Monthly Archives: July 2013

When was the last time you felt like the apostle Peter and thought you knew better than the Lord in a particular area of life? Did you ever decide to provide a refined rebuke or cold correction to the Almighty?

Peter took [Jesus] aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!” (Matthew 16:22)

If you pause for a moment and think about your average day, you just might be surprised at how many times you say, “Never, Lord!” And I think the area we all struggle the most is in the area of grace. The words of 2 Corinthians 12:9—“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness”—often unleash my unbelief, and I wander off into far countries looking for something smaller than Jesus to meet my needs, lift my spirits, and bless my hurting heart.

•  We say “NEVER” to God’s grace when we look for our purpose in our profession.
•  We say “NEVER” to God’s grace when we look for our significance in our success.
•  We say “NEVER” to God’s grace when we look for our meaning in our ministry.
•  We say “NEVER” to God’s grace when we look for our approval in our accomplishments.

God’s grace is sufficient to guide us, govern us, and grow us into the person God is calling us to be. His power is made perfect in our weakness, and it is God’s perfect plan to work through imperfect and weak people, providing all the purpose, significance, meaning, and approval we could possibly hope for or even imagine.

Far too often we say, “Never, Lord!” when it comes to acknowledging that His grace is totally sufficient for our salvation. To His mercy we want to add our merit. To His grace we want to add our good works. To His finished work we want to add our feeble works. Our sinful human nature simply will not receive the completed work of our Savior on the cross; we look for every imaginable way to supplement it.

And when we can receive the grace that is sufficient for our salvation we say, “Never, Lord!” to that same grace that sanctifies us as well. Deep down we believe that the only way we will grow up in our faith is by the spiritual sweat of our own brow. We believe God will bless us when we do good and curse us when we do less than good. Well, in the words of my friend and pastor, Steve Brown, that idea “smells like smoke and comes from the pit of hell.” Nevertheless, we refuse to believe that God is not angry with us anymore and no longer seeking to exact His pound of flesh when we step out of line and mess things up.

Let us never say “Never, Lord!” to the truths of the Gospel because we simply cannot understand the greatness of our God. May we say, “Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!” to every Gospel truth and simply trust in His every Word. May our Lord gently rebuke us, correct us, and exhort us until we rest in the reality of our completed redemption until that day we are received into glory.

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

The greatest gift we could ever receive is the gift of God’s grace, which is given to us through the sinless life, sacrificial death, and supernatural resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Sadly, we can treat this priceless gift like any other gift and misuse it . . .  even abuse it!

Certain men whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are godless men, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord. (Jude 4)

Jude, the half-brother of Jesus, identifies those who perverted the priceless by changing the grace of God into a license for immorality. They took the greatest gift that could ever be given and distorted it. They perverted the priceless gift of God’s grace by teaching that the Christian was no longer under any obligation to follow the Law of God as a rule of life.

We have been preaching through the book of Romans at Cross Community Church each week, which has afforded me the opportunity to explain the term antinomianism, which literally means “against the law.” Antinomians disregard God’s Law as a guide for living the Christian life.    

In his book, The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about a “cheap grace” that crystallizes the way the church in the 21^st century has perverted the priceless gift of God’s grace. Bonhoeffer decried the rhythm of redemption that requires no repentance, the duty of discipleship that requires no discipline, and a Spirit-led service that requires no suffering. It is a Christianity that is devoid of Christ and His call on the lives of His disciples. It is a style of living marked by self-protection rather than self-sacrifice. And when forced to choose, those who seek “cheap grace” always choose the way of ease rather than exertion in Zion.

But this is not for you!

Preaching the Gospel to ourselves daily is the cure that keeps us from perverting the priceless. The clearer our view of what it cost our Lord to give us His grace, the more careful we will be to both appreciate it and appropriate it in our lives, regardless of the cost or circumstance.

Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. (2 Corinthians 5:14-15)

Being compelled by the love of Christ begs the question, “What are we to be compelled to do?” And the Bible makes it clear that our greatest work is not in the doing, but in the believing. The more we understand the truth that our freedom was not free—it did, in fact, cost Jesus everything—the more we will walk by faith, rather than by sight, and live in sold-out service to our Lord.

The grace of God remains “amazing” the more we are amazed by His grace! The perfect Son of the Living God freely took our place on the Cross and endured our punishment for our sin—all our sin. He who knew no sin became sin on our behalf. He lived the life we could never live and died the death we deserved to die in order to give to us His life—a life of righteousness, to be lived out with both freedom and joy, knowing that we are unconditionally loved and fully forgiven.   

Keeping Gospel truths in view keep us from perverting the priceless gift of God’s grace. These truths shout to the heart that has been made new that grace is far more than a theological proposition; it is a person, and His name is Jesus Christ.

Now that is the truth that truly transforms!

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

The dictionary defines the word desire as a longing for something; to exhibit or feel desire for something; to express a wish. We all have countless desires throughout the day. Desires determine the clothes we wear and the food we eat. Desires determine how we spend our leisure time and where we allow our thoughts to dwell. To stop desiring is impossible, but when it comes to our walk with the Lord Jesus Christ, we find ourselves facing what I call “dueling desires” moment by moment.

The sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want.  (Galatians 5:17)

Make no mistake. In the heart of every believer, there is a real and bewildering conflict of desires going on between the old sinful nature and the new “spiritual” nature. They are at constant war, each nature desiring what is contrary to the other. Every Christian knows this to be true by way of experience. Who of you reading this would not echo the apostle Paul’s sorrowful confession of Romans 7:15—“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do”?

Our desires place us smack dab in the middle of two kingdoms in conflict. We have the desire to expand the cause of God’s kingdom and we have the desire to expand the cause of our own kingdom. We have the desire to serve the kingdom of The One and the desire to serve the kingdom of one. We have the desire to serve our blessed Creator and the desire to serve ourselves. The primary problem we face is our desire to serve our own little kingdom is in direct conflict with the One who has saved us to serve Him.

The world, the flesh, and the devil battle all day long to capture the desires of our hearts. They make alluring and attractive promises, but in the end they simply cannot deliver on any of them. They leave us poor, blind, and naked. They promise peace and deliver disquiet. They promise fulfillment and deliver despair. They promise life and deliver death.

So how do we win the battle of these dueling desires that rage inside of us? Through the Gospel, of course! Only the Gospel has the power to dislodge an inappropriate desire and replace it with one that pleases God. The Gospel not only impacts our desires, it also empowers our disciplines. The Gospel is both the motive and the only enduring motivation to keep us consistently seeking after the things of God.

Only the truths of the Gospel can free us to desire the things of God from our place of acceptance—not for our place of acceptance. If our desires are rooted in what we will ultimately get from God, we will eventually turn away from Him, because we will be devoid of any lasting joy. But if our desires are rooted in what we already have been given by God, the joy of the Lord will be our strength to keep on keeping on(Nehemiah 8:10).

Let me close with a little story that wonderfully describes the inner battle of “dueling desires” and how to win that battle each day.

A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: “Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time.” When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, “The one I feed the most.”

On this side of the grave, we will always struggle with the battle between two desires; we can either feed the good, God-centered desires or the bad,self-centered ones, knowing the one we feed most will win the day.

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.'”

“You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. (Genesis 3:2-8)

Oh, how the cunning serpent slithered his way into the hearts of Adam and Eve!He made a promise of life, to “be like God,” but he could not deliver on his promise.The life the devil promised lead only to death . . . it always has and it always will.

Adam and Eve were made in the image of God; they were His image-bearers.But evidently they were not satisfied with being made in the image of God; they wanted to be God.They traded the worship of the Creator for the worship of the created thing—themselves—and sent all of humanity into a hideous,downward death-spiral.They forgot who they were and what they were created for.Our first parents had “identity amnesia” and bought into a lie that they could live a life of autonomous independence apart from the One who created them.To be sure, this was both foolish and fatal!

The devil is still busilyworking to sell his lie to those who have been re-created in Christ.He promises that we can step outside of our relationship with our Redeemer and find more life.He tempts us to believe that we can find in created things what only the Creator can actually give.

• We begin to look for financial security in our finances instead of looking to the One who give us the ability to get wealth (Deuteronomy 8:18).
• We begin to look for good health in our nutrition and exercise program instead of looking to the One who holds our lives in His hand (Daniel 5:23).
• We begin to look for purpose in our work instead of the One who is our purpose (John 14:6).How quickly we forget that the Lord is our only security, health, and purpose on this side of the grave!

But this is not for you.On the cross, Jesus crushed the enemy—and along with him, the promise of life that delivers only death.Because of what Jesus did for us on the cross, we no longer have to define ourselves horizontally. In other words, we no longer look to created things (finances, physical appearance, possessions, relationships, etc.), to get what only the Creator is able to give to us.Everything smaller than Jesus is “fool’s gold,” which looks valuable on the surface, but in reality it is worthless and leaves us poor, blind, and naked.

Jesus is the only One big enough to meet you in your place of every need.He is big enough in our marriage.He is big enough in our parenting.He is big enough in our profession.He is big enough in our recreation.He is big enough in our storms.Jesus promises more and delivers more than He promises.He dismantles our walls of self-protection and erects walkways of self-sacrifice.His history-changing death on the cross makes possible the life-changing death to self, which frees us to live for something bigger and better—and His name is Jesus Christ.

Only in His willingness to die do we find life.His death is life, and the death of the self He calls us to is the abundant life.We will never find life apart from our relationship to the One who created us.Because we have been created by Godfor God, we will only find true life when we are living in God.As we continue to surrender and submit to His control in our lives, He frees us from the control of the things that were never created to control us.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.(John 10:10)

A full life was never intended to be found in anything smaller than Jesus.Every time we put the creation in the place of our Creator we find ourselves living a life that is no bigger than the life we are living.Rather than being an abundant life, lived out for the glory of our Savior King, it becomes an atrophied life, devoid of every lasting joy we were created to experience.

So . . . who and what have you been living for lately?Funny thing about living for Jesus; the more we die to the self, the more life we actually find!

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

Most church pews are filled with men and women who affirm the inspiration and authority of sacred Scripture. This is a good thing. However, if affirming the inspiration and authority of sacred Scripture does not translate into changing our beliefs and altering our behavior, it is of very little value in the life of the Christian.

The searing searchlight of sacred Scripture has been given to us by God to renew our minds, enlarge our hearts, and bend our wills. Is this the confession of your life today? Is the Word of God the functional authority in your personal and professional life?

For 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)

Because the Word of God is living and active, it is to function in our lives in such a way as to rule our hearts and shape our lives. It is to test our tightly held traditions and challenge our current comfort zones. It is to dismantle every deity we have designed in the idol-making factory of our unholy hearts—from power and pleasure to prosperity and prestige. Because the Word of God is sharper than any double-edged sword, it will cut away everything that does not conform us to the image and likeness of the Lord Jesus Christ—in thought, word, deed, and desire.

Because the Word of God is living, it will impart life to those who marinate in it and meditate on it. The apostle Paul, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, asserted that “The holy Scriptures . . . are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 3:15). The Word of God brings life where there is death. It brings health where there is disease. It brings hope where there is hopelessness. And because it is active, it is designed to empower the believer to pursue a life that is pleasing to God. It changes the orientation of the heart from beating for the self to beating for the Savior.

The searing searchlight of sacred Scripture is always on. If the world around you begins to darken, the Word of God shines brighter! If you begin to lose your way, it becomes a celestial compass to guide you through every storm and return you to the path God is calling you to walk. Regardless of where this message finds you today, you can be sure that the searing searchlight of sacred Scripture will be . . .

•  A lamp to your feet
•  A light to your path
•  A rock for your foundation
•  An anchor for your soul
•  A shield of protection against the attacks of the enemy
•  A deep well of living water to slake your every thirst

As the Word of God judges the thoughts and attitudes of your heart, it will be the catalyst and cause of your spiritual growth. Whether you hear it in a sermon, Bible study lesson, in your personal time of devotion, or through the loving counsel of a godly friend, it will be the rich soil in which the seeds of the supernatural are carefully sown, producing a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

The Word of God both tells and transforms . . . announces and accomplishes . . . and nothing in all creation can stop it from doing exactly what God has ordained it to do in your life. “For the Lord Almighty has purposed, and who can thwart him? His hand is stretched out, and who can turn it back?” (Isaiah 14:27.)

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

If someone was going to write about you in a book and describe the life you are currently living, how would you like to be described?  As a faithful friend?  A loving parent?  A hard worker?  A super servant?

To be sure, none of us would want to be described in someone’s book the way John, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, described Diotrephes in sacred Scripture.

I wrote to the church, but Diotrephes, who loves to be first, will have nothing to do with us. So if I come, I will call attention to what he is doing, gossiping maliciously about us. Not satisfied with that, he refuses to welcome the brothers. He also stops those who want to do so and puts them out of the church.  (3 John 9-10)

So Diotrephes . . .

• Loves to be first
• Will have nothing to do with church authority
• Gossips maliciously
• Refuses to welcome the brothers
• Hinders others from welcoming the brothers
• Puts them out of the church

WOW!  Being chronicled by name in sacred Scripture with this kind of life confession leaves a lot to be desired.  A whole lot!  Now, you and I don’t know what was going on in the heart of Diotrephes that made him dislike, distrust, and disrupt the apostle’s ministry.  But it would serve us well to pause and see where our story intersects with his story.  Why?  Because, like Diotrephes, we are all sinners—both by nature and habit.  Given the right (or wrong) environment and circumstances, we all might do some of the very same things.  After all, which one of us does not love to be first?

The only cure for such a carnal chronicle is the Gospel.  The Gospel truths enlarge our view of Jesus. As He increases in our lives, we begin to decrease.  We no longer are driven by our need of being first. We rest in the Gospel truth that many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first (Matthew 19:30).  We no longer feel the need of wagging our gossiping tongues in the direction of others, putting others down to lift ourselves up.  We learn what Paul learned about being content because he knew he had everything he needed because he had Jesus (Philippians 4:11-13).

So . . . if someone were chronicling your life, what would you hope would be said about you? What if a researcher interviewed those closest to you . . . what do you think they might say about you? Well, if there is a difference between your answer to the first question and your answer to the second, you still have time to do something about it!

Check out the chronicle of a woman who is identified only as “Peter’s mother-in-law.”

When Jesus came into Peter’s house, he saw Peter’s mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever. He touched her hand and the fever left her, and she got up and began to wait on him. (Matthew 8:14-15)

What a wonderful thing to have written about Peter’s mother-in-law, especially in light of the plethora of mother-in-law jokes circulating today! Peter’s mother-in-law moved from sickness to service—from fever to faithfulness.  Clearly, Jesus was on the throne of her life and her heart beat to bless Him.  May this be the confession of our lives . . . and the chronicle that appears if our name is ever recorded in someone’s book.

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

What has you restless lately? Are you facing uncertainty at the office? Are you dealing with difficulty in your marriage? Are you struggling with your season of singleness? Do you find too much month left at the end of the money?

If you stroll into a bookstore, you’ll find a plethora of books in a section labeled “Self-Help”—books that promise to give you the cure to what is ailing your restless heart. But make no mistake; the self-help field is no help at all! That is why the message today is a word of holy help from on high and contains a prescription for going from restless to resting.

Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth!  (Psalm 46:10)

The command to “be still” seems counterintuitive in the world we live in today, doesn’t it? It seems as though God did not know just how much would be going on in our lives when He gave us this divine imperative to simply be still and know Him. But infinite Wisdom knew everything about us and the lives we would be living . . . and He knew just how critical it would be for our restless hearts to rest in Him and be still if we are ever going to live the life we have been called to live.

In the words of St. Augustine, “God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you.” Often we remember the first half of the prescription—“Be still”—but forget about the last half: “and know that I am God.” The only answer to the vacuum in our restless hearts is in knowing God and growing in our personal relationship with Him. Knowing the Father through the cross-work of His Son, as applied to our hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit, is the cure for every ailment that causes our restlessness. As we both rest in and rehearse the Gospel truths in our lives, we are transformed by the renewing of our minds, the enlarging of our hearts, and the bending of our wills.

You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand. (Psalm 16:11)

Think about looking at life through a camera lens. The more you move around, the blurrier the picture. We have all taken pictures like that and thought how nice the picture would have been if there was less movement. That is why some of the best photography in the world is done with the camera mounted on a tripod so as to keep it still. When we “be still” in God’s presence, our vision becomes clearer . . . which empowers us to keep moving in the direction God is calling us to go.

Our hearts were redeemed to beat for the things of God. We are to be pursuing God, serving God, and loving God. When God is at the center of our lives, we will know Him better and better with each passing day. The command to “be still” will be part of our daily living. And at this level of living, we will consistently move from restlessness to resting.

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

For the believer, the answer to the question “Who’s the boss?” is, of course, the Lord Jesus Christ. Yet every moment of every day countless other “bosses” try to gain the attention of our minds, the affection of our hearts, and the application of our wills. Our minds, our hearts, and our wills will be ruled by something; there is no disputing that fact. The question before us is: “Who—or what—will rule?”

For some, their work is their boss. They live for career advancement and climbing the proverbial ladder of success. For others, achieving financial security is their boss. They live for building “bigger barns” and storing as much as they possibly can. For some, their boss is their painful past. They simply cannot get past the past; instead of learning from it, they live in it. Still others are ruled by a fantasized future. They live in a world of “waiting for their ship to come in,” always looking for the big score rather than daily progress. I could go on, but you get the point. When anything smaller than Jesus is our boss, we shrink the borders of our lives down to painfully narrow borders of survival and self-protection. And this is no place for a believer to be living!

When Jesus is our boss, we live for something greater than the life we are living. When Jesus is our boss, we live a life that truly matters, a life filled with significance, meaning, and purpose. There are no mundane moments when we are living for the Master. Small things become big things. Unimportant things become important things. Common things become uncommon things. The Creator constructed us to live at this level of transcendence—a level of living that is greater than our level of living. Because the One we serve is larger than life, we are to be living for something larger than life!

You’ll remember that back in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were not created to live a life of self-indulgence, self-satisfaction, and self-rule. They were commissioned by God to live a life of transcendence, above and beyond themselves, and they were given the ability to do what nothing else in creation was equipped and empowered to do.

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”  (Genesis 1:26-28)

God was their boss and the life they were living truly mattered. They were to have dominion over all things. They were to be fruitful and multiply. They were to be the stewards of God’s creation and slaves to nothing. But when they replaced God on the throne of their lives and made themselves the boss, they denied their own humanity and disconnected themselves from the only One who could meet them in their place of deepest need.

So . . . who is the boss in your life today? What have you been living for lately? What does the confession of your life say? Remember, when God is the boss our lives, we are being shaped—not by the creation—but by the One who created us: our Creator God.

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN

We have all heard the expression, “Fake it ‘til you make it!” The idea is also expressed as “Act as if . . .” Both phrases mean to act as if you have confidence in a process, and as the process produces success, it will generate genuine confidence. The purpose is to avoid getting stuck in a self-fulfilling prophecy: lack of confidence in a positive result leading to a negative result. The phrase, which was popularized by various 12-step recovery groups in the late twentieth century, is a simplification of Aristotle’s notion that acting virtuously will make one virtuous.

Well, I have both good news and bad news for you today. The bad news is that acting as if you are virtuous will never make you virtuous. Only God, in His grace, makes a vile sinner virtuous. The good news is that after God has made a vile sinner virtuous by His grace, we no longer have to “Fake it ‘til we make it,” because we already have made it . . . thanks to what Jesus Christ has done for us.

Those who fake it ‘til they make it are working entirely in their own strength. They are walking by sight and not by faith, and rarely do they “make it” as they had intended. We can understand the reason why an unbeliever would use this approach, but this should be as far as the east is from the west for the Christian believer!

Sadly, there are a great many men and women in the church today who put on a good show and fake their faith on Sunday, but Monday through Saturday you can’t tell them apart from the unbelieving world. Their language is not seasoned with salt, but rather peppered with profanity. Their behavior is not a light for a dark world, but rather mirrors the moral morass of the world’s system.

But this is not for you!

“I will strengthen them in the LORD and in his name they will walk,” declares the LORD.  (Zechariah 10:12)

God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.

(2 Corinthians 9:8-9 ESV)

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.  (Philippians 4:13 NKJV)

With promises like these, the notion that we should fake it ‘til we make it seems silly, doesn’t it? The Lord God omnipotent promises to strengthen us in our faith so that we will walk in His name rather than follow the ways of the world. He will make all His grace abound to us, so that we may abound in good works—in all good works that are done through Christ who gives us strength.

These glorious promises of putting the Gospel on display in a way that makes God attractive are grounded in God’s sufficiency, not our own. Walking by faith and not by sight lifts us far above any need to “fake it” for anyone, at any time, and for any conceivable reason.

Once we trust God’s promise of progress in this life (note that I said progress, not perfection), we are liberated to lean into the plan and purpose God has for our lives without any fear of falling or failure. Remember, falling isn’t failing unless you fail to get up. Proverbs assures us that “Though a righteous man falls seven times, he rises again” (Proverbs 24:16). We must hold firm to God’s promise to complete what He started, including includes what He started in you! Yes, you are a work in progress, and it’s true that progress won’t be complete until you are received into glory, but it will be completed! You can take that to the spiritual bank.

Until that day, let us do all we can with all God has given us to do it with, knowing that the power of heaven stands behind us, so there is never any need to fake it.

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

How often we speak of the heart. “I love you with all my heart,” we’ll say, or “He really put his heart into it,” or “Her heart must be breaking.” Shakespeare wrote, “I did never know so full a voice issue from so empty a heart.” But who really knows the heart?

Lord, you know everyone’s heart.  (Acts 1:24)

It is one thing to speak about the heart; it is another thing altogether to actually know the heart. The Author of Scripture also formed the heart of man (Job 31:15), and the Bible tells us that the human heart is so ensnared by sin, so wicked and deceitful that it is beyond our understanding (Jeremiah 17:9). Make no mistake; the Cosmic Cardiologist really knows the human heart, which is why the prayer of the psalmist must be the confession of our lives.

Search me, O God, and know my heart. (Psalm 139:23)

It is the wise person who cries out to our Cosmic Cardiologist to search the heart; the fool thinks his heart needs no searching. By nature we all think we are better than we really are; we think more highly of ourselves than we should! We compare ourselves with others, find those who are a little worse off than we are, and tell ourselves we are doing well. We believe we reflect much more of the character of Christ than the confession of our lives affirms. And how often are we convinced that we know with absolute certainty what is beating inside the heart of another? We practically put ourselves in the roles of judge, jury, and executioner.

But this is not for you!

Only God knows the heart—every heart (John 2:25). He is the One who removed our heart of stone and gave us a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26). Only God knows exactly what is going on inside our hearts moment by moment. We need to acknowledge this truth and live in the light of this truth. We need not fear God searching our hearts, because He is the only One who can cause it to beat after the things of God.

You see, God will tolerate no rival. He is to be on the throne of our lives and He will dismantle and deconstruct every idol of the heart. He began this work when He raised us from death to life and He continues this work until it is done (Philippians 1:6) and that will only happen when we reach the other side of the Jordan. Until that day what we need to remember God is at work in the lives of you and me and all of His children.

In light of this truth, we need to keep preaching the Gospel to ourselves daily. We must keep both past grace and future grace before the eyes of our heart. We live under the banner of the finished work of Jesus Christ (our justification, which is past grace), but we also live under the banner of the future work of Jesus Christ (our continued sanctification and ultimate glorification, which is future grace). What God started He will finish, and nothing will get in His way—and that includes you!

Regardless of where this finds you today, whether your heart that is beating strongly for the things of God, broken on the anvil of affliction, or buried under the weight of weakness and despair, God will finish what He started in you and in this world. There is a day, not so far off, when your heart will beat only for the things of God and you will be in a place where there are no more tears, sorrow, pain, or death. Let that truth from our Cosmic Cardiologist be a comfort to your heart today and all the days of your life.

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!