Know Thyself

As we close this study out let's take a look at a few key words from our lesson this week:

HEART (pg 91) Proverbs 4:23 says
"Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flows the springs of life."NASB

I especially like it in the New Living Translation:
"Guard your heart above all else,
for it determines the course of your life."

We learned early on in this study that the "heart is desperately wicked, hard to understand." but there is so much more to this thing called the "heart" of inner man.

Jerry Bridges in The Pursuit of Holiness describes the heart this way:
Heart in scripture is used in various ways. Sometimes it means our reason or understanding, sometimes our affections and emotions, and sometimes our will. Generally it denotes the whole soul of man and all its faculties, not individually, but as they work together in doing good or evil. The mind as it reasons, discerns, and judges; the emotions as they like or dislike; the conscience as it determines and warns and the will as it chooses or refuses - are all together called the heart.

So this whole of inner man is desperately wicked, and yes very hard to understand because it encompasses absolutely everything about you, your thought processing, your emotions, your will. It's all wrapped up in this thing we call the "heart".

And yet God has been gracious not to leave our hearts in this condition of desperate wickedness.

Ezekiel 36:26 states, "Moreover I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove your heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh."'NASB

Acts 15:8-9 "God knows people’s hearts, and he confirmed that he accepts Gentiles by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us. He made no distinction between us and them, for he cleansed their hearts through faith." NLT

Romans 10:8-10“The message is very close at hand;
it is on your lips and in your heart. And that message is the very message about faith that we preach: If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by confessing with your mouth that you are saved. NLT

Our hearts, by faith in God's good grace, through Christ's work at the cross and the grave can be made new. Now that deserves a great big THANK YOU JESUS!!!!

Of course, once these hearts of ours have been made new we easily find out they still have tendencies to stray. God is in the process of transforming these hearts of ours from the moment we give the whole of our hearts and lives to Jesus Christ to the day we stand before Him in heaven. So in this transforming process we are encouraged to "watch over our hearts" which leads us to our second word.

STEWARD (pg 92) We are called to be good stewards of these hearts of ours. We read from our study that the word steward comes from the old English word "ward", keeping charge of something and "sty" meaning pigsty. Seems quite appropriate when you consider some of the yucky emotions that flow from these hearts of ours. I like how Proverbs 4:23 says to "guard" our hearts. it means to protect it, to protect the treasure of God's word which has been planted in you. We can easily hear Paul's words to us which he also stated to Timothy in 1 Timothy 6:20, "Guard that which has been entrusted to you."

That takes us to the next word CHOOSE (pg 93, #2). For in guarding we are choosing. Every time a negative emotion threatens to take you down for the umpteenth time you can choose to go back to God's word, the only place of absolute, unadulterated truth. We sometimes prefer to let ourselves seep slowly into the pit of emotional nothingness but we know there is no joy, peace or hope there. Run to His Word sweet sister, to get God's voice of trust. You may have to run there over and over and over again before you sense God's peace and strength but don't give up. God's word makes it clear in the New Testament that perseverance is absolutely necessary in getting through our short lives here on earth. We've heard it said many times, "life is hard". For that very reason we need to cling to that which gets us through. At the end of this long race called life is our God waiting with open arms. Until then choose to persevere.

DEPEND is our next word (pg 93, #4). For when you are choosing to run to God you are learning to depend on Him, to trust Him. Colossians 1:29 tells us "For this purpose also I labor, striving according to his power, which mightily works within me." To some degree this seems contradictory - I need to depend on His power and yet I am striving. I can't tell you that I comprehend this verse completely in its complexity but I can tell you that when I look at it in light of our emotional struggles I come up with this: Depending on God is sometimes extremely difficult. When I am in the middle of an emotional funk it takes effort on my part to get up off my lazy spiritual behind and seek Him. My will is involved here as God's power pushes me toward Him and His word, to rest at His feet and allow the "power which so mightily works in me" to begin to take hold of my emotions. God does His part but there is a part we play as our wills need to be surrendered to Him in our day by day emotional struggles.

Question 4, page 94 asks why has God given us these "muddled emotions." First we have to understand that when man was first created in the garden his emotions were pure and undefiled, until sin crept in for the very first time. Sin corrupted a beautiful and perfect inner man, a perfect heart. So our emotions are first and foremost effected by our sinful nature. Throw in the deceptive culture around us and the lies of an enemy of your soul and our emotions become "muddled". In fact, sometimes they are downright maddening. However, it is in the amazing gift of our emotions mixed with faith that we truly understand God's love for us. Let's close with this descriptive passage from Ephesians 3:14-21, the New Living Translation. Do more than just read these words. Meditate on them, sweet sister. Let them seep deep into that emotional heart of yours. In no time your heart will be singing His praises.

When I think of all this,
I fall to my knees and pray to the Father,
the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth.
I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources
he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit.
Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him.
Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong.
And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should,
how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is.
May you experience the love of Christ,
though it is too great to understand fully.
Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power
that comes from God.
Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us,
to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.
Glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus
through all generations forever and ever!
Amen.