A Different Perspective Official Podcast

• Spotting the Fake // God Wants to Heal Your Heart, Part 6

  If there’s one thing that most of us can’t stand it’s a fake, a hypocrite. Someone who’s one thing on the outside and something different on the inside. And when that fake, that hypocrite is us – it can end up tearing us apart. I don’t know about you but if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a fake. A product that doesn’t do what the advertisers claim that it will do. A person who says one thing but does another. It’s not just dishonest but well, it’s annoying. Because there’s no excuse for it. Fake is the word we use to describe a thing that falls into that category. But when it comes to a person we have another word. We call them a hypocrite. A hypocrite is someone who lives life by the maxim, ‘Do what I say and not what I do’. A hypocrite is someone who holds themselves out to be one thing but on the inside they’re something entirely different. Hypocrisy violates trust. And let’s be honest, it’s something we’ve all done. When we go for a job interview we can be so intent on putting our best foot forward that we hold ourselves out to be something that we just aren’t. We so want to impress so that we can win the job, we embellish our abilities and our experience. You know what I’m talking about. Two faced is another expression we have to describe this disconnect between the person who we are on the inside and who we really are on the outside. Because eventually who we are on the inside shows through. And that’s why it appears that we have two faces. The question is, when we look in the mirror can we spot the fake? Last week on the program and again this week we’re looking at our hearts. That deep place inside where we live. Where our dreams and motivations and desires and intentions are. The place where we experience joy and pain. Because the heart is so incredibly important. It’s something I realised when I gave up smoking. I used to smoke 3 packets a day. I was a chain smoker. I was really addicted. I tried to give up, I tried and tried and tried but I never could. I tried and tried and tried again. But one day I was in a room and I watched someone die of cancer. I watched this woman breathe her last breath on this earth. She’d been a smoker. It’s almost 30 years ago now but I remember as if it was yesterday. I walked out of that room. I took the packet of cigarettes out of my pocket, a gold pack at about half full. I threw them in a grey metal bin and I haven’t had a single cigarette since. Why? Because I had a change of heart in that room. Watching that woman die moved me so deeply, it changed my heart. And the moment my heart was changed the rest was easy. But for ages before I used to lie to myself and others. I’d pretend I’d given up. I’d kid myself. I’d pretend to others. But you can tell when someone’s had a cigarette. I was trying to be one thing on the outside but I was something else in secret until I had that change of heart. The heart is so incredibly important because it’s what happens in our hearts that determines how we live our lives. If the stuff going on in our hearts is good then we’ll live a good life. But if it’s rotten, we’ll live a rotten life. You can’t help it. It’s just the way it is. Psalm 55. It’s a psalm of king David. Have a listen to what he says about a so-called friend: My companion laid hands on a friend and violated a covenant with me. With speech smoother than butter but with a heart set on war. With words that were softer than oil but in fact were drawn swords. I love that contrast. “A speech smoother than butter but with a heart set on war”. Do you see the disconnect between what the person was saying, this so-called friend, and what he did. That’s the temptation for all of us. To have deceit and anger and war in our hearts and to pretend to be something else on the outside. In fact many, many years later the apostle Paul wrote this. You can read it in the New Testament book 2 Timothy chapter 3, beginning at verse 1: You must understand this, that in the last days distressing times will come. For people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable slanderous, profligates, brutes, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. Holding to the outward form of Godliness but denying its power. Avoid them. See, there it is again. This disconnect between the real person on the inside and what they pretend to be on the outside. They hold to an outward form of Godliness but inside there’s all this rottenness. They pretend to be Godly but they deny the power of God to change their lives. That’s the problem with being religious. People ask me, “Are you religious?” And I answer, “Absolutely not!” It has absolutely nothing to do with religion for me. It’s about a relationship with Jesus Christ. Jesus said the same thing. The hypocritical religious leaders, the Pharisees, appeared to be so Godly, so “goody two shoes” on the outside but listen to what Jesus said to them. Matthew chapter 23, verses 25 and 26: Woe to you scribes and Pharisees. You hypocrites, for you clean the outside of the cup and the plate but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisees, first clean the inside of the cup so that the outside may also be clean. And this is the reason that we’ve been talking about the importance of a clean heart over this past week and again this week on the program. Listen to me. Unless God changes our hearts and that’s the power the apostle Paul talks about, nothing’s going to change in our lives. I tried to give up smoking but it’s not until God changed my heart that it actually became possible. Can I tell you? I tried so hard. I have a strong will okay, I’m not some weak-willed person. I simply couldn’t give up the cigarettes. But here’s the amazing news. God wants to transform our hearts. He wants to change our hearts. He wants to do things in us that we simply can’t do for ourselves. So even if you or I were heart surgeons, we couldn’t operate on ourselves to clear a blocked artery. You have to get someone else to operate on your heart. That’s what’s going on here and the heart is who we are deep inside. It’s so important. Because who we are deep down inside is either going to give us a fantastic life. A life that’s a blessing to ourselves and to others. A life where we have the power to love and to sacrifice and to serve. Or it’s going to give us a rotten life. A life of selfishness. A stunted life. Last week we looked at this verse from the book of Proverbs. Let me ask you to let it become part of who you are and how you live and what you want God to do in you. Proverbs chapter 4, verse 23: Above all else, guard your heart for it is the well spring of life. Let’s stop pussy-footing around. Let’s stop tinkering at the edges trying to change this or that. Real change, powerful change, decisive change that once and for all sets us free from the rubbish that’s holding us back, comes from the power of God, the Holy Spirit. God Himself at work in our hearts. Because when He sets us free we will be free indeed. I believe that God wants to give us a pure heart, a strong heart, a soft heart, a steadfast heart. I believe God wants to hide His word in our hearts. Yours and mine. To do mighty, mighty things that we simply can’t even imagine.

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• A Revival of the Heart // God Wants to Heal Your Heart, Part 5

  When we’re exhausted – so tired we can’t go on, turns out that what we need to do is to stop and revive, in order to survive. We need revival deep in our hearts.  And as things turn out – well, that’s God’s plan too. To revive an aching heart, and a failing spirit. One of the things that happens just about everywhere on the planet I suspect is on those special holidays, those long weekends, school holidays, whatever, many people hop in their cars and head off for a break. Sometimes they drive long distances. I mean, here in Australia it’s a big country and it’s nothing for people to drive 11 or 12 or 13 hours straight to arrive at a holiday destination. And of course, the longer you drive the more you become tired and the more your mind wanders and you lose concentration. And so tiredness combined with the fact there are many more people on the roads, leads to a spike in road accidents and fatalities. In the state where I live, a few years ago, the police or the road authority or whoever it was, came up with a catchy slogan and it goes like this. “Stop. Revive. Survive.” It’s not bad and it’s true. Sometimes we have to stop and revive in order to survive. And you know, it’s like that in life sometimes too. Have you ever been exhausted to the core? You know, so dog tired that you feel as though that you can’t possibly go on. There are a lot of reasons that can happen but happen it does and when it does we need something or someone to revive us. Fortunately, God has a plan. We’ve been talking this week on the program about our hearts. You know that place deep down inside where we live. That place where we experience joy and pain. Peace and turmoil. Deep down in our hearts. And in this world, time and time again, you see people who are so exhausted, so wrung out. Interesting, I was listening to a social commentator being interviewed on the radio just the other day. And he was making the point that we’re in a phase, in western society at least, where it’s all about perfection. The perfect latte. The perfect holiday. The perfect meal. The perfect education for our children. This striving for perfection all the time is making people tired. It’s exhausting. Because when you go to the coffee shop and the coffee isn’t quite perfect and the service isn’t quite perfect people are starting to get all stressed as though somehow their lives were meant to be perfect. And they were never meant to be perfect. That started me thinking and I thought about it for a while and I came to the conclusion that actually sin is exhausting. You know, selfishness and pride and anger. Whatever it is in our lives, all those things take so much energy. I mean rebelling against God is just plain hard work. Because when we do that we’re living in a manner that we weren’t designed to live in. We’re pulling in the opposite direction to God and we know that it just doesn’t work. It’s exhausting. You start feeling like you’re carrying around these incredible loads and burdens. As I look back on my life, I used to be so concerned about my image. What people thought about me. I was always trying to impress people. Like you’re living life for show. Always in the limelight. I was addicted to that stuff. It was just plain exhausting. It was like living in a display home all the time. You know when you’re selling the house, you always keep it perfectly neat and tidy just in case the agent brings some prospective buyer around at a moments notice. You never relax. You never enjoy. You’re always on edge. Listen to me! Millions of people are living their lives like that and it’s not the way it’s meant to be. Some people out there, well you need to stop and revive in order to survive. Have a listen to this. It comes from God. It comes from the Old Testament book of Isaiah. Have a listen, it’s great stuff. Isaiah chapter 57, verses 15 to 21: For thus says the high and lofty One who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy. He says, “I dwell in the high and holy place and also with those who are contrite and humble in spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite. For I will not continuously accuse nor will I always be angry for then the spirits would grow faint before me, even the souls that I have made. Because of their wicked covetness I was angry. I struck them, I hid, I was angry but they kept turning back to their own ways. I have seen their ways but I will heal them. I will lead them and repay them with comfort, creating for their mourners the fruit of the lips. ‘Peace, peace to the far and near’, says the Lord, ‘I will heal them. But the wicked, they are like the tossing sea. They cannot keep still. It’s waters toss up mire and mud. There is no peace,’ Says my God, for the wicked.’ See the story playing itself out here? God wants to revive our spirit. He wants to revive our hearts. Now I’m sure you know this but this was written originally in the Hebrew language. So this word “revive”, well I went back to see what it originally meant before it was translated into the English. Here’s what the dictionary definition for the original word is. “To live. Have life. Remain alive. Sustain life. Live prosperously. Live forever. Be quickened. Be alive. Be restored to life or health.” “Wow, give me some of that”, says the one who’s exhausted. But we have to read the rest of what God’s saying here through the prophet Isaiah. See it talks about God’s anger towards the wicked and then it talks about His mercy and grace. Let’s have a look at it again, Isaiah 57, verses 18 and 19: I have seen their ways but I will heal them. I will lead them and repay them with comfort, creating for their mourners the fruit of the lips. Peace, peace to the far and the near, says the Lord, and I will heal them. See this promised revival of the heart and the spirit is not for everyone. God says: I dwell in the high and holy place. And also: With those who are contrite and humble in spirit. In order to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite. This peace, this revival, this rest is for the humble and the contrite. But those who continue rebelling against God, this is what they should expect: The wicked are like the tossing sea. They cannot keep still. It’s waters toss up the mire and mud. There is no peace, says my God, for the wicked. God is saying something here. He wants to heal our hearts. He wants to revive the heart. Revive the spirit. But He’s giving us the choice and the choice is ours. It’s yours and it’s mine. If we set our hearts on living the life that God always intended. If we bow our lives down before Him. If we humble ourselves. If we come to Him with contrition. If we decide to live a life that’s close to Him and in Him, a life that honours Him as our God. If we turn from the sin. Let me call it exactly what it is, sin, that’s like a heavy weight on our shoulders, here’s what to expect from God. Revival of the spirit and revival of the heart. But if we don’t humble ourselves before God. If we don’t turn back to Him, then expect this. There is no peace or no rest for the wicked. They are God’s words and not mine. Let me come back to it. If you are someone whose heart is to honour God and to serve Him, I want to encourage you to take God at His word today. Expect Him to revive your heart. Expect Him to give you peace and rest on every side including on the inside. Because actually, that’s exactly what God wants to do for you and for me and anyone else who is humble and contrite, bowing their lives down to God. It’s that simple, really.

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• A New Heart // God Wants to Heal Your Heart, Part 4

  Sixty years ago, heart transplants were an impossible dream. Today, thousands of people have heart transplants every year. They’re a reality. And it turns out that God – well, God’s in the heart transplant business too. In fact, He’s been in that business for a very long time. I don’t know about you but I am old enough to remember the very first heart transplant. It was performed by Dr Christiaan Barnard on the 3rd of December, 1967. The patient was Mr Louis Washkansky. Sadly he lived for only 18 days and died, in the end, of pneumonia but his heart beat strongly until the end. Since then, of course, there’s been many thousands of heart transplants and these days they are much more successful. The doctors have things pretty well figured out. They know how to stop the body rejecting the heart. I mean, for me, it’s impossible to imagine, how do they do that? Forty something years ago heart transplants were a pipe dream. Today, thousands are conducted each year around the world. But here’s the thing, when the old heart is so diseased sometimes the only option, to bring life, is to implant a new heart. A heart that’s strong and healthy. A heart that will pump life to each of the hundred trillion or so cells in the human body for a good many years to come. But this heart transplant idea, it’s not something new. Actually, it’s been around for thousands of years. Really! This week on the program we’re looking at our hearts. No, not the fist sized muscle that beats between 2 and 3 billion times during the average lifetime. But our heart. Your heart. My heart. That deep place inside where we live. That place where we take things to heart. Where we lose heart. Where we long for something with all our heart. When God talks about the heart, He’s talking about the inner being. The inner most part. The seat of our appetites, our emotions, our passions, our courage, our fear. The middle. The centre. The inner most part of the person. And I remember when I first became aware of God. I mean really. A decade and a half ago when I decided to give my life to Jesus Christ. You know the amazing thing is, for all my life before then I thought I was fine. Yeah okay, I wasn’t perfect but I was pretty full of myself. You know, I thought I was pretty crash hot. But then one day the Spirit of God came and touched me in a way that opened my heart. And one of the first things I realised was how rotten I was to the core. It wasn’t something I had to think a lot about. It wasn’t some guilt trip. I just knew when I gazed upon God for the first time I so deeply, so powerfully, for the first time really understood what He meant by that little word sin. I was full of it and you know something, when we get a powerful revelation of God like that. When His Spirit reaches out and touches us with His truth like that, it’s a really common reaction. We’re gripped by our own inadequacy. And I think that’s important. Finally to realise that the clothes in which we once boasted were nothing but insubstantial rags. It happened to the prophet Isaiah. Have a listen to what happens when he sees God down in the Temple in Jerusalem in the 8th century BC. Have a listen. Isaiah chapter 6 beginning at verse 1: In the year that King Ussiah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty, and the hem of His robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above Him, each had six wings. With two they covered their faces and with two they covered their feet and with two they flew. And one called to another saying, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory.” The pivots on the threshold shook at the voices of those who called and the house was filled with smoke and I said, “Woe is me. I am lost for I am a man of unclean lips and I live amongst people of unclean lips. Yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” Do you see the reaction? This reaction of a sinner who encounters the holy, pure, perfect, glorious God: Woe is me. I am lost. He recognises his own sinfulness in the presence of God. Now if this kind of God experience has never happened in your life. You might think, well, I’m getting a bit weird here. But for me, when I experienced the warmth and the love and the forgiveness and the glory and the power of God. It was in that place that I came to realise how diseased my heart truly was. How desperate my need truly was. I realised the poverty of my own spirit and my own situation and yet it was for me and for you that Jesus said: Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And I thought, “Well, now what? What do I do? How do I deal with this mess that I’m in?” That’s my natural reaction all the time. I’m a “doer” so I say, “Well what do I have to do?” Then one day I stumbled across these words in the Old Testament and they changed everything. Have a listen. This is God’s promise through the prophet Ezekiel and you can read it for yourself in Ezekiel chapter 36, verses 26 to 29. God says this: A new heart I will give to you and a new Spirit I will put within you and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and make you follow My statutes and be careful to observe My ordinances. Then you shall live in the land that I gave to your ancestors and you shall be My people and I will be your God. I will save you from all your uncleanness and I will summon the grain and make it abundant and lay no famine upon you. What an amazing promise. God promises them a heart transplant. That’s what God promises us. A new heart. Have a listen again: I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you. God’s Spirit within us and that’s what changes the way we live. See, there’s a flow on effect of this new Spirit and if you read that passage again it talks about God’s blessing: Then you shall live in the land that I gave to your ancestors. You will be My people. I will be your God. I will save you from your uncleanness. I will summon the grain and make it abundant and lay no famine upon you. See God offers us a new heart and a new spirit and from those things we change and the blessing flows. Sometimes when a heart is so diseased we can operate on it as much as we like but nothing makes a difference. We need a new heart. Have you ever felt like Isaiah? Have you ever felt that sense that no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, you’ll never be good enough for God? Well, me too and I want to share a prayer with you. The prayer of King David after he had committed adultery and murder and he came to his senses before God. He felt so rotten. So dirty. So unclean. And so he cast himself on the mercy of God and this is what he prayed. You can read it in Psalm 51, verses 10 to 12. He prays: Create in me a clean heart, oh God and put a new and right spirit in me. Do not cast me away from your presence. Do not take Your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of Your salvation and sustain in me a willing spirit. Just when we think we have to do it all ourselves, what we discover is that actually God has a different plan. God plans to give us a new heart and a new spirit. Nothing that we do, something that God does. And you know something, that’s what I’ve discovered. In one sense God changing me is still so much a work in progress but the closer I drew to God the more I discovered changed attitudes. A compassion I never had before. A desire to serve and not to be seen. A heart for people and a passion to serve God. I never had those things and somehow they just happened without me thinking too much about them. God gave me a new heart, just like that!

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• Health Check // God Wants to Heal Your Heart, Part 3

  Sin is like heart disease – it robs us of life. Anger, resentment, pride, dishonesty, lust – all those things rob us of life. But we, well, we want to sweep them under the carpet. Problem is, when you do that – all you get, is a lump under the carpet. They say men are the worst at going to the doctors. So many men drop dead in the prime of life from bowel cancer and heart disease. Because we just didn’t want to go to the doctors. There’s this foolish male pride thing going on. “Well, I’m a man. I’m strong. I’m okay.” And that’s the very same man who can wake up dead tomorrow because he didn’t go for a regular check up to the doctor. In part it’s pride but in part it’s that we don’t want to hear the bad news. I mean how many men know that they’re overweight but they don’t want to hear it. They just ignore it and suppress it and behave like there’s nothing wrong. Until one day they have a stroke or a heart attack that could have been avoided with a bit of exercise, losing just a few pounds, getting the blood pressure under control. Hello! We don’t want to hear the bad news and so, at best, we end up living a sub optimal unhealthy life where we’re tired and short of breath. And at worst we keel over dead before our time. Now, none of us likes bad news. Problem is that our aversion to bad news can end up robbing us of life. We want to sweep it under the carpet but all you get when you sweep it under the carpet is a lump under the carpet. You actually don’t solve anything. And so what we’re looking at this week and next week on the program is getting a grip and dealing with some issues. The things in our hearts that are robbing us of life. And today, today if you’ll join me I’d like to have a bit of a health check with you. Just a bit of time where we look through the things going on in our hearts. A little probe, a little prod around in there. Because it’s not until we acknowledge those things that we can join hands with God and start doing something about them. Now, we only have a few minutes so we’re going to talk about just a few diseases in our hearts today. The main ones. The ones that are ruining the lives of probably 80% of the people listening today, including you and me. Come on, let’s get real here. Let’s take some responsibility for the things that we’re hiding in our hearts. Proverbs chapter 27, verse 19 says this: As water reflects a face, so a mans heart reflects the man. What’s going on on the inside is going to have an impact on the outside. You can’t help it. And so today we just want to look at a handful of these different diseases of the heart that are hurting our lives. And that’s why I’m asking you to spend these few minutes with me and have the courage, when you hear one or two that you know are alive in your heart, to look God directly in the eye and say, “God, you know something, that’s me! I have to take responsibility for that and even though I don’t have the strength or the ability to do something about it, I know that You have and You can and that You want to.” This is about opening up our hearts to God and His Spirit and His Word to let Him to make some changes to heal our hearts. So that we can have the life that He always planned for us. Amen. Okay, here’s the first one. Psalm 10, verse 3 says: He boasts of the cravings of his heart. He blesses the greedy and reviles the Lord. The first one. The first disease of the heart is greed. So many people in this world want more and more and more and more and more and we’re taught that that’s okay. Even our governments encourage us to spend more to help the economy. But when the cravings of our heart take over. When greed drives us. Let me tell you something, you and I will turn our hearts away from God. We will revile Him because we can’t serve Him and greed. We can’t serve Him and money and wealth and position and status. And that one, this greed, leads to another disease. The disease of deception and dishonesty. Psalm 62, verse 10 says: Do not trust in extortion or take pride in stolen goods. Though your riches increase do not set your heart on them. Many, many people are caught up in deceit and dishonesty. In theft and lying. In fact there are certain personality types for whom this is their main weakness. And the problem with this is that you can’t lie straight in bed. You can’t be dishonest and deceitful and lie and cheat and then have a good nights sleep. Now you might be deceiving the rest of the world but none of us is stupid enough to think that we can deceive God. And so, this particular disease of the heart robs us of our relationship and fellowship and intimacy with God. It’s a rotten disease and I know that there is someone who needs to look God in the eye and confess this sin right now and ask for forgiveness and ask for God to help heal their heart right now. The third one, the third one’s a biggy. Many of us get caught up in this one and this is probably the main disease that God’s had to heal me of. Have a listen. Psalm 101, verse 5: Whoever slanders his neighbour in secret, him will I put to silence. Whoever has haughty eyes and a proud heart, him I will not endure. Interesting how slander and pride go together here. See the root’s in his pride. When I’m proud it’s all about me. I’m important. I’m more important than you and I’m more important than God and I’m right and it’s my way or the highway. Now you see I can rattle those things off the tongue so quickly because I have more than a passing familiarity with those. And the thing that pride breeds in us is that we can’t stand it when someone else succeeds. We can’t stand it when someone else gets the limelight. And so the proud person will slander other people. They’ll stab them in the back. Undermine them. And with pride and slander comes envy. Have a listen to this one. Proverbs chapter 14 and verse 30: A heart of peace gives life to the body but envy rots the bones. We looked at that one yesterday. You can’t have peace when you’re proud because life is about having one big competition. So pride, envy and slander are all part of the same disease and these next two follow close along. Have a listen to these from Daniel chapter 5, verse 20: But when his heart became arrogant and hardened with pride, he was deposed from his royal throne and stripped of his glory. This is written about King Belshazzar, Nebuchadnezzar’s son. He became arrogant and hard of heart. And that’s what happens through pride. And let me tell you something, God always opposes the proud. You can read that in James chapter 4 in verse 6. And so this piece of wisdom from Solomon holds true. Proverbs 16, verse 18: Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. Now this last one we have time for, it’s a disease in the heart for many, both men and women. We’re reading about it in Proverbs chapter 6, verses 25 and 26. It says this: Do not lust in your heart after her beauty or let her captivate you with her eyes. For the prostitute reduces you to a loaf of bread and the adulteress preys upon your very life. Lust, sexual lust brings many a man down. Tears many a marriage apart. It’s a real disease of the heart and this one, more than any other perhaps, is one that so many men and women quietly live with not realising the destruction that it brings upon them. Now we’ve only spoken about a handful of most common diseases of the heart. Things that rob us. Greed. Dishonesty. Slander. Pride. Arrogance. Lust. These things harden our hearts to God. They rob us of life and that’s what we’re going to be looking at over these next few days and weeks. About the fact that God wants to come and heal us of these diseases.

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• God Values the Heart // God Wants to Heal Your Heart, Part 2

  We people are very much into surface things – things we can touch and feel. Someone dresses well or performs well or looks good – and we judge them to be successful. But God’s interested in something else. Something quite different. God’s interested in our hearts. I don’t know if you’ve ever watched the Oscars on TV. You know, the movie awards they give in Hollywood, in “Tinsel Town” each year. Look I think it’s great that they award the best movies and actors and directors. But sometimes, as I see people prancing down that red carpet and accepting their glory when they get their awards. Well, I can’t but help have this sense that it feels just a tad superficial. It’s about being beautiful. It’s about being the best. It’s about winning. And that my friend is pretty much what our world’s like. If you’re rich or beautiful or entertaining, we value you. But if you’re not, we don’t. We tend very much to judge the book by its cover. Now, it’s not always true. Sometimes we form closer deeper relationships but in a world where there are so many options to consume and to be entertained, hey, you have to choose somehow. And we tend to choose a book by its cover. We tend to value outward symbols of beauty and success. And that’s good because that’s what makes the economy grow. That’s what gets us to buy things. That’s what gives people jobs. So it’s a good thing, isn’t it? Well, we know it’s not but it’s just the way the world is. This, of course, is nothing new. It’s been around for a long time. The apostle Paul, a couple of thousand years ago, wrote about people who boast in outward appearance but not in the heart. You can read that if you like in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 12 in the New Testament. And another thousand or so years before that, God had this to say through the prophet Samuel when he was looking for a new king for Israel. God said: Man looks on the outward appearance but the Lord looks on the heart. (1 Samuel 16:7). I was watching a show on TV the other day; it was out of the UK. About a woman who goes in to show shops how to turn their business around. So she goes into this struggling little boutique and she’s helping this little boutique in Doncaster in the UK and she decided that their target market was, listen for this, the disciples of Beckham. People who wanted to be like and look like Victoria and David Beckham. Now sure, they’re celebrities and there’s nothing wrong with that. But this whole idea in turning this boutique around was to stock and promote clothes and the look that celebrities were sporting. To be seen to mimic the celebs. Do you see what’s going on here? I don’t knock the business. They’re doing stuff to get money. But what they’re chasing after is our desire to be all about appearances. But outer appearances aren’t actually that important to God. See He’s much more concerned with our hearts and to tell you the truth, when I started doing a bit of research in the Bible I was actually quite shocked with how much God has to say about our hearts. And how concerned He is for our hearts. Have a listen to 1 Chronicles chapter 28, verse 9. Listen to this: The Lord searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts. Listen to that again. He searches every heart. See we race around doing things. Thinking things. Imagining no one notices. Imagining that people can only see us on the outside and they don’t know the rotten things going on, on the inside. We can be angry, revengeful, deceitful, dishonest in our hearts. But we stick a smile on our face and have soft word on our lips and we think we’re kidding everyone. We may well be. But we’re not kidding God because He searches every heart and understands every motive behind our thoughts. And God tests our hearts too. Have a listen to these few verses. The first one comes from Deuteronomy chapter 8, verse 2. It says: Remember how the Lord your God lead you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what is in your heart. Whether or not you would keep His Commandments. And this one, it’s a little bit longer. 2 Chronicles, chapter 32, verses 27 to 31. Have a listen, it’s about a king called Hezekiah: Hezekiah had very great riches and honour and he made treasuries for his silver and gold and for his precious stones and spices and shields, all kinds of valuables. He also made buildings to store the harvest of the grain, new wine, oil and he made stalls for various kinds of cattle and pens for the flocks. He built villages and acquired great numbers of flocks and herds for God had given him very great riches. It was Hezekiah who blocked the upper outlet of the Gihon spring and channelled the water down the west side of the City of David. He succeeded in everything that he undertook. But when the envoys were sent by the rulers of Babylon to ask him about the miraculous signs that had occurred in the land, God left him to test him to know everything that was in his heart. See this king, he’s rich, he’s powerful, he’s successful and it’s all happened through God’s blessing, under God’s hand. Because the king turned away from his pride and so God blessed him. Everything he touched turned to gold. But then, with the ominous threatening envoy’s were sent by the rulers of Babylon and they showed up to check out all his successes, what did God do? Did God perform more miracles and wonders? Did God show up with some flashy display of power? No. God left him to test him and to know everything that was in his heart. God searches, tests and probes our hearts. Now probe is a very strong word. It’s an invasive word. I had to go to the doctor recently and he put a telescope in through my right nostril and it went down the back of my throat to look at my voice box. That’s probing. It was very uncomfortable, very unpleasant, very invasive and I couldn’t wait for him to stop doing it. Psalm 17, verse 3 says that God probes our hearts and examines us. Jeremiah chapter 20, verse 12 says that God examines the righteous and probes the heart and mind. Now this is pretty ‘in your face’ kind of stuff and there’s a reason for that. Because God is so concerned about our hearts. The heart is the wellspring of life. If we have a diseased heart, our life is going to be diseased. And God aches for us to have a healthy heart. God looks at the inner person. The inner man. The inner woman. Because He wants to heal us. He wants to set things right in our hearts. Listen to me my friend. We go through life setting our hearts on all sorts of things. We go through life with our hearts torn and divided. We want to serve God. We want to love Him. But there’s attractive, beautiful, external things that everyone else can see. They beckon us and that means our hearts are torn. Did you know that when our hearts desire wealth or fame or recognition, they become diseased with envy and pride? Have a listen to what Solomon writes, a great piece of wisdom from God, in Proverbs chapter 14, verse 30: A heart of peace gives life to the body but envy rots the bones. See God wants you and me to have peace. That’s why He’s concerned about our hearts because God has a plan to heal our hearts. Yours and mine. When we seek after God with all our heart. When our heart if full of His peace and His joy. Then we don’t lose heart. Then we see Him just as He is. God wants the very, very best for you and me and He reserves the very best for those with a pure heart. That’s why Jesus said: Blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God.

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