Prepare Our Hearts

Today our nation and the Church are poised anticipating what the next steps will be in the days to come. God is God and He is still on the Throne—He is not sitting wringing His hands wondering what His next step will be. God’s plan will be fulfilled and He is in total control! Jesus warned in Luke 21:26 that before He returns that people’s hearts would fail for fear looking on the things that would occur. But in Psalm 27:1 David said: “The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid.” The Bible reveals that David was a man after God’s own heart. Therefore, if we are to face the future without fear or doubts then we too must also be men and women after the heart of God. The heart of God is the essence of who He is, what He desires, His will, and His purposes. By studying the Bible, knowing Jesus, and spending time in prayer, we can prepare our hearts as David did trusting in God as our Light and our Salvation!

We find God’s salvation through His Word and His grace and He becomes our Stronghold. Isaiah sets forth the pattern in Chapter 55 when he bids us to incline our ear to the LORD; to come to the LORD and our soul will live; seek the LORD while He is near. In verse 7 we see God’s pathway to blessing: “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto the LORD, and He will have mercy upon him; and in our God, for He will abundantly pardon.” He reminds us that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, nor our ways His ways, but His are higher than ours. He declares that God’s Words that go out from His mouth will not return to Him in vain but will accomplish what He intends and will succeed in what He sends forth. The heart of God cannot be separated from the Word of God and the written Word accomplishes God’s purposes as it becomes a lamp and a light to our path.

Could it be that we like the Israelites in the wilderness have failed to listen and obey God’s Word? In Hebrews 3: 7-11 we have a warning revealed by the Holy Spirit: hear His voice, do not harden your hearts in rebellion, do not test the LORD, do not go astray in your hearts but know His ways. The Israelites hardened their hearts, fell away, received the wrath of God and did not enter His rest! Hebrews 4: 3 reveals that His works were finished since the foundation of the world and in verse 12 we are instructed that the Word is alive and powerful! The Bible is the living Word of God because it is the message given to us from the “living God”. Jesus spoke of the life-giving property of His words: “The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life.” (Jn. 6:63) The Bible cannot be ignored as if it were dead or obsolete. It has been removed from schools and gathers dust on the table. Matthew Henry said that the Bible “convinces powerfully, converts powerfully, and comforts powerfully. It makes a soul that has long been proud, to be humble; and a perverse spirit, to be meek and obedient. Sinful habits, that have become as it were natural to the soul, and rooted deeply in it, are separated and cut off by this sword. It will discover to men their thoughts and purpose, the vileness of many, the bad principles they are moved by, the sinful ends they act to.”

The Bible teaches that God knows our heart and judges the intent of our heart. Proverbs 21:2 states that every man’s way is right in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the hearts. Psalm 44: 21 states that God knows the secrets of the heart, and I Kings 8: 39 states that God alone knows the hearts of all the sons of men. The Lord’s plans for us are based on our actions, and if we keep living the way we want to live and He tells us to stop, repent, and turn from that life, the plans He has for us will be different. God has a good plan for our life if we will heed His word and walk in His paths.

Recently, a friend gave me a copy of the biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pastor, martyr, prophet and spy in Germany during the time of the Nazi regime—a time with many parallels for the Church and our nation today. Bonhoeffer gives us a warning that we would be wise to receive and embrace. “It is high time we broke with our theologically based restraint towards the state’s actions—which, after all, is only fear…Who in the church today realizes that this is the very least that the Bible requires of us?” He wrote a book called “The Prayerbook of the Bible” which is a book on the Old Testament Psalms. He said “we cannot reach God with our own prayers, but by praying His prayers—the Psalms of the Old Testament, which Jesus prayed—we effectively piggyback on them all the way to heaven…By praying the Psalms, we pray along with Christ’s prayer and therefore may be certain and glad that God hears us. When our will, our whole heart, enters into the prayer of Christ, then we are truly praying. We can pray only in Jesus Christ, with whom we shall also be heard.”

With this in mind, God directed me to Psalm 80 that is a plea for the return of God’s favor—to restore and revive us. These are key principles in having our prayers answered. First, we pray to the Shepherd—that Great Shepherd of the sheep who is enthroned among the cherubim. May He shine forth! O God, stir up Your might and come to save us. O God, restore us, make Your face shine and we will be saved. May the LORD of hosts hear the prayer of Your people and do not be angry with us. We have drunk a measure of tears. You make us a contention to our neighbors and our enemies mock as they please. Why have You broken down the fences, so all who pass by pluck us? Look down from heaven and see! You have planted this nation by Your right hand and strengthened it by Your Son for Yourself. Revive us, and we will call on Your Name, restore us. Make Your face shine and we will be saved. We can identify with this Psalm in many ways as America’s fences and borders have been thrown down and multitudes of people from many enemy countries have trampled the land, its people and devoured its resources. God is a God of righteousness and justice and His ways do not change.

Let us go again to Isaiah for lessons of judgment for injustice in Chapter 5. God rehearsed His love and special provision for His people and He poses the question: “What more was there to do that I have not done? I expected a great yield but there was none.” Consequently, He took away the hedge—the wall of protection and the land was trodden down and laid waste. The land would not be blessed. God looked for justice, but He saw bloodshed for righteousness! His heart was broken over what He saw. They were consumed by their pleasures and did not acknowledge the LORD or the works of His hands. They did not seek Him or His wisdom and knowledge so humanity was bowed down and humbled. He issued a clarion decree: “The LORD of hosts will be exalted through justice, and the Holy God consecrated through righteousness.” Iniquity and deceit prevailed among the people. They called evil good and good evil; presented darkness as light and light as darkness; presented bitter as sweet and sweet as bitter; were wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight; their heroes drink wine and mixed drinks; the wicked are justified for a bribe; and the innocent are deprived of justice. Fire consumed the land and all in its path because they rejected the law of the LORD of hosts and despised the Word of the Holy One of Israel. The LORD’s anger was kindled against His people. He stretched His hand against them and struck them, the hills trembled and bodies lay in the streets. He allowed nations from far off to come upon the land and their roaring was like a lion. If one looks at the land, darkness and distress is present—the light darkened by the clouds. Should we doubt that America is in judgment for injustice?

It is then in Isaiah 6 that we see God seated on the Throne—high and lifted up. We see Isaiah’s confession to the LORD—I am ruined, I am a man of unclean lips, I dwell among a people of unclean lips. The touch of the seraphim takes away his iniquity and atoned for his sin. Isaiah heard the voice of the LORD saying: “Whom should I send, and who will go for Us?” Bonhoeffer’s sister-in-law presented him with a similar question in the face of dire circumstances in their nation: “You Christians are glad when someone else does what you know must be done, but it seems that somehow you are unwilling to get your own hands dirty and do it.” A major theme for Bonhoeffer was that every Christian must be “fully human” by bringing God into his whole life, not merely into some “spiritual” realm. He believed that to merely talk about God but refusing to make Him real to the world in which God had placed him was bad theology. Isaiah’s answer was: “Here am I, send me.” I believe that God desires to get up front and personal with us to prepare our hearts to answer His call at such a time as this.

By reading the Bible, a person can know the heart of God because Scripture was divinely breathed out by Him (2 Timothy 3: 16). However, reading the Bible merely to gain facts about God will not bring a person any closer to the heart of God. Instead, reading Scripture should cause a person to worship and love Him and desire to share Him with others. Seeking to know the heart of God is a serious endeavor, as knowing Him will change a person’s entire life. Adrain Rogers said: “The problem is not in the head; the problem is in the heart. When a person surrenders his or her will, God will speak. Light obeyed increases light. Live up to the light that you have, and God will give you more.” God is presenting this personal challenge to us today—to prepare our hearts to be salt and light in the darkness. In Christ we see God as the Savior of mankind who desires all to come to know Him and experience the salvation He offers (2 Peter 3:9). “What does the LORD require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8) AMEN.