Direct Your Heart

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Contemplative Review

  1. Right relationship with God
  • Without knowledge of self-there is no knowledge of God.
  • Without knowledge of God there is no knowledge of self.
  1. Identify one thing that you’re struggling with, that you need prayer for.
    • This exercise is to develop a relationship with our father in heaven.
    • This is more about your right relationship with God than a “prayer request” for intimacy with God, provisions etc.
    • We need to know our heart and how God deals with His perfect and complete knowledge of our heart, so, search your heart.
    • No excuses for not spending time with the Lord, you cannot identify and be aware of your spiritual problems.
    • This is a vicious circle because we would never seek God but remain just as we are without it.
  • We trust in God for His divine intervention in our lives
  • Ephesians 3:20 Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us,
  • To surround us with a community that depend on the word of God.
  • Ephesians 2:19 Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God,
  • We are not alone
  • Acts 12:5 Peter was therefore kept in prison, but constant prayer was offered to God for him by the church.
  • We should never isolate ourselves,
  • Proverbs 18:1 A man who isolates himself seeks his own desire; He rages against all wise judgment.
  1. God will never advance your instructions beyond your last act of disobedience.

Direct your own heart

  • Skateboard
  • Skis

The heart of the person directs his or her life, but the person is also the one directing his or her own heart.

  • Just like a man skiing down a mountain slope, the ski is like the heart—strapped firmly on to the skier, it takes him according to the pull of gravity.
  • Slipping through the snow, the skier goes where his skis go.
  • The person goes wherever his heart goes through his life of constant movement and change.
  • Yet, it is the skier who puts on and takes off weight on his skis that determines the direction and speed down the slope.

In the same manner, the person controls what goes in and out of his or her heart, which then determines the person’s activities and responses in life.

  • Proverbs 4:23 Keep your heart with all diligence, For out of it spring the issues of life.
  • Proverbs 25:28 Whoever has no rule over his own spirit Is like a city broken down, without walls.
  • Proverbs 3:5-6 Trust in the LORD with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.
  • Psalm 119:24 Your testimonies also are my delight And my counsellors.

Our relationships with other people

Recognizing that the real person is hidden in the depth of the heart is also meaningful in our relationships with other people.

When we hear someone say or do something that we don’t think is right, we are often quick to draw a conclusion about the person.

What a difference it could make if we first stopped and asked our self, “Am I hearing or seeing the real person, the person in the depth of their heart?”

  • Spirit of God
  • spirit of Man
  • Demonic spirit

I have learnt to ask myself

  • Do I really know the person behind who I see?
  • Do I know the person’s heart and what has shaped it this way?
  • What traumatic wounds—perhaps in early childhood, perhaps continuing—have contributed to this outwardly dysfunctional life?
  • Do I know what is in the deepest part of the heart the deep drives and passions that may be there battling against the powerful negative forces, but only occasionally and weakly breaking through?”

God alone knows our hearts.

  • Yet I’m told to know its condition
  • Proverbs 27:23 Be diligent to know the state of your flocks, And attend to your herds;
  • Both physically and mentally, naturally and spiritually

Therefore, I need information that God alone possesses

This is the word of knowledge

  • 1 Corinthians 12:4–11 4 There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. 5 There are differences of ministries, but the same Lord. 6 And there are diversities of activities, but it is the same God who works all in all. 7 But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all: 8 for to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, to another the word of knowledge through the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healings by the same Spirit, 10 to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning of spirits, to another different kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. 11 But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as He wills.

Judge nothing before the time

Paul said that no human being can know the heart of a fellow human being absolutely.

  • 1 Corinthians 4:5 Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels of the hearts. Then each one’s praise will come from God.

The emotionally disturbed person who has difficulty coping may, underneath all of the outward dysfunction, have a heart that is genuinely seeking God

  • even more than the person who outwardly seems on top of things.

There are times when we can’t avoid making some kind of judgment about people.

  • But caution should always be in order since the real person is the hidden person of the heart.

Judgment vs discernment

  • 1 Corinthians 12:10, a gift, discerning of spirits
  • God will judge all things
  • 1 Corinthians 6:2 Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world will be judged by you, are you unworthy to judge the smallest matters?

Summary

Renew your mind in the Word

  • Don’t lose hope
  • Romans 12:2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
  • Psalm 17:5 Uphold my steps in Your paths, That my footsteps may not slip.

Don’t lose trust in the Lord

  • Psalm 37:39–40 But the salvation of the righteous is from the LORD; He is their strength in the time of trouble. And the LORD shall help them and deliver them; He shall deliver them from the wicked, And save them, Because they trust in Him.
  • Saving of the Righteous – from the LORD;
  • 2 Corinthians 5:21 For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
  • Ephesians 2:8–9 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.
  • Time of trouble- deliver them from the wicked
  • 2 Thessalonians 1:6–8 since it is a righteous thing with God to repay with tribulation those who trouble you, and to give you who are troubled rest with us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
  • They trust in Him
  • Ephesians 1:13-14 In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory.
  1. Direct your own heart
  • Don’t scheme or devise wicked ways
  • Proverbs 14:12 There is a way that seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.
  1. Our relationships with other people
  • Proverbs 18:19 A brother offended is harder to win than a strong city, And contentions are like the bars of a castle.
  1. Judge nothing before the time

 

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