The Pureness of a Heart Desiring God

There is none upon earth that I desire besides You. — Psalm 73:25

C. S. Lewis wrote, “It would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. . . . We are far too easily pleased” with lesser things than Him.

There is something special about having a pure heart and desiring God above all else. I’m at fault of wanting other things more than God (significant other, friends, success, money, etc.), but my desire for God is so strong!

Reflect on this scripture and song today …

Those things were important to me, but now I think they are worth nothing because of Christ. Not only those things, but I think that all things are worth nothing compared with the greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Because of him, I have lost all those things, and now I know they are worthless trash. This allows me to have Christ and to belong to him. Now I am right with God, not because I followed the law, but because I believed in Christ. God uses my faith to make me right with him. I want to know Christ and the power that raised him from the dead. I want to share in his sufferings and become like him in his death. Then I have hope that I myself will be raised from the dead. – (Philippians 3:7-11 NCV)

Stay Pure,
Deidre S.

Thankful Thursday

I’m sooooo thankful that after a busy week God has given me today as a day to rest, all is well in my family, & even though I don’t have everything I have a lot.

It’s Thankful Thursday!! What are you thankful for? Please feel free to leave a comment.

Purity Through Creation

God has made all things for us to enjoy. He rules over all His creation. & once we understand that, we can better understand & trust that He can handle our lives as well.

The Lord wisely designed all things for their specific purpose & fit everything together in perfect harmony.

If God is always tending to all He created in nature, how much more must He care for His most prized creation – people.

Psalm 104 helps us appreciate God through His creation and the way He cares for it. As you observe your natural surroundings thank God for His creativity. Take a fresh & pure look at people, seeing each one as God’s unique creation.

Psalm 14

Only the fool denies God. How foolish it must seem to God when people say there is no God.

Only fools say in their hearts, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, and their actions are evil; not one of them does good! The Lord looks down from heaven on the entire human race; he looks to see if anyone is truly wise, if anyone seeks God. But no, all have turned away; all have become corrupt. No one does good, not a single one! (Psalms 14:1-3 NLT)

The true atheist is either foolish or wicked. Foolish because he ignores the evidence that God exists or wicked because he refuses to live by God’s truths. We become atheists in practice when we rely more on ourselves than on God. The “fools” mentioned in Psalms 14:1-3 are aggressively perverse in their actions. To speak in direct defiance of God is utterly foolish according to the Bible.

Singing “Get right church and lets go home”.

Life is short people!

1 Peter 4:7 “Everything in the world is about to be wrapped up, so take nothing for granted. Stay wide-awake in prayer.”

Praying for Trayvon Martin & Family

Thank you Jesus! Let’s have purity in our thoughts about this situation. Praying for comfort in the Martin Family!

Outer vs. Inner

Matthew 23:24 “Blind guides! You strain your water so you won’t accidentally swallow a gnat, but you swallow a camel!”

Here, the Pharisees strained their water so they wouldn’t accidentally swallow a gnat, an unclean insect according to the law. Meticulous about the details of ceremonial cleanliness, they nevertheless had lost their perspective on inner purity; in essence, they would then swallow a camel and not even notice. They were ceremonially clean on the outside but had corrupt hearts.

Plenty of the time we are like the Pharisees, we are so worried about our outward appearance and what is visible for other people to see. We focus on people more than we focus on God. But our allegiance is to God first, people second. When we contemplate the reactions & criticisms of people, we can become paralyzed in fear. But we know that God has not given us the spirit of fear (2 Timothy 1:7). So instead of focusing on our outward appearance, let’s make sure that we have inner purity as well. Making sure our motives and thoughts are coming from God and His Word.

Prayer: God, I pray that you change our hearts. Teach us how to not focus on our outward appearance or what others may think of us for we know that is minuet. But help us to focus on something bigger, our heart and our thoughts. Teach us to be pure in your sight. Amen.

God Is Greater Than Your Conscience

So, we sin. Everyone knows that as long as you are on this earth you will sin. Because you are made of flesh and we are in a evil world.

Galatians 5:19 – “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality,”

We may try daily to live a pure life and stay away from sin as God has called us to,

“And now what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on his name.” – Acts 22:16

but I think in the midst of trying to do right and sometimes failing, we can have doubts about ourselves and our conscience can beat us up. Every time I fall short of the glory of God, I have guilt and I feel terrible.

Here’s another example…

We are always likely to have hidden sin in our lives, sin we don’t even know about because God’s standards are so high and our performance is so imperfect. If we are true believers, however, all our sins are forgiven because of what Christ did on the cross in our behalf (Romans 5:1; 8:1). The bible also teaches that even if we feel guilty, God is greater than our feelings (1 John 3:20). His forgiveness and cleansing are sufficient; they overrule our nagging doubts. The Holy Spirit in us is our prof that we are forgiven in God’a eyes even though we may feel guilty. After truly seeking God, we can stand up to others’ accusations as well as our own nagging doubts. If God has forgiven and accepted us, that’s all we need. When we feel guilty, we should remind ourselves that God knows our notices as well as our actions. His voice of assurance is stronger than the accusing voice of our conscience. If we are in Christ, he will not condemn us (Romans 8:1; Hebrews 9:14-15). So if you are living for the Lord but feeling that you are not good enough, remind yourself that God is greater than your conscience.

Be blessed!

Job and His Friends Teach Us About Purity

It’s as though God surrounds us with friends but He only wants us to listen and focus on His calling and His declarations.

We have to learn when to listen to our friends when they need us so that we do not say something that may not be agreeable with God, but most importantly when we are going through something we should call on God first. We seek our friends as if they are all knowing and all wise, we actually have a God in heaven that wants to hear from us. Our struggles come only to make us stronger and we should think of them as a test from God just as He had the devil try Job because He knew that Job would not go against God.

“Thou he slay me, yet will I trust him” (Job 13:15)

Basically, though God may bring trouble my way I will still trust Him and have hope in Him. Job never denied God or lost his faith in the midst of his struggles and his friends lack of support, but he kept praying and seeking God for answers. So no matter what you are going through stay strong in your faith and always have hope in God. He made you and knows what’s right for you. So don’t think this issue you are battling now is not sent directly from God to make you suffer, but it is sent directly from God to make you grow.

Stay pure in your faith.

Grace and peace!

Inner Purity

“it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.” – Matthew 15:11

In Matthew 15: 1-20 Jesus teaches about inner purity, and in this scripture above He is very clear about how inner purity can be defiled … by the words that come out of our mouths. But it isn’t until verses 16-20 that Jesus truly explains to His disciples what He means.

“‘Don’t you understand?’ Jesus asked him. ‘Anything you eat passes through the stomach and then goes out of the body. But evil words come from an evil heart and defile the person who says them. For from the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, all other sexual immorality, theft, lying, and slander. These are what defile you. Eating with unwashed hands could never defile you and make you unacceptable to God!'” – Matthew 15: 16-20

Christ shows that the defilement we should fear, is not from what enters our mouths as food, but from what comes out of our mouths, which shows the wickedness of our hearts. Nothing will last in the soul but the regenerating graces of the Holy Spirit; and nothing should be admitted into the church but what is from above; therefore, whoever is offended by a plain, seasonable declaration of the truth, we should not be troubled at it. In this passage the disciples ask to be better taught as to this matter.

“Where a weak head doubts concerning any word of Christ, an upright heart and a willing mind seek for instruction.”

It is the heart that is desperately wicked,

Jeremiah 17:9, “for there is no sin in word or deed, which was not first in the heart.”

They all come out of the man, and are fruits of that wickedness which is in the heart, and is wrought there. When Christ teaches, he will show us the deceitfulness and wickedness of our own hearts; he will teach us how to humble themselves, and to seek to be cleansed in the Fountain opened for sin and uncleanness.

Instead of being so consumed with dieting and watching what we eat, God is calling us to become more consumed with what is really causing us to be unhealthy, the hidden evil within our hearts.

God Bless!

The Great Purge

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.” (John 15:1-3)

These words being inserted in this scripture relating to the vine and branches, and the pruning and purging of them to make them fruitful, are thought, by the learned Dr. Lightfoot, to be an allusion to the law in Leviticus 19:23; by which the fruit of trees, for the first three years, were accounted uncircumcised or unclean, and in the fourth year fit for use; the apostles having enjoyed the ministry of Christ, and been his disciples about such a time. Though the “already” in John 15:3 seems to refer to the removal and taking away of that withered and unfruitful branch, Judas. Christ, in John 13:10, had told his disciples, that they “were clean, but not all”, because the betrayer was among them. But Judas being discovered by Christ, and ordered to leave, left the disciples and Jesus and continued with his wicked plans. And now, Christ could say of them all, that they were clean: which could then represent their regeneration and sanctification, in which their hearts were sprinkled with clean water; were washed with the washing of regeneration; were purified by faith in the blood of Christ; and were given pure principles of grace to be formed in their souls. The Gospel of Christ was the instrumental means of these happenings and their justification by the righteousness of Christ, by which they were justified from all sin; and were all fair, and without spot; which was through the Gospel of Christ revealing his righteousness to them, or through the sentence of justification He, by his Spirit, passed upon their consciences.

This passage is so powerful because it reminds us that we aren’t perfect, but every time Christ is with us we are under a process of purifying by His instructions. Thus, now that it is a new year we need to do some purging to release ourselves from the clothes and shoes we have piled up in our closets that we haven’t worn in years, the old perfumes and colons that are half full, the old school papers that don’t apply to our current studies, etc. But most importantly, we need to get rid of people that aren’t positively adding to our lives, fear that has kept us stagnate for the last few years, old hurt from a past relative or friend … We need to forgive, let go, and move on. After all, the best way to get over a fear is to face it.

Be Free. Be Clean. Be Pure.