In your heart

“And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. – Deuteronomy 6.6-8

Even in the days of the Law we see that the heart of man was important to God. Keeping the Law was not really what pleased God. The heart condition was. You can fix the outside and fool everyone, but if you fix inside genuine outside change will always come.

God says a lot more about the heart. Here are just a few examples.

‘Your heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked…’

‘Keep your heart with all diligence…’

‘Where your treasure is there will your heart be also.’

‘This people honours Me with their lips, But their heart is far from Me.’

‘Man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart.’

While the Bible says plenty about the heart there were times in my life where I spent far too much time and effort in conforming the outside while the heart was never really dealt with. Fixing the outside is much easier than the inside. It is easier to see and judge. But that can all be faked. 

That’s why God says ‘keep the commandments in your heart’ before He says anything else.

The psalmist says ‘your word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against thee.’

The key to godly living to get God’s word settled in our hearts. What is in our hearts will come out in our lives, so if I have God’s word in my heart I will be living it out in my life. Fixing the outside will never fix the inside. As a popular song puts it ‘you have to change your heart before you can change your shirt.’

Get it right on the inside and the rest will sort itself out.