ApprehendingGrace.com

Last spring I wrote a series of articles titled Live…Like Someone Left the Gate Open! It was a series that impacted me more than any other that God’s given me. A few months ago God began laying on my heart a focus for 2013 – essentially, a year-long series – about living from a heart that has been transformed by God – living from a heart that reflects His heart – living from God’s Heart! I am trusting that this series will take us more deeply into Christ-likeness than we’ve ever gone.

Each month we’ll focus on a different aspect of a healthy heart – healthy as God defines it, that is! We’ll start with a seeking heart and look at other conditions such as a faith-filled heart and a generous heart. We’ll also look at having a repentant heart and a joyful heart. (To name just a few.) For each condition of the heart, we’ll examine what that condition looks, how we develop it and how we live it.

Let me encourage you to take these messages into your heart and focus on developing them in your own heart, as I will be doing throughout each month. More than ever, I sense that it is time for us to go deeper into God – to allow Him to transform us into the image of Christ in a greater way. This world needs us.

I’ve not seen the movie Gladiator, but this morning as I was getting ready for work I had the television tuned to a Christian station. The preacher quoted the movie and it grabbed me: “What we do in life echoes through eternity.” (A subsequent search revealed that I’m probably the only preacher who hasn’t heard the quote. Oh well. Guess I lead a sheltered life when it comes to battle movies.)

What a great line, and what a biblical truism! What we do in this life – how we live, how we trust, how we hope – echoes in eternity. And how we live is largely determined by the condition of our heart.

The things we say are determined by the condition of our heart.

The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.
Luke 6:45 (NRSV)

Do your words bring life to those around you or are they carrying a spirit of criticism and death?

The things we do are determined by the condition of our heart:

I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. ²⁰Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. They will be my people, and I will be their God. 
Ezekiel 11:19-20 (NIV)

Are your actions consistent with holy living? Are you living as one who has been set apart for God?

How we love God is determined by the condition of our heart:

Moreover, the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, in order that you may live.
Deuteronomy 30:6 (NRSV)

Our hearts must be circumcised – our desire for sin and our attachment to worldliness must be cut away – so that we can love God better, and in that loving receive life. Is your heart pining after the world or the Lord?

I expect to be challenged by this series – if I were to tell you the truth, I’d have to admit that I’m a bit afraid of it! Yes, I know, fear is of the enemy. I admit that I don’t have enough of God in me yet because I am afraid of the changes He’ll want me to make as I learn more about the heart He wants me to have.

But what I do here on earth does echo through eternity and I want those echoes to be good ones. I want them to touch people with life. I want to hear God’s heart beat and live it out.

So friends, I invite you to come along. And I encourage you to heed the words of the Psalmist:

⁶Come, let us bow down in worship,
let us kneel before the LORD our Maker;
⁷for he is our God
and we are the people of his pasture,
the flock under his care.
Today, if you hear his voice,
⁸do not harden your hearts…
Psalm 95:6-8a (NIV)

Let the adventure begin! Watch for the first blog in our Living God’s Heart series.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 5th, 2013 at 7:19 am and is filed under Christian Living, God's ways, training for spiritual growth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.