Our access to God is determined by the status of our hearts. This daily devotional looks at how we get a clean heart through devotedness and loyalty.
Nuggets
- Our prayer life needs to show that we are devoted to God.
- Our hearts are purified at conversion and through sanctification.
This year, we are looking at the status of our hearts. That status determines how we gain access to God.
Access to God
“Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded” (Jas. 4: 8 ESV)
Our prayer life needs to show that we are devoted to God.
We normally think of drawing near to God as the healthiness of our prayer life. Prayer is a two-way communication with God in which we pour out our soul to Him.
Are we approaching God on His throne? Are we doing it the right way?
Wait! What?
There is a right way? Can’t we just start praying and have Him hear us?
Grose said that more than just a prayer life is needed. We need a devotedness to God.
Look what Grose said. He wrote, “THE DUTY here required of us by the apostle principally implies a life of prayer and devotedness to God, as contrasted with the careless indifference or the dull formality of nominal or pretended Christians.”
Resource
We’ve just talked about nominal disciples. Nominal disciples are those boasting they loved God without even trying to imitate Him — those who dig on religion and its rituals without having a change in heart.
To read a related devotion, click the button below.
I like the term devotedness. We can probably understand it better than piety — though it means the same thing, just not as churchy.
Piety is defined as the persistent application of moral virtues to our lives because of our supreme love for God.
That is exactly what devotedness is.
Hislop reminded us we have to be conscious in our prayers. I know. Unless we are talking in our sleep, aren’t we conscious about our talking?
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Well, we are to “pray without ceasing” (I Thess. 5: 17). It is continuous, but it is more than that.
It is a firm loyalty.
The way I read that is we have to be sincere. We can’t be just going through the motions — even if it is daily and at all times.
Most of us probably have that friend that, regardless of how often we see them, it feels like we pick up where we left off when we do.
God doesn’t want that kind of relationship.
God wants us to value the relationship. That gives us the opportunity to grow in Him.
Yes, we are unworthy, so how can we approach God? The only way we become worthy is asking Jesus to make us so.
Approaching God has to have several prerequisites. Jeary gives us a list.
- We have to know God.
- We have to know we need God.
- We have to know that Jesus is the only way we will be reconciled to God.
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We have to give God the reverence due Him. We have to acknowledge our need for Him in our lives because of our sinful nature.
Let's Put It into Context
I know. This heading is out of place. But I wanted to have the reminder here where we need it.
Remember when we had the From a Wrong Heart to a Right Heart series, we talked in Making the Heart Right that, after conversion, God gives us a new heart.
Hale addressed that. He wrote, “If the heart must be created anew before it can be a clean heart, certainly, before it is thus new-formed, it is AN IMPURE AND UNCLEAN HEART.”
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We know that the heart must be renewed because it is unclean. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer. 19: 9 ESV).
This translation says that the heart is sick. Some translate it as wicked. Wicked refers to sinful things.
That means we have to strive to become clean. Nothing is more important in our lives than pursuing our Father.
Access Because of Our Hearts and Hands
“… Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts…” (Jas. 4: 8 ESV)
Our hearts are purified at conversion and through sanctification.
We need to cleanse our hands and purify our heart because we are, as Synder said, “… dying and accountable creatures.”
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Hogart had a good definition of a clean heart. He wrote, “A clean heart is one purified by the Holy Spirit from everything that is contrary to holiness.”
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A clean heart is the result of having our hearts purified. Purity means possessing God’s moral character, having eliminated the stain of sin.
Our hearts and hands become cleansed only because of God’s unmerited grace. Grace is a free and unmerited gift of love from the Heavenly Father, given through His Son, Jesus Christ, that enables salvation and spiritual healing to believers by the work of the Holy Spirit.
We can’t do it ourselves. Only God can. He does it through the Holy Spirit.
Hogart contended that there are two different clean hearts. One is given to us at conversion, and the other is gained through sanctification.
Conversion is the product of repentance, when we turn away from our sins and return to God, that secures salvation.
- Sins are actions by humans that disobey God and break one of His reasonable, holy, and righteous laws and commandments, goes against a purpose He has for us, or follows Satan’s promptings.
- Holy means to be set apart — because of our devotion to God — to become perfect, and morally pure while possessing all virtues.
- Perfection means we reach a state of maturity because the combination of the spiritual graces form, when all are present, spiritual wholeness or completeness — holy, sanctified, and righteous.
- Spiritual graces are worldly morals that have been submitted to God to further His kingdom instead of enhancing this world.
- Sanctified means to be set free from sin.
- Pure means not being sinful or having the stain of sin.
- Perfection means we reach a state of maturity because the combination of the spiritual graces form, when all are present, spiritual wholeness or completeness — holy, sanctified, and righteous.
- Righteous means we are free from sin because we are following God’s moral laws.
- Holy means to be set apart — because of our devotion to God — to become perfect, and morally pure while possessing all virtues.
Salvation is the gift of life through the deliverance from condemnation and sin to acceptance and holiness and changes us from being spiritually dead to spiritually alive.
Sanctification is the transformation of mind, body, and soul, which begins with regeneration, gradually changes our nature and morals through the promptings of the Holy Spirit, and ends with perfected state of spiritual wholeness or completeness.
- Regeneration is being changed from spiritually dead to spiritually alive and the internal new birth and requickening that God brings about through the work of the Holy Spirit to give us new character.
- Spiritual death is the separation from God that occurred as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin.
- The spiritually alive are those who have ABCDed, so they are no longer separated from God.
- Spiritual death is the separation from God that occurred as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin.
The ABCDs of Salvation
If you have not become a believer in Christ, please read through the
Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.
A – admit our sins
B – believe His Son Jesus is our Redeemer
C – confess God as Sovereign Lord
D – demonstrate that commitment by making any changes needed in our lives to
live the way in which God has called us
The Disciple’s Job Description
Glossary
Well, yes. We are converted, but we aren’t perfect yet. We won’t get perfected until we reach Heaven.
In this life, we are changing from milk babies to steak adults. Paul also called it working out our minds. That is what sanctification is.
Here we are back to constant and steadfast again. “God, create a clean heart for me and renew a steadfast spirit within me” (Ps. 51: 10 CSB).
We are established in the relationship. We are established in having a clean heart.
But the emphasis should be on establishing. We aren’t going to not sin.
The musical directions at the beginning of the psalm say it was written “when the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba” (Ps. 51: 1 ESV). David had established his relationship with God by then (Ps. 51: 11).
It is about changing to be like God is. It is getting it down to the heart level.
We get God’s character into the center of our being. We become a man after God’s own heart.
It is more than just that, though. It is hating sin.
In Romans 12: 9, the word for what we do with evil is translated several different ways.
• Hate (NIV, NLT, CEV, GNT)
• Abhor (ESV, KJV, HCSB)
• Detest (NKJV, NASB, CSB)
We get it whichever way. It is an intense emotion of dislike.
To read a related devotion, click the button below.
The consistency discussion has to be applied here, too. We have to consistently abhor evil. We have to hate evil all the way down to its roots.
Making the Connections
We have to remember that we also access God through worship. Our prayers are to be worshipful.
How many times do we just ask for our list of wants to be heard and answered? We have so many friends and family that are sick and hurting. We focus solely on that in our prayer time.
Instead, we need to start focusing on God and truly worshiping Him.
God has always required an inward, heart worship. We focus on the ceremony that the Israelites did, but they were required to worship from the heart, too.
They forgot sometimes, too. “And the Lord said: ‘Because this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men, therefore, behold, I will again do wonderful things with this people, with wonder upon wonder; and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the discernment of their discerning men shall be hidden’” (Isa. 29: 13-14 ESV).
Instead, we should honor God. Snyder wrote, “The duty of worshipping God is no less the dictate of reason and of common sense, than of Scripture. It has been the sentiment of mankind, universally, that children ought to cherish peculiar respect [for] their parents. So men have always deemed it proper to specially regard and honour those high in authority.”
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We have to give God the honor due Him.
How Do We Apply This?
- Have a prayer life that has both quantity (continuous) and quality (firm loyalty).
- Evaluate both our prayer lives and our lives in general to make sure we are following His laws and commandments.
- Choose to serve Him in every opportunity that He presents.
- Have a genuine, sincere faith.
- Obey God in everything He asks of us.
Resources
Father God. We want our hearts to be clean and pure so that we may come to You. We want our prayers to be filled with praise for You. May You accept the praise and honor we give You. Amen.
What do you think?
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