The Wayward Heart

I shall never look at my heart the same again!  

Truth shall abound from an Almighty God who has declared that my heart is desperately wicked and exceeding sinful.  Though with great pains He created the heart of man as a perfect place of communion and natural integration of our spirit and His Spirit; we, as children of our ancestors, have inherited a nature that is devoid of love for God and has a natural bent toward a debased behavior.

• The Rebellious nature of our heart

One doesn’t have to look very far to see the effects of the sinful nature so generously bestowed upon us by the sins of our ancestors.  Personal weaknesses and struggles usually get handed down, not necessarily genetically, but spiritually (Exodus 34:6,7).  As Adam’s descendants (Genesis 1-3), his choice to hand authority in his life over to Satan has affected us in one way or another.  Life is now a struggle to take back that authority and give it back to God who is the real owner of authority anyway.  For some reason, by default Satan seems to always receive from us what should be God’s.

The carnality of the heart desires wickedness so when a person follows after wickedness, his focus has left God and has turned to following carnal things.  Even if we are not living in full rebellion we have been deceived and need to repent, otherwise we will be living off one deception after another.  The Word of God makes it clear; if it isn’t of God, it is of the devil and you will be following the devil making him your illegitimate father, which is sin.

The nature of our heart is selfish, yet because we are relational to one degree or another, we create the appearance of service toward others in hopes of getting something in return.  In other words, we are still selfish.  In many cases we desire approval of man, so we offer “approval” to them in order to gain it from them.  In reality, we are worshipping their opinions in order to receive their worship.  The only approval we really should need is God’s approval.  In other words, we are idolaters and have made ourselves gods.  We also deal with personal pride believing we deserve better than what we are getting.  When this happens, we have an over-rated opinion of ourselves and have made ourselves a god.  Pride is usually driven by selfishness, as is adultery, drunkenness, gluttony, etc.

God has shown us through the written text of His Word that though the Old Testament people experienced a promised blessing if they remained true to Him, it was not enough for them to remain true.  The wicked nature of the heart always seemed to show itself sooner or later and sometimes in very pronounced ways.  What was accomplished then by the promise of success for choosing to believe God?  We now have a clearer picture of the state of the heart of man.  Man could try to fit into God’s Plan and receive the success that was promised to them, but with an unregenerate heart the heart is still carnal and no amount of promises of success from God can take that away.

Romans 1:18-32

For some reason or other mankind has resorted to disregarding the evidence of the existence of God, and has chosen to take its own way and worship the created world over the Creator.  Even if we are sinning through deception, we are effectively transferring authority from God to Satan and Satan as a master will destroy us.  God has said that sin can only go so far before He will turn us over to a reprobate mind.  As we continue to transfer authority over to Satan, he becomes the way we think and we end up in complete disregard for the truth.  When this happens, our lives no longer have any room for truth and we become mockers and truth inhibitors.  Once we have a complete disregard for truth God can no longer speak to us and we become a destructive part of society (A minion of Satan if you will).

We are to blame for allowing our culture to desensitize us, for we are responsible to maintain a high alert against the sinful nature we possess.  It is as if the father of deception has set forth to deceive the very elect of God through incremental deceptions leaving us numb and ill equipped to fight for our souls.  Are we going to wake up before we drift away into eternal destruction?

Today, the promise of success has been removed, but God has a plan which involves Redeeming the heart through Salvation and Sanctification.