The day after I got back from an eight-day “drive-around” road trip at the southern end of Highway 89 in Arizona, I needed to run an errand in “downtown” Greenbrier. Solid Rock Baptist Church sits where I take a left to cross the railroad tracks, then continue to the main highway. That church has one of those signs that lets it post a brief message for all to read. This week’s message is, “Spring Cleaning, let Jesus clean your heart.”
There is no doubt that a good spiritual or, at least, moral, “Spring Cleaning” is needed in most, if not all, of our lives. After all, have you ever known a Christian who didn’t readily confess, “I’m not perfect! Everybody sins.” While the confession is accurate, I seldom hear a convincing tone of voice that suggests it is from a contrite heart, expressing a conviction of the despicable reality.
I have an absurd mental picture of the first hour in heaven. I wonder if God will have us strapped to a chair, forced to watch and endure the playback of all the lackluster confessions, both of love for God and of our love for ourselves. We will be unable to avoid the contrast between what we said we believe and the revelation of what God said to us. The revealed disparity will be devastatingly disappointing to us.
We might be tempted to say to God, “But Lord, Bro. Fred said….” To which God will reply, “That is true, I did tell him to communicate that to you, but what did I say? My Kingdom suffered because you relied upon what Fred said about what I said. You were expected to test what he said by what I said. You leaned on your brother rather than on your Father.
And that brings me to the words on the church sign. Those words, “let Jesus clean your heart,” are so dense in their meaning. They can also lead to a casual, shortsighted, and inadequate understanding of how God works, what he is doing. So, let’s take a brief refresher. In the N.T., “heart” primarily describes our mental constitution and disposition. Because our immediate circumstances can make our physical heart beat faster, the ancients identified it as the center of our emotions. We all know that. But how does Jesus “clean” our hearts? Does he clean our hearts?
More appropriately would be to beseech Jesus, “Clean up my mind.” It’s not our emotions that need to change; it’s the way we interpret the contemporary disturbances of our tranquility. How we “feel” is largely determined by the ideas we have adopted into both our conscious and subconscious minds. The fuel of our thoughts generates the heat of our emotions.
Clean thoughts generate clean heat that directs and powers positive “Kingdom of God” actions. Otherwise, we are left with uncontrollable heat that drives our “kingdom of self” actions. There is a huge difference between the two kingdoms.
We do need clean, healthy cordis (Latin); we need to listen to our health providers for that advice. What we desperately lack and need is advice from our God to govern our motivations, aspirations, and actions.
It is correct to say that Jesus gives us clean hearts, but it is more important that what he has given is a brand-new heart, an intimate connection with our Creator. Jesus did indeed die on a cross to release us from the penalty for how we have rejected God and his love, choosing to live on our own terms to fulfill our own desires. Just as important and just as phenomenal is that Jesus rose from that death to give us what we need, a major reconnect with our Creator, a new heart. That is a new way to evaluate the events of my life.
My problem is that God did not give me a new mind. That He left for us, He and I, to deal with together, me following His knowing, gentle, but firm hand. He consistently leads me to be all that a human image of God can become! But will I bend the knee in submission?
Perhaps that is what prayer is all about, the processing of all the information I have gathered about and from God and talking to Him about its importance and my defaulting to my own personal preferences. Prayer is the sorting out of all the differences between my kingdom and His Kingdom.
Solid Rock Baptist Church has given us a challenge.
I would suggest meditating on Philippians 2:5-11. Here is verse 5 to get you started…
“In other words, adopt the mind-set of Jesus the Anointed. Live with His attitude in your hearts. Remember: …” (The Voice)
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