Prelude
In the beginning, back when God created everything,
It was good, all creation, and the man was king.
God warned man about disobedience and the sin that follows,
But the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they did swallow
This fall led to the flood of Noah and later to the tower of Babel,
Where God delegated His care for nations, and instead chose Israel.
Man left on his own did more evil, leading to Sodom and Gomorrah,
Finally, to understand sin and His standards, God gave us the Torah.
To restore all things, God gave His own Son, Jesus the Messiah,
He fulfilled obligations in the Law of God, reconciled us to God, our Father.
Jesus Christ died on the cross for you and me, the first time He was here,
He will return soon to judge and to renew, and to hand over the kingdom to God,
His Father.
In a nutshell, this is what I teach.
In a heartbeat, this is what I preach.
That if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
To understand His love and the peace that He alone can give, through His grace He calls you deeper to know the path that He has paved.
To recognize what went wrong, to realize what is true,
I explain God’s grace through the Holy Bible; His plan to make our lives new.
Preamble
† Relationship not ritual/performance.
† Understanding just not knowledge.
† Knowing ourselves is vital for our spiritual life, the real you.
† The Heart has a voice, it speaks to us.
† Just like we need Jesus Christ to pay for our sins, we are totally incapable of cleansing our heart without Him. We need God to give us a new heart, that is the reason that we are a new creation in Jesus Christ.
† Spiritual warfare starts with the status of our hearts.
† The “Real You” is inside, your sin nature as in Rom. 7
God Relates to the Inner Person of the Heart
The human life is much more than complex physical and mental life.
† It is a life lived responsibly before God.
† No condemnation Rom 8:1
† Do not let your hearts be troubled John 14:1
It is this inner self to which the word “heart” in Scripture overwhelming refers.
† The heart is the seat of our desires, intentions, and will
2 Corinthians 9:7 So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver.
† The heart is the seat of our various intellectual activities such as knowing and thinking.
Matthew 9:4 But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, “Why do you think evil in your hearts?
† The heart is the seat of our feelings and passions.
Acts 2:26 Therefore my heart rejoiced, and my tongue was glad; Moreover my flesh also will rest in hope.
The Great Pretender
We can hide from others the deep hurt of our real person with outer joy.
Proverbs 14:13 Even in laughter the heart may sorrow, And the end of mirth may be grief.
We may do this as deliberate camouflage to keep others from knowing what is really going on inside of us. But even if we would like to communicate the contents of the depths of our heart to others, Scripture suggests that it is not possible.
Proverbs 14:10 The heart knows its own bitterness, And a stranger does not share its joy.
We are called to rejoice with those who rejoice and to weep with those who weep in Romans 12:15
But “one’s emotional-intellectual-religious-moral motions are too complex, too inward, and too individualistic to be experienced by others or even to represent them adequately to others.
1 Corinthians 2:11 For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God.
† The deep person of our heart is uniquely us with our own experience.
The truth that the inner person of the heart is our real identity is evident also in our uneasy and often distressful experience of duplicity—of “putting on a front” so people do not see who we really are.
This distinction between what a person does and says—and what is in his or her “heart”—is frequently noted in Scripture.
Psalm 55:21 The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, But war was in his heart; His words were softer than oil, Yet they were drawn swords.
Psalm 62:4 They only consult to cast him down from his high position; They delight in lies; They bless with their mouth, But they curse inwardly. Selah
Jeremiah 9:8–9 8 Their tongue is an arrow shot out; It speaks deceit; One speaks peaceably to his neighbor with his mouth, But in his heart he lies in wait. 9 Shall I not punish them for these things?” says the LORD. “Shall I not avenge Myself on such a nation as this?”
We usually desire to appear better than we are, this is a particular problem in our moral and spiritual life.
God Knows Your Heart
The real person of the heart that is hidden from others—and to some extent even from ourselves—is never hidden from God.
† The psalmist declared in Ps. 139, “O LORD, You have searched me and known me”
† Everything about our actions and our thoughts, “behold, O LORD, You know it all”
God knows us truthfully and exhaustively—that is, he knows who we really are—because he knows our hearts.
We are reminded of this again and again in Scripture so that we will never forget.
† “Would not God find this out? For He knows the secrets of the heart” (Ps. 44:21).
† “The refining pot is for silver and the furnace for gold, but the LORD tests hearts” (Prov. 17:3; cf. 1 Chron. 29:17; Ps. 17:3; Jer. 12:3).
† “Render to each according to all his ways, whose heart You know for You alone know the hearts of the sons of men” (2 Chron. 6:30).
† “I, the LORD, search the heart, I test the mind], even to give to each man according to his ways, according to the results of his deeds” (Jer. 17:10).
† “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of men, but God knows your hearts” (Luke 16:15).
† “You, Lord, who know the hearts of all men” (Acts 1:24; cf. 15:8).
† “We speak, not as pleasing men, but God who examines our hearts” (1 Thess. 2:4).
† “All the churches will know that I am He who searches the minds and hearts; and I will give to each one of you according to your deeds” (Rev. 2:23).
In examining our hearts, God probes beneath the surface.
† He always knows what is really there.
The individual whose life appears all together and peaceful on the surface may in the real person of the heart be coldly, even rebelliously, distant from God.
In Mathew 23 Jesus described them as whitewashed graves, beautiful on the outside, but inside full of “dead men’s bones and all uncleanness” (Matt. 23:27–28).
The Heart Life
The impressions from everything that we encounter along life’s journey all meet together in our heart
† impressions from various circumstances, contacts with people, and especially our relationship with God.
Our responses to these circumstances likewise come out of our heart.
† The bottom line is that human life is heart life.
The number of references to the human heart in the Old Testament outnumbers other terms associated with the inner life of the person.
† The same numerical frequency of “heart” is found in the New Testament.
If anything clearly emerges from a careful study of what Scripture says about humanity, it is that the word heart is the most significant term for understanding the person.
† The human life focuses on the heart.
† Our heart is the point of your personal contact with God.
Hebrews 10:11–18 11 And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God, 13 from that time waiting till His enemies are made His footstool. 14 For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified. 15 But the Holy Spirit also witnesses (testifies) to us; for after He had said before, 16 “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the LORD: I will put My laws into their hearts, and in their minds I will write them,” 17 then He adds, “Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.” 18 Now where there is remission of these, there is no longer an offering for sin.
† Enemies, Footstool, Spiritual warfare has everything to do with our new covenant with God, in our heart.
† New Covenant,
1. My laws into their hearts, and
2. in their minds I will write them.
3. Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.
God Relates to the Inner Person of the Heart.
Though we may fool others or even ourselves, we cannot hide our heart from God.
The human life is much more than complex physical and mental life.
† It is a life lived responsibly before God