Down to Earth But Heavenly Minded

Let’s start part three out by looking at Proverbs 4:20-27:

“My son, be attentive to my words; incline your ear to my sayings. Let them not escape from your sight; keep them within your heart. For they are life to those who find them, and healing to all their flesh. Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. Put away from you crooked speech, and put devious talk far from you. Let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight before you. Ponder the path of your feet; then all your ways will be sure. Do not swerve to the right or to the left; turn your foot away from evil.”

Our key verse was verse 23, Where Solomon said, “Keep your heart with all vigilance,” or “Guard your heart with all diligence.” And then he gives us the reason because, “from it flow the springs of life.”

I read a heartwarming story a few weeks ago and it was about a little boy who lived in a small town and he had a severe congenital heart defect and had suffered with it for a number of years and in that same town there was a doctor who was almost ready to retire and over the years he became quite cynical and sarcastic about religion of every kind. And this little boy was taken to him one day and was given an examination. And after the examination the doctor realized he needed immediate surgery. So he sat down with the little boy and said to him, “I’m going to go into your heart and I don’t know what I’ll find there.” And the little boy looked up at the doctor and with a smile on his face and said, “when you open up my heart you will find Jesus there because that’s where he lives.” Now the doctor didn’t think that was very funny because he wasn’t interested in spiritual things.

So a week or two went by and it was time for surgery and he sat down with the little boy again and he said, “I am going to go into your heart and I don’t know what I’ll find there.” And again the little boy said, “when you go into my heart you are going to find Jesus because he lives there.” So the doctor took him into the operating room and during the surgery the little boy died. So when the doctor came out of surgery he went to the parents and had to give them the sad news that their little boy had died. And the father asks the doctor, “when you opened up his heart what did you find.” He was asking what physically did he find in his heart. By this time, the doctor had been deeply touched by the little boy and with a wee bit of a smile on his face and a tear in his eyes he said, “I think I found Jesus there.”

I tell you this story not because we are going to talk about the physical heart but we are talking about the metaphorical heart that the Bible speaks of more than eight-hundred times. Remember from the first two parts in this study we talked about, at least in the Old Testament that the ones I could find there were only two scriptures that refer to the physical heart and all the other referrers and more than seven-hundred in our English Bible; and I understand that in the Hebrew Bible there are more than eight-hundred words that has some relationship to this metaphorical heart.

Now when we turn to Proverbs 4 where the writer tells us to guard our hearts he is not talking about our physical heart those it is important to make sure our physical heart is in good physical condition also. So we need to find out what the heart is in the scripture if you want to understand what it means to guard the heart.

Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones who was a great expositor at Westminster chapel a few blocks from Buckingham Palace, and I had the privilege of visiting there a few years ago and he was one of the most gifted expositor he was a reform in his theology. He was tremendous in his expositor in the scriptures. And if you read any of his books you will find when he begins a new chapter he will go over what he talked about in the previous chapter so he would bring us up to speed. Someone said once, “repetition is the mother of learning.” And someone else said, “and it is the father of all boredom.” So I don’t know which one of those viewpoints you have. Let’s review for a few minutes and then I am going to add three other components to what we will cover here in part three.

If we are going to guard our hearts then we need to understand what the heart is. And as I mention the Bible has an enormous amount of context; an enormous amount of scripture that relates to this metaphorical heart. Let us just look at a few scriptures to highlight how important the heart is in the life of the believer. Starting with Matthew 5:8 and other scriptures:

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” “For where your treasure is there your heart will be also.” “For the mouth speaks out of that which fill the heart.” “Do not let your heart be troubled believe in God and also believe in me.” Acts 16:14: “The Lord open her heart,” speaking of Lydia “to respond to the things spoken by Paul.” And this verse is really an important one if we are going to understand the heart. “That if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved, for with the heart a person believes.” Now there are many other references. But we can never understand these verses unless we understand what the Bible is talking about when it speaks of the heart used in a metaphorical sense.

I picked up a principle interpretation from an old Bible teacher who would be one-hundred and fifty years old by now. His name was A.T. Pierson, and he wrote lots and lots of books. He founded the YMCA back around the 1900’s. He has a great book out called “The Bible and the Spiritual Life.” And just for your information I think Gospel Folio Press has reprinted that book. (Note: it is also a free ebook from Google books at http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Bible_and_Spiritual_Life.html?id=klxHAAAAYAAJ )

And it is a great book to read and for help in the Christian life. It is a great book. In that book, he established a principle, and he stated it this way, “That God hangs the key on the outside of the door.” And what he meant by that was often times in scripture the first occurrence of a word will give you the meaning and when you run across that word in the rest of scripture it will basically have that same definition.

So using that principle I looked up the first occurrence of the word heart and I found it in Genesis 6 and Genesis 8. Remember just before the flood and God looked at man and saw, “that every thought of the heart was evil continually.” So in that context in that verse it tells us that the thoughts; that the word heart involves the thoughts, the mind, the intellect of man and the very next verse and because of man’s wickedness, “that God was grieved in his heart.” So God has a heart, not a physical heart by he has a heart and in that heart he can grieve, and that speaks of emotion. So when the word heart is used it speaks of intellect, the mind of man, it can speak of the emotions. And the third use of the word and not so much in the New American Standard Bible but the idea is in the American Standard Bible. But when Noah emerged from the ark and made the altar and offered up offering to the Lord, and it was a sweet-smelling to God and God said in his heart that he would never destroy the earth again by water. So if God decided or said in his heart so that means God made a decision he made a decree. Now he didn’t do it right then and we have to understand that all of God’s decisions are eternal in nature. As long as God exist is as long as his decision exist. But for our sake, because we live in time and space it is stated so we can understand it.

So if those three occurrences of the heart involve the mind of man, involves the emotions, and it involves the will, and now we are getting at the heart of the matter, and that was not a punt but we are getting at how the scripture uses this word heart. Now I have checked, but not every reference but there are more than seven-hundred in the English Bible. But those that I have checked you will find it either reference to the mind and some cases the emotions and sometimes to the will. But those that I have checked in every instant the heart always refers to the mind, emotion, or will. So when Solomon tells us we are to protect or guard our hearts he’s not talking about the physical heart he is talking about protecting our minds, emotions, and our will.

Now the second thing we learned in the second part of this study is this metaphysical, this metaphorical part of man the heart of the soul of man. Now there are some interesting verses in chapter two in verse seven it describes how God made mankind. I think this is a very interesting and I think I will just digress for a moment so we can look at this verse. Here is Genesis 2:7:

“Then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living creature.” or “living soul.”

Now this verse tells us that there are at least two parts to man. Some theologians like to take about the tri-part of man. The tri-part is the body soul and spirit. But I think it better to describe it in two parts. The material part; that that was formed from the dust of the ground, and then there is the immaterial part that which is not seen and God breathed into us the breath of life. Now notice what the end of that verse says. “And man became a living being.” or “creature” or “soul.” But in the original the word is soul. So in this text it is describing the whole of man. Not only the immaterial part but the material part also. Now in the immaterial part of man is where the soul is, this is where the heart is. So when God is going to deal with us he is dealing primarily with our hearts. That’s our point of contact with God, and that is what God is interested in, he is interested in our heart; the condition of our heart.

If you would like to do an interesting study, take a concordance and follow the word heart through the Old Testament and you will see that God is looking for people with certain kinds of hearts. Some that has a steadfast heart, some that have a broken heart, but you can find all of that if you look it up for yourself in the Old Testament.

Now the heart of man was corrupted at the fall. Do you remember before the fall; sometimes I wish we knew how long it was between creation and the fall of man, I don’t know if it would help us any but it would be kinda interesting to know how much time passed between those two events. But we know from Genesis 3 you have to conclude that man had a pure mind; his emotions were pure and he always made pure decisions because there was no sin in the world yet. At the moment Satan came and tempted Eve and she was deceived and took of the fruit and gave to Adam, and the scripture says three words, “and he ate.” Those are some of the most ominous words in all of scripture. Because at that point they took to themselves, and theologians call it endemic nature. Or we may call it the flesh. I like to use the word disposition. I think functionally that the way the flesh works, and all of our lives we are disposed to evil. Just like a compass goes to the north just so we naturally we are attracted to that which is evil, and that characterized our lives up until the time you and I were saved. And at that moment and God gave us a new disposition and that new disposition is favorable towards God. That’s why one moment when we were lost and in darkness but the moment we believed and God open our heart, and our mind our emotion and our will suddenly when we were saved we felt a connection with God. Do you remember that? If you were saved as an adult; and I can remember in my own life how suddenly I was favorable toward God and I realized something had dynamically changed in my life. So the heart of an unsaved person is corrupted but at the moment we were saved, this radical conversion takes place when God regenerates our spirit and our spirit is going to affect our mind, it’s going to affect our emotion and it is going to affect the will also.

Now that is a little background, but one of the dangers we have as believers is we can live detached from the heart. And what I mean by that is, if you and I secretly cherish sin in our lives. Or if we are knowingly disobeying God; if there are certain commands in the scripture we should be obeying and we are not for whatever reason that will lead to living detached from the heart. The heart is not functioning out of responds for the love of the Lord. Now that kind of living, I believe leads to a legalistic type of living. If we are living detached from our hearts what we start doing is looking at the external.

It is amazing to me that in the scripture there is a vast difference between form and freedom. Sometimes we get so hung up on the form; we get so hung up on the external but at the same time we’ve lost heart contact with God. So what God wants us to do is have the kind of heart that is broken before him and wants us to respond to him out of love for himself or his son and the work that he did at Calvary. And maybe this explains partly why that in groups of believers that you see some that are at different levels in our Christian experience. But it seems like some Christians hang out way down here, they never rise to higher height; they never seem to make much progress. They can become very taken up with external; one of the great dangers of legalism. Galatians 5 covers the subject on legalism. We can get so hung up on the external when the heart is not right. Someone has well said, “sometimes when we are more religious, we are more at risk of losing touch with God.” And I think there is a lot of truth to that.

Now that brings us to the three things I want to add to what we were studying so we will finish part three in our study on man’s heart. Now all of these are really important to understand how to guard our hearts because we need to understand what goes in the heart so we can understand the importance of the Word when we are growing in the Lord.

I like to look at a very interesting passage in Luke 8:11-15 which demonstrated something that I believe that maybe helps us understand why we need revival among us. Why there are believers who never seem to progress beyond a certain place. It was kinda like studying a language when Darlene and I were studying the Korean language years ago, and I found out for myself that in studying a language you reach a plateau and you have to move on from there. And I suppose those who study Greek at Emmaus find that they reach a plateau, and it seems they don’t go beyond that. I think sometimes in the Christian life we reach plateaus and we don’t go beyond that. Now what God wants to do is take us from the moment of our conversion; he begins an incredible work to conform us to the image of his son. That is his soul purpose for us. More important than the local church. More important than anything else because God’s chief goal is to conform us into the image of his son. Now in order to do that on our part we have to learn to guard the heart. Now let us look at Luke 8:11-15. Here is the scripture:

“Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. The ones along the path are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts so that they may not believe and be saved. And the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe for a while, and in a time of testing fall away. And as for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature. As for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience.”

Now this is our Lord’s interpretation of the parable of the sower; someone pointed out that it might be better call the parable of the soil because the emphasis is on the reception; the soil itself where the Word was planted. So the Lord gave the parable first then he interpreted that starting with verse 11. Now he tells us the seed is the Word of God. Now those beside the road are those who heard then the Devil comes and take the Word away from their heart so they will not believe and be saved. Those on the rocky soil are those who hear and receive the Word with joy, but they have no firm root. They believe for a while and in a time of temptation they fall away. The seed that fell among the thorns these are the ones that have heard and as they go on their way they are choked with worries and riches and pleasures of this life and bring no fruit to maturity. But notice verse 15, but the seed in the good soil these are the ones that heard the Word in an honest and good heart and hold it fast and their fruit will have perseverance.

Now most of the readers have studied this parable or heard it taught and I think generally speaking among Bible students they think the first three soils are referring to unsaved people and the fourth soil; those who have a good heart refers to those who believe and they bore fruit in their lives. And maybe the fruit as a changed character and not so much as fruit in evangelism. That is probably true, but I think in a functional practical way that you can have people; Christian people that can respond in the same way. And to me there seems that there is a truth here and it is helping us to see that the Word of God can penetrate to different levels of the heart. Does that make sense?

Now there are some Christians after they get saved hear the Word but it just lays on the surface of their mind and they never really makes much progress. There saved, they know they’re saved, but they make no progress.

And then you have other Christians who and I believe at least by application and not by interpretation but not by interpretation of the text but they hear the Word and are like the rocky soil and when life gets tough, and a lot of testing and lots of problems they kinda give up. They think it is too much and they give up.

Then you have some who take the Word and they allow worries and riches and pleasures to get in the way and they bare no fruit to maturity. Don’t you think in a practical sense that we Christian people can be like that? Don’t you think on of the big problem today among Christians is materialism.

Do you remember the fellow who led the group on 9/11, and he was the guy that kinda led the group on the plane and they fought against the terrorist and they crashed the plane; he was a believer by the way and his wife wrote a book about that. I won’t tell you who this person was, but he was very close to my wife and I. She said to me after she read it, “I liked it but because I can be a Christian and have all kinds of materials thing as well and that is what she took out of the book. Now we don’t take vows of poverty like the Buddhist Monks do. But don’t you think that is a danger? Even Christians think they are entitled to the American dream. The Bible doesn’t teach that. The Bible simply doesn’t teach that. The degree we relate to those things is a personal issue between the Lord and us. But I do believe that this text tells us that the Word of God can penetrate a certain level of our heart. And when you meet someone who has a good and honest heart and they are guarding the heart and receiving the Word; there are obeying the Word, and when you are around them you know what’s going on in they life, you can see it.

When I was much younger I use to enjoy being around Christians because I could see the way they lived, the way they talked, by their behavior. These were men, these were women who were in touch with God. You could see they loved the Lord. They might not have been teachers or preachers of the Word, but by their example; by their behavior you knew they were people who really knew and loved the Lord. Now you might wonder what is the point of bringing all this out? It is this; that in the Christian life the Word of God can penetrate as far into your heart and my heart as we allow it too.

Would you agree with me that if as a believer we only read our Bibles now and again or when we feel like it do you think the work goes to the deepest levels of our hearts? I find that kinda hard to believe. So we are getting at something that is really important if we want to grow and be conformed into the image of Christ and have a heart that pleases God then we have to be believers who are serious dedicated to the Word of God.

Now understand all of us are not students, but that doesn’t mean that I am going to give you a clue to what I think all of us can do in a couple of minutes to get the Word into the deeper part of our being. So that is the first thing, so when we think about guarding the heart it is going to affect the mind, emotion and will and the Word is going to get to a certain level in our hearts.

Now there is a second thing and this may sound a little psychological but I don’t mean for it to be that way. But it is interesting in scripture that it demonstrates that the mind and the heart and the will never function independently of each other; they all function together. The mind will affect my behavior; the mind will affect the decisions I make. Sometimes my actions will affect the way I think. And sometimes my actions will determine what I believe and what I receive as a conviction in my life. And I think I have time to give you those three illustrations from scripture. The first is in 2 Samuel 13. Now this is not a particularly positive example but it will demonstrate what I am trying to get at.

This is the story of Amnon and Tamar. Absalom the son of David had a beautiful sister; and we see this in 2 Samuel 13:1. And Amnon the son of David loved her and Amnon was so tormented that he made himself ill because she was a virgin. I would advise you to read the whole chapter to get the entire story. But Amnon gets advice from a friend. He tells him to pretend he is sick and jump in bed have Tamar come and take care of him and be his nurse, and then it tells us down in verses 11-13, “But when she brought them near him to eat, he took hold of her and said to her, “Come, lie with me, my sister.” She answered him, “No, my brother, do not violate me, for such a thing is not done in Israel; do not do this outrageous thing…” Now dropping down to verse 15 we read, “Then Amnon hated her with very great hatred so that the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love with which he had loved her…” Now this is an illustration without going into a lot of details how the mind affected his emotions which in turn affected his will.

Now the word “mind” is not used in the text but what comes into the mind enters either by the eye gate or ear gate. So he sees Tamar; she is a beautiful woman so you have to conclude that he starts thinking about her because he wanted her physically. So he became emotionally drawn to her and in the end they plot this bad deal in order to get her near him so he could rape her and in the end he turns out hating her. Now the mind, in generally speaking from what I can tell in scripture this is the normal pattern. The mind affects the emotions and the emotions affect the will.

Back when we started looking at the subject on the heart, I gave you an illustration on how I met my wife. Do you remember that? How I met her in a little restaurant a few doors down from Emmaus, and I said, “Wow, she is kinda cute.” Now I didn’t realize she was a believer until later on that day. I found she was a waitress in the Emmaus cafeteria and then I really got excited and I began to feel emotionally drawn to her and eventually I build up the courage to ask her out for our first date and eventually we got married. You see, I saw her through the eye gate and then I began to think about her and then when I realized she was a believer then my mind really began to work and then I got emotionally involved and eventually I made the decision to marry her.

We are not trying to psychoanalyze each other here, but it is important to remember when we are talking about guarding the heart we need to know the flow how things work in the heart. Now it is obvious that the Word gets into the mind first if we are going to guard our hearts. It’s also true in scripture that sometimes our actions can change the way we look at things and can change our emotions. Let’s look at Luke 6:27, and I think this is a really interesting passage. Now it is not sure if this is a parallel passage to the sermon on the Mount or if this was a second time that he spoke these similar words, but in verse 27 he said,

“But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.”

Now that’s a very interesting passage because if you look at it carefully the Lord is saying that sometimes your actions can change the way you view someone. Let me give you an example. We know a certain assembly where the sister in the meeting is very gifted. but she is a controller. She likes to meddle in everybody’s business or whatever is going on. She’s that kind of woman. She sits in the meeting with a kinda scowl on her face to see if she barely agrees with what you are saying. She was just that kind of a person. Now let’s just suppose for a moment that she never interfered with our ministry but we hear these stories about what she is doing and we start to imply there is something wrong with that woman. She has to be in control, that’s her thing. And we find ourselves thinking negatively about that woman. And then I find I really don’t want to greet her; I really don’t want to say hello to her. And the longer I put that off the more I am going to have those negative feelings about that woman. So in my mind I feel negative so Jesus is saying here is it would be time to let myself go and to extending my hand to that woman I really resent, and I have no reason to resent and shake her hand and say something good to her. And guess what would happen? If we take the initiative in our actions it will change the way I look at someone.

Now in the Heart when we are given certain commands and we may not want to do them in the mind but if we start to practice them in action then God changes our mind so we want to do what he has commanded us. This is all important in guarding our heart.

Now the third thing is quite interesting too is that our affections can affect our feelings and our thoughts. In the Book of Psalms 111:10: This is a great verse for the meditation of the heart.

“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom; all those who practice it have a good understanding. His praise endures forever!”

Some translations read the last part as, “ a good understanding have all those who do his commandment.” It is interesting in the New Testament that the Lord said to his disciples, “he who has an ear let him hear. Now he wasn’t just saying take it in the ear. The word hearing involves obedience as well. And this text is telling us that through obedience we come to understand the commandments of God. You see we can know a command and we can KNOW a command. Do you agree with that?

It is interesting in the New Testament there are two Greek words for know, “oidamen” and “gnwnai.” Oidamen has to do more with the intellect of a gathering of knowledge, which all of us can do. We can all know a lot about the text of scripture the interpretation of scripture. But there is a totally different word and more often used by the Apostle Paul he used it in Philippians 3:10 “That I may know Him…” and that word is “gnwnai.” And that word means to know by experience. So what God wants is not for us to just know the facts of the word but we come to know the real meaning of the word when we obey it. And what the heart does in the heart is that our actions will affect our feelings and will affect our thoughts and as we obey we learn more of the Word of God

Now in closing there are three things I want to share with you. Now in regarding the subject on the guarding of the heart. How do we get the Word deep into our hearts? Because in order to guard it we must know it. Solomon said to guard the heart it is necessary because out of it flows the springs of life.

And think of it this way. There is a mountain stream; at the top of the mountain there is an artesian well with water coming out of the ground and flowing downhill and if it is pure at the top it’s going to be pure at the bottom. So Solomon is telling us in this passage that the heart is like this artesian spring of water and if our heart is pure and if our hearts are clean; that is our minds, emotions, and our wills are clean and from that is going to flow a life of victory; a life of encouragement; a life of rest; all of life will be lived out from the heart.

So how do we do that? Now I can’t go through all of this, but here are three things.

1.) First we have to have a desire. One of the things the Lord uses three times in the gospels is, “hungering and thirsting. And maybe this is why some of us never progress beyond the state we are at is because we do not have the desire to go any farther. We have to hunger and thirst. Do you know how you feel when you really get hungry? You have this craving for food and this discomfort in your stomach. Well in a way we should have that desire; we should be like the Psalmist who said, “As the deer pants for the water so my soul longs after you O my God.” We have to have a desire.

2.) Secondly, we have to guard the heart in the sense of hearing the Word; read the Word and not just read the Word, and not just listen to the Word being taught. One of the things that I have noticed over the years in moving around the assemblies and it seems like many are the same that all they know is what is being taught at the meeting. There no personal meditation of the Word. So when you sit down with them and try to reason with them from the scripture all they can tell you is what brother so and so said. Sometimes I don’t care what brother so and so said. I am more interested in what the scripture says and means. So if we are going to guard the heart we not only have to have a desire we have to hear the Word in the sense that we want to obey it.

3.) And the third thing is: We need to meditate, and to me this is the key. In order to get the Word deep into our hearts it is not just reading the Bible, and it’s not just listening to the Bible being taught, but it is personal meditation. Fifteen times in the Psalms the Psalmist speaks of meditation. It has a very interesting meaning. One of the books I bought over 50 years ago when I was a student at Emmaus was a book on the Psalms by Dr. Graham Scroggie. He was this great Baptist preacher with this great analytical mind. He wrote outlines on all the Psalms and in the back from the Hebrew he gave a glossary of terms and one of the terms he defined was meditation. Let me show you what he had to say and I found it very interesting but first the idea of meditation comes from two Hebrew words, which I don’t understand because I do not know Hebrew. But it comes from Hebrew words which mean “to think” “to talk” “to utter” “to murmurer” “to speak” “to complain” “to converse” “to declare” and “to pray.” When you think of meditation you don’t think of all of them do you? You normally only think of, “to think.” Now Scroggie defines it this way:

“From the Hebrew, One thinks he talks to himself, either inwardly or outwardly, and he frames his thoughts in words. Do you see that? That is like you were sitting at home reading Matthew 6 and as you are reading through the chapter and you start to think inside yourself, but maybe you are not good at that, so you start talking to yourself and you might say, “What’s the whole point that Jesus’ is teaching here.” And then I start to talk again, “Does he mean this or does he mean that…” And as one talks to self and reason with self you start to think and meditate, and all this does two things: One, it keeps away distractions, and Two, it will give me a frame of thought so I can keep my thoughts within the confines of those. If you don’t think that’s not helpful, try it sometimes. Don’t do it in public or someone will call the guys with the white jackets. But try that sometimes when you are sitting at home alone reading the scriptures and you come to a passage like Galatians 4:19 where Paul says he desires that Christ be formed in him and you asks yourself what did Paul mean by that. Do I know what Paul means by that? How does it fit in the context where he makes this statement and we begin to talk to ourselves, and what that does is it cements what we are thinking in our minds. That is the concept behind meditation, and that is what you and I need to do if we want to get the Word deep within our hearts. It’s a lot more than just following your Bible reading schedule every day it’s really meditation on the Word.

I will conclude with this illustration. This is a quote by A.W. Tozer. Here is what he said:

“Contemplating the fact 10,000 thoughts a day pass between our ears, (I don’t know how he figured this out). Our thoughts not only reveal what we are they predict what we will become, we will soon be the sum total of our thoughts. The Holy Spirit uses the nourishment of the Word of God to rewrite our computer and renew our minds.”

Now that’s called guarding the heart. So I guess through all of this the lesson is we need to protect our hearts because that is our point of contact with God. And that is what God is primarily interested in, it is the condition of our heart

End of Charlie’s messages.

As we leave the lessons on Man’s Heart let us close with this quote by Charles H. Spurgeon in regards to man’s heart and the dangers around it. “Our hearts can find poison in the very flowers of Paradise.” Let us always remember that.