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Keep Your Heart
Proverbs 4:23

Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life. Proverbs 4:23

Proverbs 4:23

• NKJV – Keep your heart with all diligence, For out of it spring the issues of life.
• NASB – Watch over your heart with all diligence, For from it flow the springs of life.
• NLB – Be careful how you think; your life is shaped by your thoughts.

Good News

• The gospel is not just an offer for forgiveness and a demand for holiness
• Both forgiveness and holiness are made available by faith through grace
• Sin can be cancelled and conquered!
• The Holy Spirit gives the ability and the appetite (desire) to live right
• The gift of God must be received
  • Forgiveness and holiness
• We are not justified now and sanctified later

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. Ezekiel 36:26

I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. Galatians 2:20

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. Romans 12:1-2

So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. Ephesians 4: 17-19

Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me, and know my anxieties; And see if there is any wicked way in me, And lead me in the way everlasting. Psalm 139:23-24

Genuine Faith

Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. II Corinthians 13:5

Tests of Genuine Faith from I John

• Are you regularly enjoying fellowship with Jesus and His church?
  • I John 1:3
• Do you have an inner hatred of the world system?
  • I John 2:15-17
• Do you sacrificially love other Christians?
  • I John 3:14
• Do you experience the inner working of the Holy Spirit?
  • I John 3:24, 4:13
• Do you distinguish between truth & error?
  • I John 4:1-6
• Do you believe what the Bible teaches?
  • I John 5:1
• Do you experience answered prayer?
  • I John 3:22
• Are you very sensitive to your sin?
  • I John 1:8-10
• Do you see a decreasing pattern of sin in your life?
  • I John 3:5-6
• Have you ever been attacked for your faith?
  • Matthew 5:11-12
  • I Peter 1:14
  • Philippians 1:28

Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things. The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you. Philippians 4:8-9