The Haunted Heart

What is the heart?

Heart is used different ways in the Bible. Sometimes it is the mind believing or being enlightened, the will deciding and acting, or the affections feeling. Lundgaard says the best way to think of your heart is that it comprises:

• your thoughts, plans, judgments, discernment (the mind)
• your choices and actions (the will)
• your longings, desire, revulsion, imagination, feelings (the affections)
• your sense of right and wrong, which approves or condemns your mind, will, and affections (the conscience)

This book points out the fact that the heart is a maze that only God can solve, and is more complicated and unsearchable: it is "deceitful above all things".

In Matthew 15:19, Jesus called the heart the fountain of sin.
In Luke 6:45, Jesus continues and says that the heart is a treasure chest where we sock away evil.

We should never think for a minute that the war against sin is over in this life.

A great example of this would be David. David lived a long life of devotion and duty to God, and saw mercy on mercy from God's hands; then he made a few bad choices and sin had stabbed him in the back.

However what made David a remarkable man was that he persevered through hardships trusting in God. He relied entirely on God. When he did stumble, he was quick to repent and ask forgiveness and didn’t repeat his sins. He took personal responsibility for his actions and didn’t try to get out of the consequences. He took the time to learn God’s voice and thank God in everything.

One thing that I pray for and really aim to do is not make the same mistake twice. I know as a sinner I will always sin; but I pray that I learn from my mistakes, pay the consequences of my actions, and then have the strength and wisdom to not make the same ones.

Hebrews 12:1-4

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.

"The Holy Spirit takes the horror out of the horror show. We don't know our hearts, but he does. He is a blazing torch we carry into the haunted house, and he ferrets out the monsters. He leads us into a closet under the stairs and uncovers a seething hatred. He shines under the bed and exposes a sniveling lust. No sin escapes his searching eye."

Search me. O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.
(Psalm 139:23-24)