When we accept God’s Plan of Salvation, we need to get it to the heart level. This daily devotional looks at how keeping our focus on God’s Word helps us keep our hearts where they need to be.
Nuggets
- It is important that we focus on God’s Word.
- We cannot choose to bypass corporate worship.
- Private study of God’s Word is also important.
- Getting God’s Word to the heart level means that we have incorporated them into our lives.
- God’s Word is important because acceptance of it leads to life and nonacceptance leads to death.
Devotions in the Keeping Our Hearts series
Words can teach us many things, especially God’s Word. It it packed full of wisdom.
Those words give us the principles by which we should live. They show us God’s laws and commandments, which show us His character. It is through these words that we keep our hearts.
Let's Put It into Context #1
Last year, we had a series called How Do We Live Godly Lives? It was based on Charnock’s sermon entitled The Sinfulness and Cure of Thoughts.
Resource
To read a related devotion, click the button below.
I pulled out one of Charnock’s points and put it in my At the Heart Level file. Let’s pull it out and dust it off.
Let's Put It into Context #2
We look to God’s Word to provide us wisdom.
Wisdom is an enlightened acceptance of God’s principles, gained through knowledge, discernment, and good sense, that is put into practice through salvation, increasing our goodness and virtue.
- Discernment means we can evaluate the situation and recognize right from wrong.
- 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.
- 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.
- Holiness is the transcendent excellence of His nature that includes elements of purity, dedication, and commitment that lead to being set apart.
- Purity means possessing God’s moral character, having eliminated the stain of sin.
- Spiritual death is the spiritual 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.
- Virtues are standards of moral excellence.
Glossary
Pay Attention to My Words
“My son, pay attention to what I say; turn your ear to my words. Do not let them out of your sight, keep them within your heart; for they are life to those who find them and health to one’s whole body” (Prov. 4: 20-22 NIV)
It is important that we focus on God’s Word.
“Refer them, if possible, to assist your morning meditation; that, like little brooks arising from several springs, they may meet in one channel, and compose a more useful stream” (Charnock, The Sinfulness and Cure of Thoughts)
Words mean nothing if we don’t pay attention to them. Lawson noted it is especially important to pay attention to these words because God’s Word build our character.
Hear My Words
We cannot choose to bypass corporate worship.
But we have responsibilities, too. First, we have to hear the words. We have to go to God’s house and listen to the pastor preaching the sermons.
Yes, we can hear online. But the unity we find in being with like-minded believers is no small thing.
See My Words
Private study of God’s Word is also important.
Then, we have to see them. We have to read the words for ourselves.
Yeah, listening to the pastor can’t be skipped over, but neither can our own study of God’s Word. We truly seek God when we hear, read, and study on His Word.
Searching for and Seeking God
Hearing His Word (Rom. 10: 17).
Reading His Word (Rev. 1: 3).
Praying to Him (Heb. 4: 16).
Studying His Word (Ac. 17: 11).
Meditating on His Word (Ps. 1: 1-2).
Memorizing His Word (Ps. 119: 11).
Keep My Words in Your Heart
Getting God’s Word to the heart level means that we have incorporated them into our lives.
Finally, they have to get to the heart level. To me, this is the meditating part of seeking God. It is where we really look at what these words mean to us. They show us what we have to change to be more like God.
The Christian Age’s sermon entitled Heart-keeping talked about why God didn’t choose the understanding, judgment, or memory. It was written that “… the understanding may be always subject to circumstances, or may be enfeebled by disease; the judgment may be in error, and the memory may fail.”
Resource
Knowledge, alone, does not give us power. Power comes from our character.
The heart, not the head, is the organ that produces life. The heart stops pumping, death follows.
What is in our hearts show our true selves. It is the seat of our character. It is these principles that guide our actions.
Our actions are a reflection of our feelings and passions. After conversion, we will still have feelings and passions. We just have to make sure they are submitted to God.
Life to Those Who Find Them
God’s Word is important because acceptance of it leads to life and nonacceptance leads to death.
No, not everyone is going to have the heart that is discussed in these verses. “… for they are life to those who find them …” (Prov. 4: 22 NIV).
Everyone has a heart, but not everyone has a heart patterned after God’s own heart.
God tells us that our hearts have the sinful nature in them. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer. 17: 9 ESV).
This is why being a good person isn’t good enough. That sinful nature will be within us until we have the heart of God. That means until we have been sanctified.
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 requickening in us that God brings about through the work of the Holy Spirit to give us new character.
- 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.
- Righteous means we are free from sin because we are following God’s moral laws.
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
Making the Connections
God’s Word gives us life. They bring us joy in this life. They bring us eternal life in the next.
We are spiritually dead until we have them. Worldview people may not think this is important, but they are wrong.
If we end this life being spiritually dead, we will find judgment leads to eternal damnation. “And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire” (Rev. 20: 15 ESV).
The only way we can have our name written in the book of life is through believing Jesus is our Lord and Savior. “Jesus told him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’” (Jn. 14: 6 CSB).
To read a related devotion, click the button below.
How Do We Apply This?
In order to become children of God, we have to admit that mankind was separated from God after the original sin, making us sinners; believe Jesus paid the penalty for those sins to become our Savior and Redeemer; confess God as Sovereign God; and demonstrate that commitment by submitting to living our lives following His laws and commandments confessing God as Sovereign Lord.
Glossary
After conversion we seek to know God more. It will take hearing His Word, reading it, studying it, meditating on it, and memorizing it. All through that, we need to be in prayer, asking God to provide the meaning.
By doing this, we navigate the Sanctification Road and become more like God.
We also keep our hearts focused on God by doing this. That is where we want them to be.
Father God. We praise You for loving us enough to send Your Son to save us. We acknowledge our responsibilities after putting our faith in Him. We need to keep our hearts focused totally on You. Amen.
What do you think?
Leave me a comment below (about this or anything else) or head over to my Facebook group for some interactive discussion.
If you don’t understand something and would like further clarification, please contact me.
If you have not signed up for the email daily or weekly providing the link to the devotions and the newsletter, do so below.
If God has used this devotion to speak with you, consider sharing it on social media.