A Roadmap

2001

If you dissect that verse he read…it contrasts religion at the end of that passage with “the goal of this commandment is love.” If you really want to get to what agape is -- and that’s where God is, God is love -- here’s how you go about it. Some have wandered away from these things and have become religious as a result. They want to be teachers, they want to be involved, they want to have their own “ministries” and do good things for God, but they don’t know what they’re talking about or what they so confidently affirm.

The things he mentions there, the little roadmap there and there’s a thousand ways to look at it. But that particular passage is incredibly powerful if you dissect it just a little bit. If you want to experience the love of God, be swallowed by the love of God, radiate the love of God and just swim around in it as your very existence, then don’t wander away from these three things. Which are a pure heart: meaning the things that impassion you. The desires that you have, the things that excite you and make your heart beat. The things you feel strongly about. Those sorts of things…you’re going to be tempted to give away a part of your heart to a number of different things. That just comes with the world and the things of the world that we’re not supposed to love. They make us an enemy of God which of course is the opposite of love. First of all, it’s just paramount that we protect our hearts. The scriptures talk about guarding your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. There’s a guarding process of our minds. That one’s pretty obvious. I’m not going to think about things I shouldn’t be thinking about. You get a garbagy catalog in the mail, you rip it up. You don’t tolerate thoughts in your head that are unproductive thoughts. What your life is made of, what things are out there that you could have. You just don’t let those thoughts in your head.

So there’s a guarding of your mind process that we definitely play a part in. The fruit of the Spirit is self-control. God gives us the power, the Spirit of God gives us the ability to make choices about those things and not be tempted beyond what we can bear but to be able to take the way out that He gives us.

There’s another part besides just guarding our minds, and that’s guarding our hearts. Some have wandered away from a pure heart, meaning that there are choices that we make. There are things that we can do to displace that, and that pure heart is an undefiled heart or a heart that has no dross, no impurities mixed in. A pure heart would be to have our seat of passion purely defined by the things that God is excited about. We don’t tolerate excess things in terms of being impassioned by them.

It doesn’t mean that we would never do anything other than just read our Bibles or something like that, because God is found in a lot of ways and a lot of places. That’s why Paul could give illustrations about running the race to win and receiving the laurel that fades versus the crown that God gives. Paul was able to use those kinds of analogies 1 about the hard-working farmer, because he saw God in so many places other than just in his Bible. He was able to understand that God created all of this stuff as a reflection, as a shadow of His Glory.

So being some sort of monastic, primitive person that just disdains anything like a new pair of shoes. To disdain that sort of stuff is a form of religion. “They want to be teachers of the law but they don’t know what they’re talking about or what they so confidently affirm.” They have these harsh treatment of the body things that Paul talked about in Colossians, but they have no ability to restrain sensual indulgence. They don’t change the heart of the matter even though it has an appearance of wisdom. Religion has this appearance of being so separate and so holy, and that’s not necessarily where Jesus was coming from or Paul or anybody that knew God.

If you knew Moses, just to walk around with him you would enjoy him a lot. He wrote a big ol’ chunk of what we call the Bible, but he was an enjoyable person because the image of God was stamped there and he let it shine out. That would be true of David or Elijah or any man of God ever. They would be fun to be with. Not that they’re just a comedian with a lampshade on their head, but there’s something attractive about them just as there was with Jesus.

It’s the same God yesterday, today and forever, and because we’re created in His image, the more we let Him shine, the more attractive we are because we can see and feel and experience who people are and we can deal with them as people rather than as objects. We can learn from anything from a green and pink tennis ball to a gas fireplace. Your senses are open. The more you know God, the more your senses are open, and the more your senses are open to listen, the more you’re able to also radiate God.

So that purity of heart and to be filled with God’s love is very much tied in to refusing to let our hearts or our minds be displaced in other areas. That doesn’t mean you don’t think. I’ve already talked about that. You might know tons about physics and relativity and how to make glass and a crayon factory and how it works. You might know tons about that kind of stuff, but your heart’s not in it. A pure heart. Some have wandered away from the things that show them how to swim in and enjoy God’s love and to exude as well as be swallowed by His personality. Some have wandered away from that. It’s something that happens gradually.

When your child wanders away in a grocery store, they didn’t just say, “Poof!” They wandered, they got distracted. They started looking at other things, and they lingered over the cereal boxes looking at the pictures and all of a sudden, mom’s gone. That’s what happens to us, too. Our hearts and our minds wander, and if we let our hearts wander, satan will rush in to fill it up with something that’s very evil and very dark. He finds a way. If our hearts wander, if our minds wander, he finds a way to grab ahold of that and wring it for all it’s worth.

Some have wandered away from a pure heart. They began to let their hearts crave or be attracted to things that aren’t important to God. It’s just that simple. What is important to Him? Is this important to Him? Then I can’t let it be important to me. That’s what it means to have a pure heart. Those that have a pure heart see God. Those that have a pure heart exude and are swallowed by love. The goal of this commandment is love.

If we really want to experience God’s love, it just needs to be flat-out, absolute well-known fact, totally accepted, absolutely resolved in our minds that if I let my affections and my desires wander from what’s important to God and I allow myself to find things that are not important to God to be important to me, if I allow that, I am swinging the door open for satan to steal love away from me and to leave me with an empty life.

Pure heart. We’ve got to demand that our affections be totally, totally controlled by where God’s affections are. Nothing else. There’s no room for affections. We can do other things; we can even enjoy other things, but it’s not important to us. We don’t run after it. We don’t make it a priority. If it comes, it comes. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. It’s not a big deal. I can enjoy physics, I can enjoy a crayon factory, I can be intrigued by some mathematical formula. I can enjoy having properly projected that a futures commodity option in wheat is going to be successful. But when I start thinking about it and my heart is in it, it’s important to me, my emotions are tied into it. I’m down if it doesn’t work out, I’m up if it does work out. If I allow my heart to be taken by it, I’ve wandered away from the goal of all of the commandments of God and the very Person of Jesus, which is Love.

If you wander out of love, there’s nothing left. We were made for love! We were made to be loved, we were made to love, we were made to live in an environment of air and water in the physical being and love in the inner man. And without that there really isn’t anything. Everything else is just junk. We’re just marking time. Just like in a marching band, marching up and down, up and down, digging your hole deeper and deeper but you’re not going anywhere. The scenery stays the same. It’s boring, it’s fatiguing. Without love there’s just nothing. “The goal of this commandment is love.”

If you don’t have it, if you won’t do the things necessary to make that your environment, you’re going to be wasting your life here basically. And the things that are necessary to make that your environment, your habitat, is that pure heart. Do not let your affections wander, and if you see, “Ahh. This is important to me. I don’t think that’s important to God. I don’t think that’s what Jesus would have valued. I don’t think that’s what God teaches is important. Okay. I reject that as an affection. I will not allow my heart to be impure. My heart must be pure.”