Daily Reading
The Way Back to God
January 5, 2025
The truth of the gospel of Jesus is intended to free us to love God and others with our whole heart and to find a life worth living. When we ignore this heart aspect of our faith and try to live out our religion solely as correct doctrine or the pursuit of justice, our passion is crippled or perverted, and the divorce of our soul from the heart purposes of God toward us is deepened.
The religious technocrats of Jesus’ day confronted him with what they believed were the standards of a life pleasing to God. The external life, they argued, the life of ought and duty and service, was what mattered. “You’re dead wrong,” Jesus said. “In fact, you’re just plain dead (whitewashed tombs). What God cares about is the inner life, the life of the heart” (Matt. 23:27–28). Throughout the Old and New Testaments, the life of the heart is clearly God’s central concern. When the people of Israel fell into a totally external life of ritual and observance, God lamented, “These people ... honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” (Isa. 29:13).
Our heart is the key to life and the way back to God.
The apostle Paul informs us that hardness of heart is behind all the addictions and evils of the human race (Rom. 1:21–25). Oswald Chambers writes, “It is by the heart that God is perceived [known] and not by reason ... so that is what faith is: God perceived by the heart.” This is why God tells us in Proverbs 4:23, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” He knows that to lose heart is to lose everything. Sadly, most of us watch the oil level in our car more carefully than we watch over the life of our heart.
Want More? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today
The religious technocrats of Jesus’ day confronted him with what they believed were the standards of a life pleasing to God. The external life, they argued, the life of ought and duty and service, was what mattered. “You’re dead wrong,” Jesus said. “In fact, you’re just plain dead (whitewashed tombs). What God cares about is the inner life, the life of the heart” (Matt. 23:27–28). Throughout the Old and New Testaments, the life of the heart is clearly God’s central concern. When the people of Israel fell into a totally external life of ritual and observance, God lamented, “These people ... honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” (Isa. 29:13).
Our heart is the key to life and the way back to God.
The apostle Paul informs us that hardness of heart is behind all the addictions and evils of the human race (Rom. 1:21–25). Oswald Chambers writes, “It is by the heart that God is perceived [known] and not by reason ... so that is what faith is: God perceived by the heart.” This is why God tells us in Proverbs 4:23, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” He knows that to lose heart is to lose everything. Sadly, most of us watch the oil level in our car more carefully than we watch over the life of our heart.
Want More? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today