"Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life." - Proverbs 4:12
When Heavenly Father speaks to us about our heart, He is asking for our entire life, the entire personality, character, body, mind, and emotions in the spirit of a person. The heart is the real person, not the person everybody sees.
The heart is the most important aspect of the spiritual body, and the heart attitude should be the major issue of every Latter-Day-Saint and Christian in the world. It is not lack of ability or potential that prevents most people from making progress and enjoying fulfillment in life. It is wrong heart attitudes that negatively affect our minds and thoughts.
There are many conditions of the heart. Some are positive, and some are negative.
"Amaziah was twenty and five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned twenty and nine years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Jehoaddan of Jerusalem. And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, but not with a perfect heart." -- 2 Chornicles 25:1-2
King Amaziah is noted for having a negative condition of the heart. He did all the right things, but his heart was not right. Therefore, God was not pleased with him. That's a scary thing. We can do the right thing, and yet have it not acceptable to God because we do it with a wrong heart attitude.
Some of us accept callings out of duty, but dread the responsibilities and try to find ways to get out of it. Some of us may only pay tithes and offerings because it is a commandment, thus never experiencing the true fruits of obedience: gratitude for the things that we have. Some of us read our scriptures daily because we should, yet we haven't feasted upon the words to learn of Christ and to learn of Heavenly Father's will for us.
Doing the "right thing" is not enough. Doing the "right thing" with the right spirit is great!
Heavenly Father is more concerned about our hearts than He is about what we do, because if our hearts are right, what we do will eventually catch up with that. Who we are in our hearts is reflected in our thoughts and attitudes.
1 comment:
It's funny you should bring this up, because my friend just posted a blog, "Playing Church."
It was an interesting concept that we don't actually ingrain the gospel into our lives, but play church, like we play house.
This is what I commented:
"I think a lot of us go through the motions sometimes. While this in and of itself isn't a bad thing, I think it can lead us into the "all is well in Zion" attitude, from which we can be "carefully led down to hell."
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is one of action. We cannot sit idly by, and expect the Gospel to happen to us. We have to be anxiously engaged, fervent, and obedient. And once we emerce ourselves in the Gospel, and submit our will to the will of the Father, the amount of joy we experience is magnified, and our sensitivity to the spirit allows us to receive intensely personal revelation.
I think everyone comes to the crossroads at some point when they have to decided if they are going to cling to the Gospel, or merely "play church.""
I do think people miss out on the fulness of the gospel. There is so much that we don't partake of that is right there in front of us! I think it is interesting that no matter what we do, God always has his arms stretched out to us, waiting for us to come and find rest in Him and His Son.
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