"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, Even to give every man according to his ways, According to the fruit of his doings." Jeremiah 17:9-10
The word heart in this verse refers to the mind, alot of times in scripture the heart is the word in place for the word mind.
For instance, Matthew 5:28 "But I say to you that whoever looks at a women to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart." Jesus here uses the word heart but is refering to the mind, that when a person gazes at the opposite sex wanting that person sexually they have mentally committed adultery.
Now back to Jeremiah the Lord says that the heart, the mind, is deceitful above all things and desperatly wicked.
You see the mind is great for thinking of answers, solving puzzles, and understanding certain things better, but the moment we let our mind wonder we set ourselves up for failure.
Imagine yourself in a creek your jumping from rock to rock because you don't want to fall into the water. Then suddenly you come across a rock that is a little distance away from you but in range to jump on. The moment you hesitate to make the jump your mind tells you that you won't make it and you begin to fail before you even try. That is exactly what happens in our own Christian walk, we let our minds decieve us and we forget that our minds are programed to this world and the abilities of this world.
The mind is good with ideas, but should not be in the driver seat of our actions.Our soul and spirit should be the source of our actions.
In Romans 12:2 the bible says "But be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and prefect will of God" Now notice how Paul says "that you may prove" after talking about a renewed mind. When we accept Christ, He doesn't just erase your mind and give you a new one what He does is gives you a good and clean conscience. Paul writes in 2 Timothy 1:3 "I thank God, whom I served with a pure conscience" Now your clean conscience is your God given ability to be able to prove what God's will is. You see your spirit tells the heart what it wants and your heart tells your mind what it needs to do. The mind then proves to see if this is acceptable to Christ, if we reject our conscience we then suffer a shipwreck in our faith 1 Timothy 1:19.
Back in Jeremiah the Lord says that He tests the mind, how does He test our mind? In 2 Corinthians 10:5 the bible says "casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ." So every perception and intention that is against God we need to take captive to the obedience of Christ. We should not cling to the thoughts that do not conform to scripture and the life of Christ. Now I'm not saying Jesus brings bad thoughts in our head to see what we do with them, No! We do that for ourselves, but seeing as everything is naked and open to His eye that includes our thoughts Hebrews 4:13.
Christ then sees what we do with those thoughts and gives each man according to his own ways. So instead of being caught up in religion and fake obedience which is your mind telling your heart what to do, give God the glory by being His true follower and have genuine obedience which is your heart telling your mind what to do.
Let the love of Christ shine on you and through you, for "above all things put on love, which is the bond of perfection-Colossians 3:14." And let all that you do be done with love, God's love! 1 Corinthians 16:14
-Soli Deo Gloria: For God's glory alone-
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