Our Hearts before Him

The status of our hearts depends on the condition of our hearts before God. This daily devotional looks at how we can have confident our hearts are in our relationship with Him.

Nuggets

  • We have to believe God’s truth in our hearts.
  • We know in our hearts good from evil.
  • Because God is greater than the sin in our hearts, He can forgive us of our sins.

To read devotions in the At the Heart Level theme, click the button below.

Devotions in the Reassuring Our Hearts before God series

Since we have had our redo for godliness, we now want to reassure our hearts before God. John talked about that in I John.

Let’s see what John meant.

Let's Put It into Context #1

So, what is the heart? Gibbon had an interesting definition. He wrote, “The heart means the whole inner moral life — the conscience.”

Resource

Previously, we defined our conscience as the part of our nature that impacts our moral decisions as it points us to what is right and gives us pain or pleasure depending on the choice.

Let's Put It into Context #2

Clarke made a great observation that we have to discuss before we get started. John’s discussion is based on the premise that good and evil are different.

Resource

Good, in the biblical sense, is the workings of God within His people through His holy, pure, and righteous behavior.

  • 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.
      • Righteous means we are free from sin because we are following God’s moral laws.
    • Pure means not being sinful or having the stain of sin.

Evil is equated with sin because it is that which goes against God and His purposes.

Because we are made in God’s image, we innately know the difference between good and evil.

Glossary

Let's Put It into Context #3

“By this we shall know …” (I Jn. 3: 19 ESV)

By this in I John 3: 19 works the same way as the word therefore does at the beginning of a verse. It is pointing back to previous verses.

That being said, it works a little differently when John said it in verse 16. It is pointing forward.

“By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth” (I Jn. 3: 16-18 ESV).

John was putting a flashing light at the beginning of verses 16, so that we pay attention to what was coming next.

Jesus showed His love for us by going to the cross and being the Sacrifice to save us from our sins.

John’s point was, because Jesus loved, we should also love others in His name. Our actions have to follow what we learn in God’s Word.

Reassured because of the Truth

“By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything” (I Jn. 3: 19-20 ESV)

We have to believe God’s truth in our hearts.

John was talking about the connection of our faith and our hearts. We’ve been calling it getting down to our heart level.

What John is talking about here is walking with God — Truth. Walking with God means we are humble, reverent, teachable servants of God. 

To read a related devotion, click the appropriate button below.

Walking with God strengthens our faith. When we get it to our heart level, we gain confidence — or assurance — of the salvation gained through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Faith is a gift from God that enhances the conviction that the doctrines revealed in God’s Word are true, even if we do not understand all aspects of them, a belief which impacts our lives and distinguishes us from others.
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.
    • 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. 
    • Righteous means we are free from sin because we are following God’s moral laws.
  • 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.

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

We keep saying that, when we get God’s love to our heart level, it has to bubble out of us. That builds our confidence.

Foote said something similar. He wrote, “Confidence, literally fulness of speech, because this is one of the principal ways in which confidence displays itself; the heart is enlarged, the mouth is opened, and thus the whole soul pours forth its feelings without restraint and without disguise.”

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That is what we want to look at this year. How confident are we in God’s Truth? What is the status of our heart?

Think of what happens when our confidence increases. We are less self-conscious, meaning we degrade ourselves less.

When our confidence increases, we start to think we can be what God wants us to be.

Our Hearts Condemn Us

We know in our hearts good from evil.

Peters clarified what John was talking about when he said our hearts condemn us. He wrote, “The self-condemnation here meant is not that of the true penitent, who, though he has abandoned every sinful course, yet cannot but reflect upon his former sins with horror, and justly condemns himself for them; but that which arises from the conscience of a wicked life still followed.

Resource

Elaine-speak. This condemnation means we think the sin is horrible. We strive to stop making it a habitual sin.

It doesn’t mean we will never sin again.

Even Paul struggled with this.

“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it” (Rom. 7: 15-20 NIV).

Think about it. Our hearts condemn us. We are convicted of our sins.

This pertains to all of us. All of us have a conscience. “So, when Gentiles, who do not by nature have the law, do what the law demands, they are a law to themselves even though they do not have the law” (Rom. 2: 14 CSB).

I know. Paul kind of takes the King James Version wording to spit it out. We can still figure out what he meant.

The Gentiles (any non-Jew) obey the law even though they don’t have it. That is because all Gentiles — worldview people — are still made in God’s image.

If we are going to condemn ourselves, why are we surprised that God would condemn us, too? God is the Author of the law. He is going to be the Judge, too.

Look what Clarke said. He argued that God makes the same judgment on us that we do ourselves — only in a perfected manner.

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If all have God’s conscience within us, showing us His right/good and wrong/evil, we know what God’s Will for our lives is. He wants us to follow His laws and commandments. He wants us to confess when we break them.

But until we have confidence in a loving God, we aren’t convinced that we can reveal our sins to Him, let alone ask His forgiveness.

Forgiveness is, when we ask, the act of God pardoning us because we have shown repentance for breaking His laws and commandments, which allows us to become holy as He is.

  • Repentance is acknowledging our separation from God and expressing sorrow for breaking God’s laws and commandments by making the commitment to changing ourselves through obedience so that we no longer do the wrong things.

We still have problems after we become disciples in believing that we are worthy of God’s love. Well, we are unworthy — but that doesn’t stop God from loving us anyway.

We are only worthy when Jesus’ salvation is in our souls. His blood cleanses us and makes us righteous.

God Is Greater than Our Hearts

Because God is greater than the sin in our hearts, He can forgive us of our sins.

Also, God is greater than our consciences. He is greater than that what many assume is our moral inner voice.

When we look at ourselves, we tend to see the faults and imperfections we possess. God doesn’t turn a blind eye to them. The Sanctification Road is all about fixing those.

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.

Glossary

Let’s take this another way. We said that our actions have to follow what we learn in God’s Word.

We have assurance we are children of God because we follow His love. We prove that by doing more for God and others. We do justly and love mercy.

To read a related devotion, click the appropriate button below.

The last thing John said in this section of verses is that God knows all things. Because He is omniscient, He knows the degree to which we sin. That means that He knows how pure our hearts are.

Whitfield told us that knowledge of the law should be lodged in our hearts along with knowledge of our sinfulness. Because the laws are in our hearts, they judge us.

Resource

“I the LORD search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds” (Jer. 17: 10 ESV).

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Making the Connections

Natt and Peters told us there are different ways of addressing our conscience. These are the ways we don’t want.

  • Those whose conscience misinform them as to the path they should take, but leads them to take the wrong path.
  • Those who are indifferent toward religion who do no pay it a second thought much if the time, therefore, no amount of conviction will influence them because it just doesn’t matter.
  • Those whose switch from a God-filled life to a world-filled life and back.
  • Those who have squashed it because of the pull of the worldview. “They became callous and gave themselves over to promiscuity for the practice of every kind of impurity with a desire for more and more” (Eph. 4: 19 CSB).
  • Those who believe every judgment in God’s Word is directed toward them.
  • Those who are weak in their faith because of doubts.

But we have to have our conscience convict us of our sins. Otherwise, we would never know the need for our Savior.

Then there are those whose consciences are working correctly, according to the Essex Remembrancer. It convicts

  • Those who continue to indulge in their sin.
  • Those who are indifferent.
  • Those whose religion is not following God.
  • Those who do not believe in God.
  • Those who are hypocrites.

The way we do want is to have “… a correct knowledge of what is essential to the Christian character.” It is a genuine repentance.

Resources

What? You think there are some that don’t know good and evil?

Oh, they do because they are made in God’s image.

Living as God would have us live brings brings peace. True, our heart does condemn us when we sin, but we gain many blessings.

How Do We Apply This?

We should have confidence that:

  • We are children of God.
  • Our sins are forgiven because we believe in Jesus.
  • We will be blessed.
  • He will hear and answer our prayers.
  • We will find our eternal reward with Him at judgment day.

Resource

Father God. We want to possess Your character. That means we will have Your laws and commandments in our hearts. We will be obedient and submissive to You. Amen.

What do you think?

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