Proverbs 21:1-3 “The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will. Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart. To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice.” Today's episode talks about how God has the power to change our hearts. It also talks about how God weighs our hearts. He knows our motives, even when we don't. Finally it talks about how important it is that we do what is righteous and just. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Only God Knows What Is Truly In Our Hearts
Proverbs 21:1-3 “The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will. Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart. To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice.”
This verse came from my prayer group yesterday. When I read it I was a little unsure what parts of it meant. I liked what it was saying and yet I didn’t understand it fully until I looked it up and until I read it in other translations. The message translation is usually where I go to first as it puts the verses in 21st century language and so it makes it a bit easier to understand at times.
The first line of this verse is a good one. “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will.” This is good because it shows us that God is the one that is in control. Our heart is in the hand of the Lord and He can turn it where He wants. To me this means God is gently guiding us in the right direction. On thing I read said that even if we have our heart set on doing something, God can change our minds. He can direct us down a new path. That just made me think of a scene from the TV show Yellowstone. I don’t know if you have seen it or not but in one of the scenes and I won’t say what scene or when because I don’t want to give anything away, but in one scene they wanted to change the direction of a river that was going through their property. You might think this is impossible a river is a river. It has carved out its path over thousands of years. There is not much you can do about it.
However, in the TV show, the family does not really take no for an answer. They have people go up into the mountains and they blow up something and the river now has a new path to follow. Whether this is something that could actually happen or just one of those things that happens on TV, I have no idea. However, this is what I thought of when I heard the first line of this verse and when I read that God can change our minds even when we are set on something. God can do all things. I think we know this on one level and then when we look at our problems, we seem to forget it.
We might be in a relationship with someone and we wish we could change their mind about something. When Tony and I were trying to figure out how to best raise our boys we did not agree on a lot once the boys started to get older and started to struggle with behavior issues. We were both stuck in our way of thinking and we both wished we could get through to the other person. I think this verse can give us hope in these situations. It says that God has our heart in His hand and can change it to His will. We don’t have to change our loved ones, God can do it for us. He doesn’t just change them, He changes us too! God worked wonders in our marriage and with our hearts and He can do the same for you
The next line in the verse says, “Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart.” This one is good because is shows us that although we may think we are doing what is right, only God knows what is really in our heart. God knows the motive behind the good deed we are doing. This brings to mind the parable of the Prodigal Son. The older brother in this story thought he was doing the right thing. He didn’t ask his dad for the inheritance and he didn’t take off and spend all of the money. He stayed and he worked in the fields every day. He did all that his father asked of him. However, he then got angry when his father had a party when his brother returned. He was angry because his father never did anything like that for him. The older brother did not stay for the right reasons. He was not helping his father out for the right reasons. He stayed and yet he didn’t have a relationship with the father. He never asked the father if he could have anything and yet resented the father for not offering anything.
I am sure we have all done things like this. I am sure we have all done good things for the wrong reasons. God is not interested in our good deeds if in our heart we are angry, resentful, and hateful. There are plenty of people that play the part. They do all the right things when they are in public and yet when no-one is around they are terrible people. This is what this line is talking about. Only God knows what is truly in our hearts. Only God knows what our motives are and yes, our motives matter. If we are helping the poor and yet our hearts are resenting every minute of it, God knows what we are feeling. God knows our hearts.
The last part of the verse says, “To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice.” I believe what this part of the verse is talking about is that the Lord wants us to do the right thing to those around us more than he wants us to ignore those around us and yet still show up and do the things that make us look like a good person. For instance how the pharisees would act one way in front of people and then another when in the privacy of their own home. God is not interested in people who come to church on Sunday, give a lot of money and then go out act terribly to those around them for the other 6 days of the week.
This verse is telling us that it is more important to God that we treat people a certain way than it is that we try to do the right thing to worship Him or to please Him. He loves us and He loves when we worship Him and yet it is more important to Him that we treat everyone we meet with love and acceptance. He has so many children and so many of them are turning away from Him because of the lack love and acceptance in the world. I just get this overwhelming impression that He is saying it is not about how we pray, what words we are saying, how much we fast or sacrifice, it is about how we treat others.
How are we treating His children? Are we feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, healing the sick, helping the homeless, helping the widows and orphans, giving drink to those who are thirsty, visiting the lonely in nursing homes or in prisons? Jesus is inside each one of us and each person we meet. How are we being the face of Christ to others? That is what is important. That is more important than if we are saying the right prayers and doing the right things as far as sacrifice goes. The two most important commandments according to Jesus Christ himself are Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul and Love your neighbor as yourself. Are we doing that? Are we loving our neighbors, our families, those we don’t know? How could we be doing this better?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to have a pure heart, please help us. Please search our hearts and ask the Holy Spirit to convict us of anything that is not right in our hearts. If we have un pure motives, if we have any resentment, hatred or unforgiveness in our hearts Lord help us take care of it. Help us get rid of it. Lord we want to care more about your children, please help us. Put is on our hearts how you are calling each of us to help. You have a special calling for each o
e us and we ask that you help us realize that call Lord. Lord, we realize anything that is in our hearts that is not of you and we ask you to fill that empty space with the Holy Spirit. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk Boldly with Jesus. If you would like to get an autographed copy of my book head over to my website walkboldlywithjesus.com. (Click Here) I look forward to seeing you again on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!