For those who actually have read my blog…yes it has been a long time. A lot of things have happened between November till now, but I am finally getting back into the swing of things. It took going to my church’s high school Beach Retreat as a leader to find that refreshing, and renewing spirit and the inspiration to get back on track with the desires of my heart, talking
about purity. I have a lot of ideas and gained a lot of inspiration from the people I was around there, so I am excited!
So to get going with today, in the last post I began talking about how to have a life of purity it has to start in our hearts. We talked about how the heart has that effect on us, but how do we begin to have a pure heart to begin our journey to a pure life?
We should know that every word of the Bible is God’s word and is important, whether it’s in the Old Testament or the New Testament. So if it is said once in the bible, we should hold it dear; if it’s said more than once, we better be paying attention. The clue to gaining purity of heart is found both in the Old Testament, as the most important law for the Jewish people and the New Testament when the teachers of the law questioned Jesus.
Deuteronomy 6:5: Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
Matthew 22:35-37: One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this
question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
How simple it seems. Love God with all that you are! When God is first in our life, the other aspects began to fall in line.
Here is an example of what happens when we love something or someone with all our heart. When I met back up with the man who would one day be my husband in 2005, we were just becoming good friends. Yet, my heart, I do believe, knew that he was the man I would love for the rest of my life, so Kyle was the topic of the majority of my conversations, even with
new people I was meeting! He was all I could think about! When we got engaged he was still all I could talk about because I was so in love with him (and even more today!). The same thing happened when we had our first daughter in 2008 and then our second baby girl 19 months later. I was so in love, and more so today, with these two little gifts from God that they were all I could talk about.
The love of our heart will be reflected in our thoughts, words and actions. So what’s the first step in being pure? Exactly what is said in Deuteronomy and Matthew. “Love God with all your heart”. I do believe once that happens, that love them spreads to our soul, our mind, our body.
When God is the number one love of our heart, others will see that. It will be easier to live a life of purity from then on.
As a Christian, this should be standard for us or “the norm”. Unfortunately, we allow the world to sometimes rule our hearts, and we expect Jesus to share his home with the world.
Think about someone that you have trouble liking or being around today. I even hate to say this because we are to love everyone, but think about someone that might be your enemy. One day, your parents come in with that person and tell you that you have to share your room with them.
How would that make you feel? Hurt? Upset? Angry?
How do you think Jesus feels when we begin to love other things over him? Now, I think its fine when we have hobbies, people, or things that we love. God has blessed us with abilities and talents and with people who love us and that we are to love. The problem arises though when those things and people take main residence in our heart and become our main focus.
It’s easy for us to focus solely on God when we are at a Christian event or camp and we are shut out from the world. But what happens when we are thrown into the world again and temptations arise from everywhere, wanting to claim our hearts, our lives? How do we fight off the world and keep God our number one love?
I began to love Kyle and continue to love him because we spend time together! I still learn things about him today that I didn’t know yesterday and I love that! It’s the same with God. To get to know God, to learn about him, to love him, we have to spend time with him. We can do that by reading His word, praying, worshiping. As Christians, this should be the
desire of our hearts; to get to know God and long to spend time with him. God knows what is happening in your life. He just wants you to tell Him. He yearns for a relationship with you.
We can let life get in the way and allow other things to come first instead of spending time with God. If we want a pure life though, God needs to be priority. If you have never had a quiet time, time alone with God or have been slacking and not sure how to get going again, go to this
website my church has set up for the students that went on beach retreat. It’s a six week devotional, lasting no more than 15 minutes, that would be a great way to get in a habit of putting God first and spending time with him.
http://blogs.second.org/aftermath
When God is the love of our heart, our actions and our lives, we will begin to live life like He wants us to. When we try to do it on our own, it is near impossible to stay on a pure path and keep our
hearts, minds and body pure from the things the world wants to pollute it with and we will always fail. When we have our hearts right and focused on God, we will be able to answer the call to purity and staying faithful to the path God has called us to. Remember “For out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.” (Matthew 12:34b) What is in our hearts will be expressed from our mouth. Work this week on spending time with God and having Him become the number one love of your life.
Check out this song by Hillsong. This was one of our worship songs and I loved it!
http://youtu.be/lg8WSYA92hY
