More than a little bit required

 The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is? But I, the Lord, search all hearts and examine secret motives. (Jeremiah 17:9-10)

What does your heart hold onto? What 'secret motives' have been hidden away in the recesses of your mind, will, or emotions that seem to creep up at the weirdest times, giving you an urge to say or do things that you know you should not? We must never forget that God gave us our unique 'make-up' - body, soul, spirit. He created us and he has watched over our lives from the very beginning - even when we made bad choices, others inflicted pain upon us by their bad choices, or we struggled to make better ones than we had in our past. Our heart might want to betray us from time to time, but when our spirit is rightly connected with God's Spirit, we stand a much better chance of resisting temptation.

As a young believer, I used to wonder what God meant by the words, "I give all people their due rewards, according to what their actions deserve." If God gave me what my actions deserved, I'd be miserable! My actions have not always been the most 'upright' or 'honorable'. The good news is that God gives those who have said 'yes' to Jesus what they do NOT deserve - grace - abundant, overwhelming, undeserved grace. The more I follow Jesus, the more I have come to realize each day dawns with new grace and each day ends the same way. The heart has changed after more than just a little bit of time with Jesus, but it wasn't always this way. There were 'secret motives' and 'hidden sins' that needed to be dealt with. The good news is that he dealt with each of them!

Some of those 'dealings' required more than a little bit of work, though. Don't be discouraged when God focuses on something in your heart that needs 'more than a little work'. It isn't that he is angry or upset with you - it is that he wants more for you than holding onto those 'secret things' will ever provide. He goes to work on those areas because he knows how much freer we will be when they are finally out in the open, under his tutelage and care, changed once and for all for the good. Some of us will have to let go of things we didn't even know we were holding onto, while others will have to trust him in ways we never thought we could. Either way, the end result is the same - a changed heart with new motives. Just sayin!