Tuesday, March 16, 2010

A Deceitful Heart

The book The Pursuit of Holiness is teaching me quite a bit about how I constantly need to seek God in order to become the child he created me to be.

While God’s desire is for me to be holy because He is holy, I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.

Paul talks about this constant battle between evil and good in the book of Romans, but this battle started all the way back in the Garden of Eden.

What I am currently learning is to trust God and lean on God – not on my own heart.

Jerry Bridges goes on to say:

“The Bible tells us that the heart is deceitful and unsearchable to any but God alone (Jeremiah 17:9-10). Even as believers we do not know our own hearts (I Corinthians 4:3-5). None of us can discern fully the hidden motives, the secret intrigues, the windings and turnings of his heart. And in this unsearchable heart dwells the law of sin. Much of sin’s strength lies in this, that we fight with an enemy we cannot fully search out.

The heart is deceitful. It excuses, rationalizes, and justifies our actions. It blinds us to entire areas of sin in our lives. It causes us to deal with sin using only half way measures, or to think that mental assent to the Word of God is the same as obedience (James 1:22).

Knowing that indwelling sin occupies a heart that is deceitful and unsearchable should make us extremely wary. We need to ask God daily to search our hearts for sin that we cannot or will not see. This was David’s prayer: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23-24). God’s primary means of searching our hearts this way is through His Word, as we read it under the power of the Holy Spirit. “The word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12). As we pray for God to search out hearts, we must continually expose ourselves to the searching of His Word.”

Having a better understanding of my heart and the sinful nature within me drives me to spend more time seeking God. In other words, I need to spend more time reading His Word, learning about His character and asking that He would mold my heart each and every day so that I may be more like Him.

It is encouraging to know that God gave us the Holy Spirit to guide us when we cannot trust our own heart. He made a way for us to become more like Him.

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