PREPARING YOUR HEART TO SEEK GOD

Within the Book of II Chronicles, the rule of each king is assessed and correlated with his faithfulness to the Lord. As we can see in the two verses below, the character of their deeds were inevitably tied to the degree of heart preparation each king made to seek after the Lord.

2 Chronicles 12:14  And he did evil, because he did not prepare his heart to seek the LORD.

2 Chronicles 31:20-21  Thus Hezekiah . . . did what was good, right, and true before the LORD his God. Every work he began in the service of the house of God in law and in commandment, seeking his God, he did with all his heart and prospered.

In a previous post on bitterness, it was noted that God desires us to destroy the weeds spoiling the “garden” of our heart. If you also consider Jesus’ parable of the sower in Matthew 13, you will find that it is also extremely important that we prepare the soil of our heart-garden. These garden metaphors are so apt that I would like to continue their usage to explore the means through which God desires us to produce a bumper crop of spiritual fruit (Galatians 5:22-23). The following study of preparing your heart for God will be compared to the preparation of soil to produce a good crop.

Prepare the Soil of Your Heart

1. We are to adopt Christ’s attitude of submission to the will of the Father.

Phillipians 2:5  Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus.

2. We are to rigorously train ourselves not to be influenced by human wisdom or the common culture that surrounds us, but to sift everything through the sieve of His Word to see if it is good and to caste away anything that doesn’t align.

Romans 12:2  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.

3. We are to fertilize our hearts by absorbing His words as revealed in the Bible, and by working them so deeply into our souls that they become part of us. His thoughts are the needed nutrients that will produce an abundant crop of superior quality fruit.

Joshua 1:8  This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success.

Psalm 119:15  I will meditate on Your precepts and regard Your ways.

To expand the fertilization concept of number 3 (above), here are some simple steps for the "fertilization" process:

Fertilize for Abundant Spiritual Growth

1) Read the Word daily. God wants to be in continual conversation with us just as He walked and talked with Adam in the garden each day. Please realize that the Lord's recorded word in the Bible is the Lord’s side of the conversation. This is the way God talks to us. Put simply, prayer is you talking to God; reading the Word is God talking to you.

Which side of the conversation do you think might be the most important, God’s words, or our words? Make no mistake, the Lord wants us to talk to Him - He made us to fellowship with Him - but He decidedly wants to be the conversation leader.

2) Ask Father for greater faith to believe His message. Faith is a gift, and our Creator well knows that receiving gifts is our special “love language.” We love to be blessed and gifted, and our Father loves to give gifts! He will gladly give you more faith.

Ephesians 2:8  For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.

3) Practice trusting God for everything, particularly the future. Don’t project outcomes for your life.

4) Be humbly aware that you are a created being, a creature. Humanity is not the star of the show; God is. The Lord cares deeply about us, but this love exists within the larger context of the reason for our creation. We were made to glorify our Creator; unfortunately, humanity often gets this reversed.