Reclaiming Your Heart by Denise Hildreth Jones

Author:Denise Hildreth Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: RELIGION / Christian Life / Spiritual Growth
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2013-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Lie of the Critical Heart: “God Expects Me to Get It Right”

So what is the lie of the critical heart?

The lie is that God expects us to be perfect, and his biggest concern is that we follow the rules to the letter and get everything right.

It is understandable that this lie is a stronghold for many because it’s based on an element of truth. Our God is indeed a righteous God, and he did give us rules to live by. The law of Moses, given in the early days of Israel and then built on by generations of God’s people, absolutely required us to get it right, and if we didn’t, the law laid out a right way to atone for our wrongness.

Having the law was definitely better than the lawlessness that had prevailed earlier. But what a weight it became to live under, especially when generation after generation of scribes started working on it and shaping it into the imposing system of regulations that people were expected to follow in Jesus’ day. God knew it was a weight, which is one reason Jesus came. To remove us from the performance mind-set the law produced and to land us smack-dab in the middle of God’s wide net of grace.

The group Phillips, Craig & Dean has a song called “Mercy Came Running.” I especially appreciate this song because of its powerful personification of mercy. It talks about how, in the days before Jesus, priests would go into the Temple to make the sacrifice in the Holy of Holies and “mercy’s face” would be “pressed against the veil.” Hearing that song, you can practically see mercy just longing to break through the constraints of the law. As the title bears witness, Jesus’ death finally accomplished that. When he died and then rose, mercy indeed came running. And it hasn’t stopped.

But the enemy is so good at feeding the lie to us that the requirements of the law are still in place—and we’re getting it all wrong. How easily he succeeds in getting us to accuse ourselves and others.

I’ve done this so many times. I have been so hard on myself and so hard on others, all because I swallowed this perverted lie that being right—doing right, thinking right, acting right—is the way to stay in God’s good graces, as if we could ever be righteous enough for him.

But what about the Garden? Didn’t Adam and Eve face consequences for their sin? Of course they did. Sin always brings consequences. But the story is deeper than that. What really caused Adam and Eve’s downfall was what happened in their hearts. They allowed themselves to be turned from that sweet place of face-to-face intimacy with their Father toward the lies of the serpent. This fostered their distrust in God and eventually had them running away from the heart of the One who knew them best.

Yes, God made rules to protect the hearts of his children. But it was Satan who got them so

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.