Make My Heart Your Dwelling Place

MAKE MY HEART YOUR DWELLING PLACE

Should we as believers and followers of Jesus fully and passionately desire that people who see our lives must believe that this the work of the Spirit and not the work of man?

Ps.51: ¹⁷ The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.

Matt.5: ⁸ Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

Matt.6: ²⁰ But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:

²¹ For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

II Thess.3: ⁵ And the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ.

I Tim.1: ⁵ Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned:

On a fairly regular basis I have a problem with my heart. I have had several small heart attacks, but it isn’t my physical heart of which I speak. My inward man, my spirit, or my heart does not submit very easily. It always desires to have its own way and think its own things and therefore my journey has always been to allow the Spirit to make my heart pure and reflective of the Person of Jesus Christ.

Sometimes as we become more mature in the Lord and more acquainted with how believers think and what is expected of us we can become proficient at presenting an acceptable outward behavior and speech while our hearts are in need of correction. Even as a pastor we must strive diligently to remain authentic and genuine inside as well as out. As believers we should not do things we did before and do things we did not do before, however the greatest work of the Spirit must take place in our hearts.

 

Heavenly Father,

Open my heart, Lord, and lay it naked before me stripped of all my pretentions and religious accoutrements. Allow me to see what I really am before you with no excuses and no comparison to others. Shine your holy light upon my heart so that I may grasp the enormity of my assumptions and the enormity of just how dormant I have become and just how far I have yet to go. Make me understand where I have wandered and how far off your path I am walking. Do not spare me any discomfort, and remove my well fortified hiding places.

Convict me with your precious Spirit so that I am captured in an inescapable aura of repentance and cleansing. I do not need some minor adjustments. I do not need information. I need a transformation that breaks me into small pieces of repentance and remakes me into the image of my Elder Brother. I cannot know what I need. Only You can show me and empower me through strong correction and strong grace. In many ways I have made my heart my own dwelling place complete with all kinds of religious tokens, evangelical thoughts, and even portions of Your Word which I have stuffed and hung on my self serving wall of comfort.

I understand the language called English but I desire to understand the language of the Spirit. Break me thoroughly and expose my hypocrisy and my deep reservoir of self righteousness. How have I walked in the energy of the religious flesh and not the power of Your Holy Spirit? Make me see how little I know while I profess to know much. Let me see and meet and touch and feel and experience and know Jesus in ways that glorify Him and change me. Make me desperate, Lord, for my heart runs for safety when I see an approaching storm that may require much of me.

Dare I ask you to make my heart His heart? Can I even broach such a subject when I am sure it would be a colossal task of the Spirit? Can I even trust my own definition of desire? Can I be honest with myself? I know I will willingly and unwilling protect some hidden treasures of my own flesh. I know I may hide pockets of dishonesty inside grandiose words of humility and brokenness. It has been far too long since I have placed myself fully upon Your altar and refused to leave alive. To say I need You is to minimize the depth of my situation.

I desire to be exposed to my hollow religious words. I need to be placed upon the potter’s wheel, drenched in your Spirit and without shape, and be made a servant to Your mighty molding hands. I know there are recesses of my heart which I have not allowed the Spirit to visit and which evidently have power. This world continues to gain access into my heart with clever pressure and admittedly with my open and subtle approval. I do not desire perfection, I desire purity. I desire my heart to be Your dwelling place and Your constant authority that controls my mind and my body. I desire Jesus to be Lord in all tangible and intangible ways regardless of how uncomfortable, absurd, and extreme they may seem to me or anyone else. I hunger and I thirst for more of You. I am sure I have much, much less of You than can still be apprehended. And it is evident that there remains much, much more of me that You can apprehend.

This is my prayer, my cry. No more religious games. No more doctrinal squabbles. No more self deceptions. Please, Lord, make me Your servant and let me completely serve You and You alone in thought, word, and deed. Here I am.

Show Me Your Testimony

SHOW ME YOUR TESTIMONY

Rev.6: ⁹ And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held:

Rev.12: ¹⁰ And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.

¹¹ And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.
¹² Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.

Every believer should have a testimony that both reflects his original conversion as well as reflects his present conversion. When you ask a believer to share his testimony he should have shared it many, many times already. I realize that some people get converted as young children, but their testimony should reflect how that original conversion worked its way out as they grew up and how it was confirmed in later years. But when a professing believer seems uncertain about his conversion experience it can be very troubling.

Not everyone has a Damascus Road experience, but every believer should at least be well aware of when he saw the light of the gospel and his heart was transformed. We all grow in the Lord at different rates, and most of us have struggled at times, but without a testimony we seem to be just religious people. The afore mentioned Apostle Paul gladly shared his testimony before paupers and kings. Men’s arguments dissipate when a person has had a personal encounter with the Crucified and Risen Christ. I know I am saved because of God’s Word and because I was there when it happened. Yes, I have a testimony.

I have not always lived up to my testimony to say nothing of living up to my Risen Lord in all His glory, but it always nourishes my soul to relive and retell my testimony. As the song goes, “Take me back to the time where I first met you”. And even in the midst of his correction and repentance, the Patriarch David asked God to “Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation”. After all the theological arguments subside, and after all the systematic theologies have been read, there is nothing that can compare with the day God’s Spirit came to live inside a lost sinner and in that moment darkness became light.

I was baptized as an infant and raised in a mainline Lutheran church where my mother was choir director and my father went on Christmas and Easter. I went to three years of catechism and was confirmed as a member as I received my first communion. Despite all the ceremony I was lost and did not have a personal knowledge of Christ. I was a disinterested high school student and although my SATs allowed me to attend college I squandered my first year and dropped out. I quickly went into alcohol, drugs, and a promiscuous lifestyle. I became involved with drug dealing as well as violence.

I was an out of control train racing toward the cliff with no thought of tomorrow. It was all a game and survival and pleasure was the goal. In my life there were arrests and police and violence and drugs sold right into the high school. I was notorious in my community and I loved it. I was planning to rob a bank and kill the guard as we went in. I stood 6 foot 5 inches with platform shoes, a 18” afro, a red dog collar with gold studs, and I was looking for trouble. It was all planned out.

But something happened in March of 1975 that changed everything.

Jesus.

I cannot show you heaven, and I cannot show you eternal life. But what I can show you is a transformed life changed completely by the power of Christ. The man I described died in 1975, and a new man was born. I am observably imperfect and I still sin. But I can stand before you and say my testimony is this. Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior and to Him alone I cling. I have let Him down many times but He has always been faithful to me. I am not what I could be. I am not what I should be. But since 1975 I am not what I was.

And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony.

That is my testimony.

The Fruit of a Changed Heart

THE FRUIT

of a

CHANGED HEART

Jer.17: ⁹ The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

Every person born after Adam is born with a fallen nature, or in other words a fallen and sinful heart. That little baby, although innocent compared with adults, has a fallen nature which will be revealed and honed after some months and years of growth. Every child comes with a capacity to sin and every child exercises that capacity with great energy. The deception that is inherent within a human heart is so deep and so clever, that it even deceives the person it inhabits. It is an evil miracle so to speak.

The evil heart of man knows no limits and can even invent evil things. It will sin not only with impunity, but it will sin cloaked as a good deed. This kind of diabolical energy comes from the evil one and from the profound strength of sin itself. Sin builds upon sin and produces an earthly strength which imprisons the souls and reaches out to imprison others. This kind of evil can even appear as messengers of righteousness and as prophets of the Most High God when in reality they are agents of Satan himself. And all this and more emanates from within the hidden places of the human heart. The prophet rightly asks the question, “Who can know it?”

But within that fallen heart there is a knowledge of the existence of a god on some level. And all men are held accountable before God. No man can find God and the Lord Jesus without the Holy Spirit draws him. And the Spirit seeks to draw all men unto Christ, and so even a sinful man must surrender to that drawing. I do believe a sinner can seek God, but I also believe the spirits of antichrist roam the earth and deceive even some searching hearts. Yes, it is a mystery. But I unequivocally believe that Christ died for every sinner and desires that all sinners be saved. I will address that in another post, however how does God get more glory by dying for a miniscule few rather than dying for the entire race when it was in His capacity to do it? And without a free will given to man the entire redemptive narrative is a colossal game of divine solitaire with man being little more than unwilling pawns in a chess game already played.

But the problem man faces is not what religion to espouse or even how to adjust his morals to align with the will of God. In fact, man has the capacity to adjust those morals without knowing God and without being born again of the Spirit of God. That kind of metamorphosis is a strong delusion and is humanism in its most obvious form. Many people join religions and cults and have a remarkable change in their behavior which includes giving up addictions, rejecting previous immoral behaviors, and even a new sense of hope and love for people. But they have just made alterations through the power of the human will. Yes, it happens.

But only through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ can a sinner receive a brand new heart, which is another way of saying a new nature. Without a new heart everything is just religion and morality without redemption.

Matt.12: ³⁵ A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things.

Rom.10: ⁸ But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach;

⁹ That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

When a person is born again he receives a new nature, a new heart, created in the essence and likeness of Christ Jesus. Everything changes. People look different; family looks different; your job is different; the temporal things give way to the eternal. You are not perfect and many things will continue to change, but from that moment when the Spirit of God comes into your being you will never be the same. Before you were changed when people talked about Jesus you could not really understand, but now you do. Now when a person gives a testimony about how they were saved you can identify. You have been given a brand new heart and you now belong completely to God.

You hear all the arguing about politics and it seems so meaningless. You still root for sports teams, but now you realize it has only a place. You love your family but all things must bow to your love for Jesus.

II Cor.1: ²¹ Now he which stablisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God;

²² Who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts.

II Cor.3: ³ Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.

The Person of the Holy Spirit has done His work of regeneration and has implanted a new heart within your being. Oh yes there are still the ever present residual effects and temptations of the old nature, but now you are free and you are a brand new creation. This is not religion. This is a divine miracle which translates a living being from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God’s Dear Son. It cannot be copied; it cannot be duplicated. Many have tried to simulate it by conforming their outward man to rules and regulations, and many have suggested they have pleased God because of their outward transformation.

However without faith it is impossible to please God. And unless the outward changes are the visible effects of an inward change because of a faith in Jesus Christ then the outward changes are useless and filthy rags. Attempting to regulate behavior from the outside is self righteousness and is an affront to God. Without holiness no man shall see God, and that holiness can only come through faith in Jesus Christ. The sinners around us do not need a lesson on marriage or stealing or abortion or sexual purity. What they need is a new heart.

II Cor.4: ⁵ For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake.

⁶ For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
⁷ But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.

People around us notice a change in our speech and our behavior. But we must let them know it is because we have a new heart. Not earned and not deserved, but given by grace through faith in Christ Jesus. We are still not yet perfect, but we can never be the same. Our being pulsates with the power and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. He makes all things new.