AND
THE MEDITATIONS OF MY HEART
Let the words of
my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable in
your sight,
O Lord,
my rock and my redeemer.
Psalm
19
Every miracle that God performs upon us, to change us
into what he wants us to be, begins in the heart. The outside of our lives, the
external things will take care of themselves, absolutely … when the heart, the
inner man, the inner woman is filled with God’s presence and ruled by God’s
nature.
Who
shall ascend the hill of the Lord?
And who shall stand in his holy place?
He who has clean hands and a pure heart…
Psalm
24:3
Behold, thou desirest
truth in the inward parts:
and in the secret part thou shalt
make me to know wisdom….
Create me a clean
heart.
O God and renew a
right spirit within me.
Psalm
51:6&10
Blessed
are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Matthew
5:8
While
he was speaking, a Pharisee asked him to dine with him; so he went in and sat
at table. The Pharisee was astonished to see that he did
not first wash before dinner. And the Lord said to him,
“Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside
you are full of extortion and wickedness. You fools! Did
not he who made the outside make the inside also? But
give for alms those things which are within; and behold, everything is clean
for you.
Luke 11
We've also observed that if this change is to take
place inside… the one who has to do it is God.
God has to give us the
new heart.
God has to come in there
and pull out the heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh.
God has to teach us
inwardly to know him.
And he does this in two ways.
First, by means of a sudden inward change. A new
beginning.
We get to a place in our lives where we begin to realize
that so much of our so-called religion is nothing but an external trapping over
us. And while we say all the right things and do such lovely things, our inside
is rotten. We can be mouthing all the religious platitudes and even doing all
kinds of good deeds and have rotten hearts.
One day we wake up and we see how this is the case
with us and we cry out to God for help. And the minute that we really do that, God
answers our cry and he says your sins are forgiven. Be clean.
And suddenly God’s presence comes inside us like we have
never experienced before, we're filled inside with light that makes all the
difference in the world.
And if you have never experienced this, you can
experience it today.
You can be filled with
light, today.
God can give you a new beginning,
today.
You can experience him in
such a way that you know he’s come, today
There's no reason why anyone
can’t be relieved from the weight of rotten hearts, today.
Many of us are too full of self. We’re self-conscious,
self-centered, self-defensive, self-assertive, self-righteous, and self-aggrandizing
…. So full of self. And then suddenly God reaches in and touches these things
in our hearts and 20 tons is lifted out of our heart and we walk like we're
walking on cloud 9 because the weight has come out of our hearts, the rock has
been lifted, and we have peace.
And God will do this today, for anybody who has not
experienced it.
But this sudden inner change is only half the story.
The other half is that God now has
to work inside that heart, day after, day after day… teaching us to
think new thoughts, and how to walk and talk with him, and how to practice his presence, all the
time.
There has to be an inner teaching of the Spirit of God
going on all the time in our hearts and in our minds. Because many of us who have experienced that
sudden inner change also find that our hearts and our minds begin drifting into
a thought world that is anything but edifying for us, and anything but pleasing
for God.
We get up in the morning and we start saying our
prayers and before we know it, our thoughts have sunk away from the throne and
now they're down here latching onto some regret that we haven't been able to
throw out of our minds maybe for days or even years.
Or we’re walking down the street and before we know
it, we're thinking about that person, who may be causing our life to be
miserable. Then the next thing that happens is that we find ourselves picturing
all kinds of juicy possibilities, ways in which their disturbing presence might
just be removed.
Or we’re at work and our eyes light on one thing and
suddenly our mind is rolling down a track of lust. Or we find ourselves suspecting
everybody’s motives, paranoid about the boss or our best friend.
And while we’re brushing our teeth, we're scheming a
new plan for our own glory, some new thing we're going to do, some new program,
something we can impose on everybody around us, starting with perhaps our own
family.
Or maybe we discover that about 70%, maybe even 90%, of
the people that we meet we find ourselves highly critical of, especially brothers
and sisters.
Here we've been given a new start and yet time and
time again our hearts just slip off track. We know that if we're going to live
in God's presence we have to have a clean heart. We know this!
Blessed
are the pure in heart for they shall see God
If we're going to walk up into the hill of God, we have
to have that heart that has been cleansed by him.
But how will it be?
Let the words of
my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight,
Oh Lord, my
strength and my Redeemer.
Psalm 19:14
And when we pray for this, we're not praying for
something morbid, but something absolutely glorious.
So that in this heart
instead of all these lies, there is truth.
So that instead of constant
restlessness and anxiety, there is peace.
So that instead of vanity
after vanity, there is burning life.
And this God will do on a day in and day out basis in
any of our lives provided we will do three things.
Pray for Clean Hearts
The first thing that has to happen if we're going to
have God teaching us from within is that we pray for a clean heart. Constantly
pray for a clean heart.
By praying for a clean heart, we're acknowledging that
our problem is something that God has to solve. And we're also beginning to see
that when we pray for a clean heart that God will verily do it. Just as surely
as he gives us air to breathe and water to drink, he will come in and he will
renew us constantly in our hearts, and he will teach us from within.
When you pray for a clean heart, you're also acknowledging
that it's not your external that is the problem, but it’s the internal, the
inside.
Notice that the Sermon on the Mount begins with the
Beatitudes, the seven ingredients of a life of faith. Every one of these
ingredients has to do with the inside.
Blessed are the poor in
spirit (where is one poor in spirit but inside)?
Blessed are they that
mourn (an inner thing).
Blessed are the meek.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness.
Blessed are the merciful.
Blessed are the
peacemakers.
Blessed are the pure in heart.
All
of these are internal, inward things.
When I'm asking God to give me a clean heart, I'm
asking God to take the beatitudes and make them real in my life.
Prepare the Way in our Heart to Receive
Him
The second thing I have to do if I want God to teach me
within… I have to prepare the way so the meditations of my heart might be
acceptable in his sight. Every day I have to prepare the way.
When people marry, they must prepare a way in their
hearts for their mates. But what's happened in many marriages is that a place,
a way isn’t continuously prepared every day. A place has to be made for
their mate in the heart every day. If a way isn’t continuously prepared then
the marriage gets dull and dry.
How much more is it the case now with Jesus himself? We
have to prepare the way in our hearts to receive him not just once, but on a
continuous basis.
This is the testimony of John, when the
Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” He
confessed, he did not deny, but confessed, “I am not the Christ.” And
they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the
prophet?” And he answered, “No.” They said to him then,
“Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say
about yourself?” He
said, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way
of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said.”
John
1:19-23
And just as the wilderness of the Jordan at the
eastern border of Israel was the place where our Lord began his ministry and
that ministry began by John the Baptist (the Elijah prophet), shouting “Make
Straight the way of the Lord”.
So in our hearts there is an externalization of that
reality. Inside each of our hearts, there is a kind of an eastern border that
opens out onto the spirit realm. And from that direction God will come,
or Satan will come.
And if that eastern border of our life, where there is
a cry, “make straight the way of the Lord” is not uncluttered, and
straightened, and prepared… there is no way that we're going to have Jesus
coming into our hearts all the time. Daily
there has to be a preparing. We have to clear the boulders and the rocks, we
have to fill in the valleys, and knock down the mountain and prepare the way
for the king to come in. Every day.
If I know there is a thing in me that the Spirit of
God is putting his finger on, if there is a habit of thought in my mind, that
is destroying me and preventing my Lord from taking dominion over my heart and
coming in with blessing, with life… I get rid of that thing. If there's a habit
of speech, if there’s a critical attitude, I get rid of it!
I have to prepare the way all the time, I have to make
straight the way so that the Lord can come in. It's not worth it to have all
these things we’ve been clinging to in our hearts and losing out on having the
Lord coming in and taking dominion …every day. This must be a continuous thing.
Give for Alms Things that Are Within- Offer
God’s Mercy
Finally, If we are going to have a meditation going on
in our heart, a continuous atmosphere of the presence of God going on inside,
it means that we're going to have to give alms of that which is within, an
offering to others.
Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the
cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of extortion and wickedness. You
fools! Did not he who made the outside make the inside
also?
But give for alms those
things which are within; and behold, everything is clean for you.
And what alms do I have to give? There is only one thing
that I have in my heart that I can ever give, God's mercy. What else do I have?
His mercy came to me as a gift and now I give it. And just as surely as I have
received that mercy, I give it out every day.
And I begin first of all, to give forth that mercy… in
my prayers.
If I'm not praying mercy on my brother, I'm not going
to do him any good. If I if I go up and say “you're
forgiven for that terrible thing you did to me”, but he's never in my prayers, It's hardly likely that I've really forgiven him in my
heart. I begin by praying for him.
And really meaning this and asking God’s blessing on
him. Then I begin to also conform my mouth to that which I have in my heart, that
mercy… and I begin to speak in such a way that I do not defame him, undercut
him, slander him, misconstrue his motives, get people thinking bad things about
him or her. And then I begin to serve him with my hands.
When I get to that place where I begin to give forth
from my heart mercy as generously as I was giving forth criticism, and hardness,
and bitterness…. when I get to that place, my heart will be clean and the
meditations of my heart will be acceptable in God's sight.
We are what goes on in our hearts. That's what we are.
Not what we
look like, not even the things we may say at certain times. What comes out of
our mouth will ultimately show what’s in our hearts.
We
are what goes on in our hearts.
And the same God who will give us a fresh start this day,
to any who need it, will also make it possible for each one of us to live in
his presence and have a heart that's just filled with his life, that’s cleansed
continuously by his peace….
If we will pray for it, ask
him, constantly.
If we will prepare the way
for him, continuously.
If we will give for alms
such things as are within, showing forth his mercy as he pours it into us,
every day.
Let's pray.
Lord God, you're requiring things of us and showing
things in us know that we have not seen before and what blessings have come as
you show us these things.
We're asking that you help us in this area of our
lives today and into the future, that we will no longer be slovenly about the
meditation of our heart and no longer so easy on ourselves concerning what goes
on in our hearts, especially while we're so hard on everybody else.
Help us Lord God to come to that place where our heart
becomes truly a house of prayer, a place of praise, and a fountainhead of mercy
for ourselves and for our families, for our brothers and sisters and for all
people with whom we have to do.
We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Richard
Bieber 1976
Transcribed
and edited for print 2022 by Maranatha Mirror
Audio
Version- https://id3434.securedata.net/mmirror/MP%203%20FILES/AND%20THE%20MEDITATIONS%20OF%20MY%20HEART.mp3