Tuesday, April 7, 2009
God in Your Heart
(I Peter 3)
In Scripture, the “heart” refers to the core of man’s being—emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. In fact, the “heart” reveals the reality of an individual. Proverbs tells us that as a man “thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Prov. 23:7). In other words, the man I am on the inside, known only to me and to God, is the man I really am—a sobering consideration.
The Bible also teaches us that we all have heart trouble, a bad heart condition. The prophet Jeremiah warned Judah that “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jer. 17:9). The heart, therefore, desperately needs help—the transforming power of the grace of God!
Christians possess the cure for heart trouble. Ephesians 3:17 tells us that Christ dwells in our hearts by faith. For the Christian, then, Jesus Christ—God incarnate—dwells within. Indeed, the Christian’s body is the temple of the Holy Spirit (I Cor. 6:19). For the Christian, the heart should be dominated by the presence of God, a sure corrective to the heart’s inherent problems.
The influence of God’s presence upon the heart is contingent, however, on the believer’s willingness to allow Him full access to every aspect of his being. Peter instructs believers to “sanctify the Lord God in your hearts,” meaning that God must be given first place in every aspect of life—intellectual, emotional, and spiritual. True revival involves just that: allowing God to fill to the uttermost the innermost recesses of our lives.
