It Starts In The Heart

My Utmost For His Highest

Jesus did not commit Himself to them…for He knew what was in man. —John 2:24-25

{CHAMBERS}  “Put Trust in God First. Our Lord never put His trust in any person. Yet He was never suspicious, never bitter, and never lost hope for anyone, because He put His trust in God first. He trusted absolutely in what God’s grace could do for others. If I put my trust in human beings first, the end result will be my despair and hopelessness toward everyone. I will become bitter because I have insisted that people be what no person can ever be— absolutely perfect and right. Never trust anything in yourself or in anyone else, except the grace of God. Put God’s Will First. “Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God” (Hebrews 10:9). […] Am I allowing my natural life to be slowly transformed by the indwelling life of the Son of God? God’s ultimate purpose is that His Son might be exhibited in me.”

{ELGIN}  The difference between your desire for someone to be a certain way or want a certain thing and their desire for the same thing is called frustration.  Spiritual change happens from the inside out.  It starts in the heart.  Prisons are full of people that have their wrong behavior constrained by locked doors and prison bars.  But let many of them free from those constraints and they will go right back to the life they had been living before they went to prison.  God changes hearts.  A study in 2005 showed that 75% of prisoners released were re-arrested within 5 years.  Jesus said, “It is not the outside of the cup that makes it unclean.” (Matthew 23:25)  Just as sure as you can’t save any one, you can’t change anyone’s heart.  (Jeremiah 17:9-10) “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? I the LORD search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.”  Only God knows and only God can change the heart but it requires faith on our part.  The change in a person that you so desperately want to see can only come through their faith transaction with God.  So what do you do in the meantime?  Love them like Jesus loves them, but remember, He never condoned the sin.  He confronted it and encouraged the people to repent.