Undivided Heart

Teach me thy way, O LORD; I will walk in thy truth: unite my heart to fear thy name. (Psa 86:11)

Many chose not to fear God because we are not willing to commit all of our affections. There are much scattered affections that have been allowed to be festered and degenerated to lust. Lust has taken dominion over and has become presumptuous sins. We need the cognition that this state of the heart of is a miserable plague that can causes a road block that prevents God’s working into us. It is hard to impart His mind and life into one that is even partially resistant.

And I will give them one heart, and one way, that they may fear me for ever, for the good of them, and of their children after them: (Jer 32:39)

No one can serve two masters, the division of the two requires love one and hating the other (Matt 6:24). It is both self serving and slavishly yielding to our self- driven desires or we can be God serving. The unity of heart to fear God is His work, don’t strive in self imposed religion of do’s and don’ts. Pray and believe that He who is able to do exceedingly above what we can ask for to perform it. Fearing God allays all other fears, including the pangs of death. It is the confidence of our salvation and the experiential knowledge of perfecting us in His love. Ultimately it fulfills the first and greatest commandment (Mark 12:30).

Outward Experience, the Enemy of Inward Transformation Experience

Our fathers understood not thy wonders in Egypt; they remembered not the multitude of thy mercies; but provoked him at the sea, even at the Red sea. (Psa 106:7)

Twice in the Gospel of Matthew Jesus replied the religious community that the wicket and adulterous generation look for the outward for confirmation of spirituality (Matt 12:39, 16:4). This generation still exists today. By and large many still look for external gratifications and conclude that they are of God. Manifestations of outward signs don’t guarantee entrance into the Promise Land of His Kingdom as with the Israelites who saw and experienced great wonders after having been redeemed from Egypt. Fire from heaven never converted Ahab neither will the same bring true conversion today.

Jesus’ answer was in the cross He carried and prescribed the same to those who desired to follow Him. Physical death is too late for transformation from glory to glory (2 Cor 3:18), something of us requiring death that concerns our Lord. This death brings about a lasting transformation experience where God penetrates deep into the recesses of our being into the inner sanctum and breaths His uncreated life into us. The hindrance of the external life has to be dealt with in order that the Holy Spirit can render us spirituality that connects and receives freely from God. The message of the cross is only morbid to those who want to triumph in the exterior.  Without death, there is no resurrection.

The human will stands as a fortified fortress that feeds on senses prevents the lasting work of the Holy Spirit. To know the complete will of God, our will has to die. In order to take up the cross and follow our Lord, preceding that requires us facing our own Gethsemane. Depth of the will is an experience, not an idea and there the process of dying daily (1 Cor 15:31). Our will rages war against the will of God. When we are hungry, we will to eat. If we are thirsty, we will to drink. If we want to gratify our flesh, we will to do so. If we have been hurt, we will not to turn the other cheek. We can’t live the transcendent life of Christ in this world. Our own will denies the complete subjection to the spirit of God. If we deny the Spirit, we deny the manifestation of Christ life in us.

As with the Israelites who left Egypt, we should be careful not live presumptuously as many of them did and looking, complaining to be fulfilled externally, but inwardly void of the power of God to transform to know the good, and acceptable and perfect, will of God (Rom 12:2). The Spirit’s working begins in us and demonstrated in the exterior, not conversely.

Deceitfulness of Lust

Say unto wisdom, Thou art my sister; and call understanding thy kinswoman: That they may keep thee from the strange woman, from the stranger which flattereth with her words. (Pro 7:4-5)

As long as we are in the flesh, lust is probably the most subtle tool of the devil to fight for dominion over God’s children. The Bible doesn’t tell us that the devil and sin has been destroyed, instead as His children we have access to the God given strength and His Word to overcome (1 John 2:14). Jesus came to destroy the works of the enemy (1 John 3:8), but the enemy as of yet have not been done away with completely (Rev 20:10). Until that time, we can victoriously overcome by faith. The saddest thing is that lust is so deceitful that the sufferer is unaware of its destructive power until relationships and daily life is damaged.

And the children of the Levites bare the ark of God upon their shoulders with the staves thereon, as Moses commanded according to the word of the LORD. (1Ch 15:15)

Faith is not about seeing victory than believing, faith is in the midst of the raging battle we take up authority of His Word and resist than victory comes. We ought to know sexual sin is against our own body (1 Cor 6:18), know also that God is zealous for our bodies to bear the testimony of God (1 Cor 6:19) in the midst of the crooked and perverse generation paid with a costly price of His Son’s life. If we ask God for the revelation that our bodies belong to Him and not our own, the usage of our physical being will then differ from the way the way the world thinks.

 Deliverance will come, but God want us to know if we are honest about our desire to leave the wallowing in the filth of lust. There is nothing too great that God cannot do in us, He has already provided the Way of escape (1 Cor 10:13, John 14:6). Escape is in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, humbly and relentless abide in Him and we will find our freedom.

By His Stripes We are Healed

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.  (Isa 53:5)

Forgiveness
Corrie Ten Boom


"FORGIVENESS is the key which unlocks the door of resentment and the handcuffs of hatred. It breaks the chains of bitterness and the shackles of selfishness"