Author: admin

Valentines Day and Hollywood like to glamorize the heart. But the truth is that it has a nasty tendency to harden. The busy traffic that traverses across it as well as the cares and heartaches that inevitably come all tend to make our hearts calloused. If left untended, our hearts gradually grow brittle. As our hearts grow hardened, they become impervious to God’s word as well as His efforts to reach out to us.

God does not look tend our heart. That is something we must do. In fact, God tells us to break up the fallow ground of our heart. That means we are continually softening our heart and making it receptive to receive whatever God has for us.

Hollywood would have us believe that we have no control over our heart. If we “fall out of love” with someone, then it is beyond our control. If we no longer care about someone, then we are not to blame. But God makes it clear that we are to be the masters of our heart. We must irrigate it so it is soft and pliable.

We cannot determine when God might choose to speak to us. However, we can prepare our heart so we are ready to respond when He does.

God has an infinite number of solutions for our problems. One of His most common is to provide us with godly leaders. A man or woman of God can transform even the worst mess we find ourselves in!

God was keenly aware of every person who had backslidden from Him. He desired to bring them back to Himself. First, God drew his wayward people away from where they had been. He removed them from their temptations and distractions. Instead, He took them to a godly place. Second, God provided leaders who would shepherd His people according to His own heart. Such leaders brought the best out in God’s people and kept them safe from backsliding once again.

At times our spiritual condition can deteriorate to the point that drastic measures are required. Staying where we are will continue to produce the same dissatisfying results. Do you presently have a spiritual “shepherd” in your life who is encouraging you and guiding you in the way you should go? Do you need to make some significant changes to find a trustworthy shepherd?

Backsliding is a common term in the church. It usually refers to people who do not attend services regularly as they once did. But of course, there is far more to it than that.

Backsliding means our heart and devotion for Christ have declined in their fervency. It signifies that something has been lost. We are not in the same place with God we once were.

There can be innumerable explanations and excuses for this. “I have been so busy lately!” “I don’t care for the pastor’s preaching.” “I don’t feel like I fit in.” “I am taking a little break.” But the truth is, our heart has turned away from our God.

The remedy to backsliding is to return to God. God has not gone anywhere! We have! So it is our response that is crucial. Thankfully, God not only welcomes us back, but He urges us to come.

Are you in the same place, or even a better place with God than you were last year? If not, is there an area of your walk with God where you have backslidden?

There are cheap substitutes for every aspect of the Christian life. Whatever God does, Satan tries to mimic. He can even feign repentance and revival.

Of course, it is not genuine revival, only a hollow impersonation. In Satan’s version, people appear to have returned to God. They can claim to be sorry for their sin. There is often tears. Yet it is not real. Often the anguish is because of the consequence of their sin, rather than for their sin itself. There may be a sense of guilt, but not conviction. There may also be pledges of fresh commitment, but these are a mirage. Such proclamations will evaporate like the morning dew. It makes a great show in church, but it is nothing more than religious hype.

Kind-hearted people can be fooled into assuming that the professed repentance is genuine. But the truth is it is only skin deep. The heart is unaffected. The moment soon passes and the life of sin is resumed.

We might assume that partial revival is better than no revival at all. But there really is no such thing. If our heart is not fully for God, then we have not returned to Him. We may have thought about returning. We may have expressed a desire to return. We may even have performed outward acts that give the impression of returning, But unless our hearts are once again wholly for God, we have not experienced genuine revival.

The only thing more incredible than the fact that God loves us, is that He invites us to return to Him after we have forsaken Him. Our just lot ought to be eternal banishment in unquenchable fire for demonstrating such insolence to our Creator. Instead, God lovingly invites us to return to Him. And, when we do not respond, He invites us again, and again. Such patient love is unfathomable.

Israel had broken every promise they had made to God. They had committed spiritual adultery against the One who loved them infinitely. Despite countless blessings, God’s people had shunned their Benefactor and become enamored with cheap trinkets. Righteous indignation ought to have been poured out in abundance. Instead, after all that Israel had done, God invited them to return.

Revival is God’s word. He initiates it. He empowers it. He is the one who forgives out sin. But it is our responsibility to return. Without a conscious decision to return to Him, we cannot experience restoration. Have you drifted away from Him? Do you need to return?

We treat God in ways we would never condone in human relationships. God asked a question: Would society accept marriages where couples divorced and remarried, only to repeat the process again and again? A land that practiced such abominable behavior would be morally and spiritually polluted into ruin. No marriage could survive such disloyalty and disregard to commitment. Yet this is how people assumed they could relate to God.

The people were regularly forsaking their commitment to God and giving their hearts to idols. They might eventually return for a time, but would inevitably forsake their Lord once more. The land had become polluted with broken promises and fickle commitment.

Nevertheless, God’s invitation was tor His people to return to Him. Not in a casual, insincere manner, but with all of their hearts.

Our land has become polluted with spiritual betrayal and insincere confession. People occasionally return, but not with all of their heart. Even as they are returning to God they are already sowing the seeds of their next apostasy. For our land to be purified, God’s people must return to God with all of their heart.

Right standing with God hinges on repentance. Without repentance there is no way for us to receive forgiveness for our sins. But without acknowledging our sin, there is no possibility of repentance.

Some people adamantly reuse to acknowledge wrongdoing. They have done nothing wrong! It is not their fault! They have no need of making any changes.

At times people can take this delusion to ludicrous levels. They may be suffering from multiple broken relationships. Their prayers may be hollow and unanswered. There may be an acute absence of victory and divine power in their life. Nevertheless, these same people loudly proclaim their innocence. They have done nothing wrong! They were well intentioned. They have simply been misunderstood. Factors beyond their control have complicated their lives.

But God awaits their confession. Until people admit their wrongdoing, there can be no forgiveness. And, without divine pardon, we are lost in our sin.

Perhaps if we put as much effort into our repentance as we do into the defense of our behavior, we would experience life-transforming freedom and cleansing.

Are you ready to agree with God about your sin?

The posture of our life determines everything. Our standing before God either enables us to fully receive God’s goodness, or it cuts us off from His blessing.

It is possible to attend church regularly and yet have our backs to God. We can attend a worship service and yet have our eyes on idols. We can be fooled into assuming that because we are in the vicinity of God that we are walking closely with Him.

At times we may not even realize that we have our back to the Lord. Because we continue going through our religious rituals, we assume that we have an appropriate posture toward our Lord. Yet God can clearly see when we have turned our back to Him When our backs are turned, we are no longer listening to Him and our life is in no position to do what He commands.

Our words may loudly proclaim our nearness to God but our body language screams out that we are closed to His work in our life. What does the body language of your life reveal about you?

To understand the heart of God, it is important to examine beginnings. In the beginning God created a people who were noble and good. They delighted to follow Him and to enjoy fellowship with Him. They obeyed Him from a loyal heart. But, as always happens with God’s people, they ultimately began to degenerate. God created them to be a noble vine, but they eventually became an alien plant.

At times people can look at the evil in the world and ask, “How could a loving God allow such horrific evil to exist on earth?” But the truth is that God did not create the world to be evil or to be filled with pain. You might look at the mess your own life may be in and ask why God is allowing you to suffer so many complications and broken relationships. But again, God did not design you that way.

God’s intent for you from the beginning was to live in righteousness. God designed your life to be fruitful and joyful. But we are the ones who depart from our divine purpose. When we are not the people God designed us to be, we can no longer enjoy the life God intends for us.

To experience God’s blessings we must embrace God’s purpose. The key to God’s blessing is always what we become. If we are obedient children, then we experience the joy and inheritance of our loving Father. If we become rebels, we experience the scourging that is dispensed by our Judge.

Have you become all that God intended?

Few things are as insulting to God as false promises. God knows the falsehood of our statements to Him even as they are leaving our mouth. While we make loud protests of our commitment to Him, God knows full well that our heart is unreliable.

Even as the Israelites promised God they would forever remain steadfast in their loyalty to Him, they were already selling themselves to other gods at every opportunity. God’s people naively assumed that righteous God could be pacified with empty words. But our Creator has no patience for insincere rhetoric. Words mean nothing to Him when they are not accompanied with actions.

How often do we sing songs of commitment to God in our worship services that mean nothing with regard to how we are actually living? How often do we utter words in our prayers that are hollow and devoid of true commitment? How many discussions among Christians sound pious on the surface but are never followed through in actual living? We are a people who love to substitute words for obedience in our walk with God.

Take an inventory of what you have said to God lately. God has a record of every word. He knows which ones you have followed though on and which ones you have blatantly ignored. In light of this, how does God view your current walk with Him?