Introduction

This series is an invitation to embrace the high call of the single life—if you are single.

If you are married, it is to help you encourage, support and pray for the single people in your lives.

Review

Key Ideas from last week:

• God does not press you about marriage. He presses you about motives.
• Why you’re dating or not dating.
• Why you want to get married or not get married.
• Why you want to have children or not have children.

Are your decisions based upon pure motives or are your decision based on based upon impure motives?

• Contaminated
• Tainted
• Deceitful

Jeremiah 17:9–10 (ESV): ⁹ The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?

Is the Christian heart still deceitful or does it change when we are born again?

• Ezekiel 36:26 (ESV): ²⁶ And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
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• Jeremiah 31:33 (ESV): ³³ For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
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• Romans 6:17 (ESV): ¹⁷ But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed,
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• Acts 15:9 (ESV): ⁹ and he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith.
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Do Christian Hearts Become Fundamentally Different?

Yes AND No.

• Our hearts become new through the Holy Spirit, but they still retain the capacity to exhibit the qualities of a wicked heart.
• How?

1. When we stop submitting ourselves to the influence of the Holy Spirit.
2. When the influence of the world on our hearts becomes stronger than the influence of the Holy Spirit on our hearts.

How Do We Actively Submit to the Influence of the Holy Spirit?

• Spiritual disciplines
  • Prayer
  • Fasting
  • Worship
  • Fellowship (with other believers)
  • Scriptural meditation

Examples of Corrupted Christian Hearts

Christian Hearts can

• Be impure [James 4:8 (ESV): ⁸ Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.]
• Be hardened [Hebrews 3:15 (ESV): ¹⁵ As it is said, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”]
• Doubt [Mark 11:23 (ESV): ²³ Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him.]
• Vary in their degree of receptivity (Matthew 13:1-23)
• Be dull [Matthew 13:15 (ESV): ¹⁵ For this people’s heart has grown dull. . .]
• Be absent of illumination (Ephesians 1:16–19 (ESV): ¹⁶ I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, ¹⁷ that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, ¹⁸ having the eyes of your hearts enlightened. . .]
• Be absent of the rule of Christ’s peace [Colossians 3:15 (ESV): ¹⁵ And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.]
• Be absent of richness of the Word and of thanksgiving [Colossians 3:16 (ESV)
• ¹⁶ Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.]
• Be filled by Satan [to lie] [Acts 5:3 (ESV): ³ But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit. . . ?]
• Contrive evil deeds [Acts 5:4 (ESV) ⁴. . . Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to man but to God.”]

Christians behave ungodly for one of three reasons:

1. They don’t understand.
2. Their hearts are corrupt.
3. They are both ignorant and corrupt.

Solve the Mystery by Following the Corruption Trail

• Ephesians 4:29 (ESV): ²⁹ Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.
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• But where does corrupt communication come from?
  • Matthew 15:18–19 (ESV): ¹⁸ But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. ¹⁹ For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.
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  • Ephesians 4:30-32 (ESV): ³⁰ And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. ³¹ Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. ³² Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
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Is the Regenerated Human Heart the same as the Regenerated Human Spirit?

Conclusions About the Christian Heart

The Christian heart’s purity is

1. Conditional
2. Malleable
3. Must be Maintained

Key Idea: If you don’t draw from the well, you won’t benefit from the water.

Is the Mind the True Culprit?

Some say that the things being said about the heart actually apply to the mind.

They say that the heart is perpetually regenerated after salvation, but that it is the mind that must be progressively renewed.

We should respond to that with the words of Jesus:

• Matthew 15:18–19 (ESV): ¹⁹ For out of the heart come evil thoughts. . .

The heart is a thought center.

Scripture consistently attributes to the heart psychological qualities.

The human being consists of three elements:

• Physical essence
• Psychological essence
• Spiritual essence

The human heart seems to be aligned with our psychology more than any other aspect of our existence.

Besides all the other things that it may do and be, it appears that the heart is a repository for our subconscious thoughts.

Subconscious thoughts are deep seated emotions, ideas and motivations that sit beneath our conscious thinking and that drive most of our behavior.

This is why the heart is deceitful

• It can hide intentions at the subconscious level, causing us to think that our motives are purer than they really are.

Why Our Subconscious Thoughts Must Be Addressed

1. Spiritual giftedness and ministry success and ethical Christian behavior camouflaging an underdeveloped inner life.
2. The decisions we make about celibacy are deeply tied to matters of the heart.
3. The decisions we make about having children or not having children are deeply tied to matters of the heart.

Do our lives belong to us or do our lives belong to the Lord?

How much of our thoughts are not our own, but are really influences of culture (and technology)?

How much of our thoughts are not our own, but inherited from our ancestors?

• Exodus 34:6–7 (ESV): ⁶ The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, ⁷ keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”
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© Joshua D. Smith, Ph.D., 2024