How's Your Heart?

THE WORD:
"You have no part or share in this ministry because your heart is not right with God . . . For I see you are full of bitterness and captive to sin." (Acts 8:21-23)

" . . . the message (the Word) they heard was of no value to them because those who heard it did not combine it with faith." (Hebrews 4:2)

"Those who obey His commands live in Him, and He in them.  This is his command: to believe in the name of the Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as He commanded us." (1 Jn. 4:24-23)

"Rid yourself of all anger, rage, malice, slander and filthy language from your lips . . . clothe yourselves (instead), with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. . . over all these, put on love . . . and be thankful." (Col 3:8, 12)

MY TRUTH:
I want so badly to be used by God, to be filled with His Spirit, and this Word revealed to me why I haven't been able to experience the fullness of His Glory. . .

I recently pondered a question in my bible study group: Can we be so spiritually minded that we are no earthly good?  I guess depending on your definition of "spiritually minded", your answer to that question may be yes or no.  I do, however, believe that we can be so religious that we are no spiritually good. As in the story of Paul, God had a very special assignment for him, declaring "this man is my chosen instrument to carry my name" (Acts 9:15), but He couldn't use him because his heart wasn't right.  How many of us are chosen by God to carry out a task that only we can fulfill, but God's plans are on hold because we're defective from a hardened heart? 

Before his conversion, Saul was a religious man, a rule-enforcer, rigid and suffered from a hard heart.  According to Hebrews 3:7-18, our hearts our hardened through sin, disobedience and unbelief.  Our hearts can be hardened from many of life's experiences: pain, hurt, disappointment, and failure to name a few.  Whether from our own sin or disobedience, or that of others, it's easy for us to harbor those experiences and allow them to callous our heart, tainting our interactions with God and other people.  Then, we try to work our way into heaven, by practicing good deeds on the outside, all the while our insides are rotting away.

Unfortunately for Paul and the rest of us rule-followers and law abiders, it doesn't work like that.  We can not purchase or earn the power of God (which is the Holy Spirit) through our own righteous acts.  It's not just good enough for us to know the Word, and walk around with a halo floating above our high buns.  Our spirit has to be right, because God looks at our heart.  Like Acts 8:21 states, we "[can't]share in His ministry [if] our heart is not right with God."  Before God could use Saul,  He had to soften his heart(Acts 5-9).  He accomplished this through first humbling him (he blinded Saul so that he could not see).  Then Saul had to respond with obedience (He went into the city that God commanded him to), and sanctification - that is, he separated himself unto God - by fasting for three days.

But can we evade this process of being humbled by God in order for Him to use us?  How can we humble ourselves first, before He has to do it for us?  This is where I believe the principles of Faith, Love and Fruits of the Spirit will cleanse our hearts so that we "may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God," (Eph 3:19b) and maybe help us avoid an encounter with God where we are forcibly brought to our knees.

God willing, my next couple of posts will be on a journey that will examine how we can exhibit these three principles in our daily lives to grow deeper in relationship with God.