“Integrity of Heart”

Reformation Sunday

1 Chronicles 29

15 For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding.

16 O Lord our God, all this store that we have prepared to build thee an house for thine holy name cometh of thine hand, and is all thine own.

17 I know also, my God, that thou triest the heart, and hast pleasure in uprightness. As for me, in the uprightness of mine heart I have willingly offered all these things: and now have I seen with joy thy people, which are present here, to offer willingly unto thee.

18 O Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, our fathers, keep this for ever in the imagination of the thoughts of the heart of thy people, and prepare their heart unto thee:

David was giving his closing words just before he died and was praying for his son Solomon and the nation of Israel. In his prayer we see how David had got to know God (“my God”) as the one who tests the heart and its integrity. Do you know the Lord as the One who tests hearts?

Jesus said that looking at a woman lustfully is adultery which has happened in the heart. This is the God with whom we have to do!

David had been through a time of denial regarding sin which he tried to keep covered by cunning and deceit but God taught Him a lesson he never forgot.

At the beginning of the revival at Mapumulo it happened that a little girl sitting under a tree saw a huge eye looking at her. Instantly, she was convicted of her sins. She had no pen and paper so she grabbed the nearest objects to write with – a piece of coal and cardboard. She wrote down her sins by name so that she would not forget what Jesus had shown her. She brought the that piece of cardboard and asked for prayer. God’s all-seeing eye is upon you too.

When Jesus was with the Samaritan woman at the well she then ran to her town and called the people to “come and see a man who told me all things that I ever did – could this be the Christ?” (John 4:29). Being with Jesus exposed everything in her heart.

In Hebrews 4: 12 and 13 we read about the God who tests the integrity of the heart by His Word:

Hebrews 4

12 For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

13 Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.

The anointing of David gives an insight into God’s way of seeing things which is so different to ours. In 1Sam 16 God says that he does not “… view things the way men do. People look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

On this Reformation Sunday may it be true that the Lord brings about true reformation in your heart. Pray that He would remove your heart of stone and replace it with a soft heart of flesh, a new and upright heart.