{"id":20742,"date":"2012-08-09T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-08-09T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gracechristian.edu\/a-pure-heart\/"},"modified":"2024-06-04T12:13:24","modified_gmt":"2024-06-04T16:13:24","slug":"a-pure-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gracechristian.edu\/blog\/a-pure-heart\/","title":{"rendered":"A Pure Heart","gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"text"}]},"content":{"rendered":"<p>God desires for you and me to have a pure heart.\u00a0 <em>\u201cFlee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart\u201d (2 Timothy 2:22).<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In the above verse, the Apostle Paul gives us five characteristics of a pure heart.\u00a0 He tells us in this passage, as he does elsewhere, what to <em>\u201cwatch out for\u201d<\/em> (or <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">avoid<\/span>), as well as what to <em>\u201cpursue\u201d<\/em> (or <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">cling to<\/span>).\u00a0 As Christians, this is a balance each of us must have in our lives.\u00a0 To simply run away from something leads to isolation.\u00a0 In this life we must replace our evil (unregenerate) habits with habits which will lead to godliness.\u00a0 The Scriptures are full of this principle of \u201creplacement!\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Flee the \u201cevil desires of youth\u201d<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0These desires would include sexual sin, pride, craving for wealth or power, prestige, jealousy, envy, self-assertiveness, and selfish ambition.\u00a0 We are to run away like a fugitive (<em>phuego<\/em>) and not \u201csettle\u201d or be content to be recaptured by those desires.\u00a0 To flee means to be continually vigilant in our denial of these desires.\u00a0 We must \u201ckeep up our antenna\u201d for these vices and avoid them at all costs!<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0We are to vigorously run towards\u00a0 these positive characteristics.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Righteousness<\/span><\/strong> is pursued by reading, studying, and living out the Word of God, which is the source of righteousness (Ps. 119:9-11).<\/li>\n<li><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Faith<\/span><\/strong> in this context is more a reference to faithfulness.\u00a0 We are, by faith, to remain loyal and faithful to God as a quality of life.<\/li>\n<li><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Love<\/span><\/strong> is the highest loyalty and example of godliness we are capable of.\u00a0 Agape love is a love of conscious determination, not of impulse.\u00a0 It is pursued so as to be practiced in our lives, regardless of the worthiness of the one being loved.<\/li>\n<li><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Peace<\/span><\/strong> is the quality of lifestyle that brings about serenity and harmony in relationships.\u00a0 (Rom. 12:18).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Amazingly enough, this admonition is given to Timothy (and secondarily to us), and it is the expected conduct of \u201cthose who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.\u201d\u00a0 God, give us a greater desire for a pure heart!<\/p>\n<p>ACTION POINT:<\/p>\n<p>Do the math.\u00a0 A heart that is truly pure will have all of these five characteristics.\u00a0 Three out of five is a good goal for tic-tac-toe, but we have a goal of a truly pure heart and therefore 5 out of 5 is God-empowered action!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>KBK<\/p>\n","protected":false,"gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"html"}]},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>God desires for you and me to have a pure heart.\u00a0 \u201cFlee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false,"gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"html"}]},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[103,43],"tags":[],"dipi_cpt_category":[],"class_list":["post-20742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-presidents-blog","category-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - 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