WHAT'S IN YOUR HEART?
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
All
the commandments which I command you this day you shall be watchful to
do, that you may live and multiply and go in and possess the land which
the Lord swore to give to your fathers. 2 And you shall [earnestly]
remember all the way which the Lord your God led you these forty years
in the wilderness, to humble you and to prove you, to know what was in your [mind and] heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. 3 And He humbled you and allowed you to hunger and fed you with manna,
which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make
you recognize and personally know that man does not live by bread only,
but man lives by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. Deuteronomy 8:1-3 AMP
You
might think you know what’s in your own heart, but you do not really
know until you are tested. When you are humbled by your
circumstances—by life—and when everything else is stripped away, what
is left is the essence of YOU! The hardest things you go through will
be the things that define who you are. How will you respond? Will you
be bitter or will you be better? Will you allow God’s Word to govern
your life; your choices; your circumstances? The sword of the Word of
God is sharper than a two-edged sword (Hebrews 4:12) and will cut down
deep on the inside of you and reveal the thoughts, intents, and
purposes of your heart. Growth involves change and you can only change
the things you know about.
God is
not the author of the negative things that happen to you, just as it
was not His choice for Israel to wander in the desert for forty years,
but the Lord will cause your own heart to be revealed to you, through
these things, so you can change, so you can grow, so you can make the
adjustments, so you can make corrections to your direction—so you can
walk in liberty and in blessing.
Unless
you have been through a tough time, suffered hunger, and been fed by
the Lord with manna, you may not come to realize that man does not live
by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
If you do not remember that God is the One who took care of you when
you could not take care of yourself, then when He blesses you and
promotes you, you will think that your ability and talents brought the
blessing. You will forget God; you will forget what He has done; you
will forget that it is HE Who gives you the power to get wealth and the
power to succeed. You will think that you did it yourself. You will
forget that God is actually the One who has empowered you to walk in
blessing and success as a fulfillment of a covenant promise He made
with you. You need to acknowledge the blessing of the Lord in your
life—you owe Him your thanks and appreciation.
If you
are going through a hard time, and you want to gain the victory, you
will need to humble your heart before the Lord. The attitude
adjustments you get when you humble yourself under the mighty hand of
God during the hard times—if you remember the lessons learned—will
carry you through the good times. You need to humble yourself even more
when you are prospering and succeeding, so that you do not become
arrogant and lose what you have—or worse—lose yourself, by moving away
from and then rejecting the Lord.
Possessions,
position and prestige are not the answer to all your problems. Things
cannot make you happy because no matter how much a person has, they
inevitably want more of it. Only the Spirit of God can truly satisfy
your heart. When your contentment comes from your relationship with God
and you look to Him and trust Him in and through all the circumstances
of your life, whether good or bad, you will be truly happy and blessed
and free!