If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.
- Psalm 37:23 The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD, And He delights in his way.
We are always on our journey, making decisions and taking steps in one direction or another.
- Even when we avoid deciding about something, we are deciding, taking a step in some direction—no decision is a decision.
Thus our spiritual growth or heart transformation includes all of the activities of our life.
- 1 Corinthians 10:31 Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
As the goal of our life is to live to the glory of God, this is also the goal of our spiritual transformation.
To each of us, God says as He did to Abraham centuries ago, “Walk before me”
- Genesis 17:1 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am Almighty God; walk before Me and be blameless.
The self-deceived heart cannot be blameless and walk before God.
It is never fully at rest. It cannot tune out the truth of reality—that we have not made ourselves, we cannot keep ourselves, we cannot control reality, we are not God.
The deceived heart seeks to deceive others who will then support its own pretensions that will aid itself in its self-deception
- We read about that in Romans 1
The heart can be deceived by others with lies that enforce our own deception.
- If others will only accept what the self cannot quite accept, the self as deceiver is given an ally against the self as deceived.
Without an awareness of our spiritual flaws, we would never seek God but remain as we are.
Self-impression/deception
All efforts to impress our fellow men—our vanity, our display of power or of goodness—must, therefore be regarded as revelations of our insecurity by veiling its weakness.
- Philippians 2:3 Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself.
- Philippians 2:3 NLT Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves.
The self is afraid of being discovered in its nakedness behind these veils and of being recognized as the author of the veiling deceptions.
The deceitful heart thus blinds us to the truth of who we really are.
- Proverbs 21:2 Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, But the LORD weighs the hearts.
Our proud deceitful hearts have a self-serving bent to consider ourselves better than we really are.
- We take credit for good outcomes, viewing them from our effort and blame bad ones on other factors.
- We consider ourselves morally superior to others.
- Almost all of us “are above average.”
Most disastrously, our proud deceitful heart blinds us to the truth of its own condition so that if we do not manage to turn our vices into virtues, we deceptively hide them from others and ourselves.
The natural heart of man is allied with the enemy of our soul, the great deceiver of the garden of Eden.
- Psalm 143:3 3 For the enemy has persecuted my soul; He has crushed my life to the ground; He has made me dwell in darkness, Like those who have long been dead.
- Revelation 12:9 9 So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
Charles Schultz – Peanuts: Linus, looking dejected, asks Lucy, “Why are you always so anxious to criticize me?” Lucy, looking very self-righteous, replies, “I just think I have a knack for seeing other people’s faults.” Linus becomes indignant. “What about your own faults?” he asks. Lucy replies, “I have a knack for overlooking them.”
It is the deceptive propensity of the proud heart that helps us understand Jeremiah’s description of the human heart as “incurably ill”
- Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?
For how can a heart that deceives itself concerning its own sickness ever cure itself?
- Ezekiel 36:26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
- John 14:1 1 “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me.
- Trouble is transportation
- Overcome
- Matthew 6:33. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.
- Philippians 4:13 13 I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
- John 14:6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.