Happy Independence Day, Dear Friends,
In 600 B.C. there was a prophet who lived in Israel named Jeremiah, and during this time there were different kings in Israel, and they were all terrible. They all made bad decision after bad decision, and it was destroying the kingdom. Jeremiah was frustrated because he could see so clearly what needed to happen. Ultimately, he made a declaration that is echoed throughout the Scriptures and most of us, through personal experience, know how true this is.
His words are found in Jeremiah 17:9, when he said, “The heart is deceitful above all things.” What an extreme statement! Your heart, my heart, Jeremiah’s heart, everybody’s heart. However, he wasn’t finished. He added these three words: “and beyond cure.” There is no pill, there is no prayer, there is no seminar, there is no book, there is no conference, there is no song in which, at the end of it, your heart is no longer deceitful.
Do you know what this means? It means you can’t trust your heart. Your heart can convince you of anything and everything. We do things that we know are wrong and we’re going to regret it later. We’ve done things in the past and we’ve told God twelve times, “I’ll never do it again,” and then we go out and do it again. Why? “Who can understand it?” Jeremiah said. Your heart is incurably deceitful and it can’t be trusted.
Can you cure it? No, lt never goes away. Can we manage this disease? Yes, you can manage it. That’s why what Jesus said is so incredibly powerful, and you’ve heard this a million times. Jesus said, “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). When you are willing to look long and hard into the mirror of your soul, and strip away all the excuses, you are a candidate for God’s grace to move you where He wants you to be. It is so much easier to make the transition from my will to God’s will once you have decided to be honest with yourself.
As long as you are lying to yourself, it is almost impossible to make sense of God’s will. However, once we are honest with ourselves, we have gotten as close as we can to allowing God to do what He wants to do in and through us. When we discover where we are, it becomes easier for God to move us where God wants us to be. Because “our hearts are deceitful beyond all things, and there is no cure.”
If this makes you uncomfortable, then you have just learned something about yourself. And that is major, major progress.
In hope that you may become free,
Bruce Jones, Pastor Imagine Church
