Yesterday on The Morning Meditation we looked at A Leak in the Character. Have you inspected your life and found a leak, just a thread of water? Get it right and remember that our sins are under the Blood of Christ.
Today on The Morning Meditation:
HOW TO HAVE A PERFECT HEART TOWARD GOD
2 Chron. 16:9 “For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him. Herein thou hast done foolishly: therefore from henceforth thou shalt have wars.”
Let me encourage you to read this whole passage from 2 Chron. 16. Asa the king of Judah made a league with the king of Syria to protect him from Baasha king of Israel. Now it worked, but it is never God’s will for His people to make alliances with the world for protection or supply. After Asa did this, the seer (prophet) Hanani came and did some uninvited counseling to king Asa. Asa did not like what he heard. In fact it infuriated him. The way the Bible puts it, “For he was in a rage with him because of this thing.” He got so mad at Hanani that he put him in prison because of it. It is amazing how people get mad at the preacher for what God says. I guess they still have enough sense and enough fear of God not to take Him on directly.
Asa’s chastening was permanent. God’s message to him was, “therefore from hence forth thou shalt have wars.” Not a very good future would you say? In other words, God gave nation peace from war as long as they were right with Him. God wanted Asa to trust Him but he acted on human viewpoint instead of faith in God. When a man’s heart is not right with God, he will not be right with man. Verse 10 of this chapter says, “And Asa oppressed some of the people the same time.”
We also learn that Asa did not respond to the chastening of the Lord. Verse 12 says, “And Asa in the thirty and ninth year of his reign was diseased in his feet, until his disease was exceeding great: yet in his disease he sought not to the LORD, but to the physicians.” God is about the last one to be consulted today in the case of illness. Instead of developing a faith that will find the God who heals, we go to the skilled physicians. Is it wrong to go to doctors? No. But I’m saying that God should be the first to be consulted. He will tell us how He wants to heal. But that is another subject.
Our text says, “For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him.”
How do we have a perfect heart toward God? I will make a few suggestions:
FIRST, ACKNOWLEDGE A DEFECTIVE HEART
Hanani the Seer brought God’s diagnosis to Asa. He was saying to the king, “God says your heart is not right with Him.” This is never the kind of news we want to hear. Asa was no exception. But if there is going to be correction to a wrong path, we must first face the fact that we are on a wrong path. If our hearts are not right with God, we must begin by acknowledging that we have a defective heart.
What picture does God give of the natural heart? Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” This verse states the condition of all men. I know it comes from an old testament Prophet, but it is as true today as it was then. To show the tendency to avoid facing this fact consider this. How many times have you heart people say, “He may have done wrong, but he has a good heart.” There is a string between the natural man’s heart and his eyes that when pulled can close truth to the eyes like a Venetian blind shuts out light. The heart protects itself against exposer.
Jesus commented on the natural heart. Jesus said in Matthew 15:19, “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.” The Jews of Jesus day were like Asa. Even worse. They did not just put him in prison, they crucified Him.
