 In Matthew 5 Jesus calls every believer to seek to grow and mature in the
beatitudes. These eight blessings come from our Father as we cultivate these
values deep into our heart. He’s teaching us that this is the kind of heart that
attracts the blessing of our Father. Hence we should aggressively seek to lay
hold of each of these beatitudes until they are the true fragrance of our
lives. It’s not enough to know about poverty of spirit, meekness or purity of
heart. We must become poor in spirit, be meek people and purify our hearts and
minds before God. As we mature in these beatitudes it will lead us to great
impact in the world (Matthew 5:13-14).
I want to highlight one of these beatitudes: Matthew 5:8 "Blessed are
the pure in heart for they shall see God." What a profound reward for
those who cultivate a pure heart before Jesus... they shall see God! What an
invitation! Purity of heart is the place of intimate communion where God is the
greatest reward to the human heart. It is the focused gaze of love with the
purest motive of serving and obeying Jesus. Purity of heart has to do with the
things that motivate our actions. It has more to do with why we do the
things we do than it has to do with what we actually do. It is the
purifying of the inward place of fleshly desires that corrupt us as we form
Biblical truth in the depth of our heart.
Jesus says the ones that purify their hearts will be rewarded...
"...they shall see God’. What does He mean by this? I’m sure
there’s an ocean of meaning that I have yet to discover but I do believe one of
the areas He’s speaking of is the revelation of God as we study His Word. In
Ephesians 1:17 Paul prays that we would receive a spirit of revelation in the
knowledge of God. He’s praying that God, by His Spirit, would reveal God to our
minds and hearts as we pursue Him. Did you know that to the degree that we
purify our minds and hearts before God has a direct effect on the revelation of
God we receive in prayer and study? I tell the interns all the time that the
purity of our hearts and minds or lack of greatly affects our Bible study. I
long to purify my mind and heart and rid of the things that would taint me that
I would be able to ‘see God’ as I search for Him in the Word. As we set our
hearts and minds to pursue and embrace purity we attract the blessing of our
Father to see Him. This is the promise of this beatitude.
There are many fronts that we must wage war on in regards to sin as we seek
to purify our heart. One of the fronts I want us to be aware of is our
speech. There are many verses in the Bible that relate purity of heart to the
way we speak (Proverbs 22:11, 15:26, Psalm 12:6, Matthew 5:22, 15:11, 18, 1
Timothy 4:12, 5:1-2). What I’m mostly thinking of when I think of our speech is
the ‘spirit’ in which we speak and not so much the words. Of course, we are to
abstain from filthy words (Colossians 3:8). But there’s more than just not
saying ‘bad’ words that can taint our hearts. When we speak in the wrong spirit
towards or about someone we are sowing in the flesh and will reap corruption of
the heart (Galatians 6:8). It is critical that we resist the flesh in regards to
our speech. Jesus taught us to speak in the opposite spirit... to bless and pray
for our enemies. As we do this we are guarding and cultivating purity in the
inward place of our heart before Jesus.
The rule that I have always operated by in regards to my speech is that if
I cannot speak in a godly spirit to or about a person or situation I don’t speak
at all. I take my ‘offense’ to God and hash it out with Him. He has the ability
to change my heart about a situation and give me wisdom to speak into it if it’s
necessary. Beloved the promise from God is that we’ll see God as
we radically pursue purity of heart. There’s no greater experience for us than
when God reveals God to the human spirit. When He touches me with revelation of
who He is I’m exhilarated in my love for Him and in my joy to be alive.
May the Lord bless us and keep us as we pursue purity of heart.
Amen.
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