and foremost to Him that which all this stubbornness originates in.

"Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me." -Psalm 51:10