February 11
“and purify your hearts, you double minded.” James 4:8b
Now back to purifying our hearts. So how do we as Christians do this, exactly? Well, desiring it, highly valuing it and pursuing it, I think is the first key. As I said a few days ago, I really never pursued purity of heart as one of the greatest treasures I could have in this life. I was focused on working a job to support my family, serving the Lord in various ways in my local church in the evenings and weekends, raising my kids, and trying to do what I thought the Lord wanted me to do. I had my devotions, I prayed, but I still had nagging temptations and evil thoughts that would come into my head, and I am ashamed to say, not all of them did I hate and flee from.
I could see there was impurity there, in my heart, and much of the time I sensed a discouragement because I didn’t see how I could ever overcome these secret sinful desires that I would at times indulge and seemed to have a foothold in my heart and mind. In my case, the Lord had to bring pretty significant adversity and pruning into my life. During that time, the Lord did His pruning work. He helped me see that all I really had in life was Him. Even my family, those closest to me, were not a confidence, just Him.
He showed me that without Him I am truly nothing and can do nothing. And I came to realize that His integrity in me, His righteousness fully in me, His purity, His holiness, Christ Himself, these were the true treasures in life. Even faithfully serving the Lord, a goal I have desired most of my Christian life, comes in a distant second to knowing Him intimately and walking with Him, in purity and holiness and truth in the innermost being.
If you struggle with secret and thoughts that you know are displeasing to the Lord, both the kind that you are appalled by and the type you may entertain too long in you mind, then I recommend that you cry out to the Lord every day for His purity of heart and mind, His clear conscience, His righteousness, His holiness in every thought at every moment of every day.
Don’t think that this is just the way it has to be as a Christian, being plagued by evil thoughts. Cry out to God to purify your heart and keep these evil thoughts away from you. Plead for His holiness and a hatred for these thoughts. Ask Him to replace your evil thoughts with His righteous thoughts. Ask Him for the mind of Christ. Ask Him to show you why these thoughts come in to your head and why you struggle with them, and ask Him to heal those wounds and take away your proclivity to this evil.
He is fully capable of doing this, and I believe this is what He wants for every one of His children. The question is, is purity of heart one of the highest priorities for us, enough so that we would plead with Him for it daily until it becomes a reality in our lives? Tomorrow we will discuss another key aspect of purifying our hearts.