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Living a Transformed Life: Start with the Heart

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Living a Transformed Life

Start with the Heart

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Living a Transformed Life: Start with the Heart

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This sermon looks at how to live a transformed life and how we must start by changing our heart. Is your heart bearing good spiritual fruit as a result of your contact with the word of God and the life of Jesus Christ?

Transcript

Sermon presented by Darris McNeely on April 26, 2014 in the Cincinnati-East, Ohio congregation.

Last Sunday when Debbie and I were at this retreat, this camp-out for the church, it was, for us at least, we were not camping in tents. We were, this is a very nice youth camp as I said and members had the option of either camping, staying in dormitory type lodgings or in some really nice hotel rooms, Holiday Inn Express type rooms. We chose the Holiday Inn Express type room. That’s camping for us today. It even had a color television. Sunday afternoon we were kind of relaxing in between activities and we were flipping between the channels as you do at times and on came this movie that I had not seen in probably 45 or more years. Some of you will recall the movie made by Charleton Heston…no it wasn’t The Ten Commandments. It was another one – The Agony and the Ecstasy – one of these big epic, 1960 type movies. The story of Michelangelo, the Italian Renaissance sculptor painter, and his work on the Sistine Chapel, painting that on his back doing all of that. What caught my attention, because we didn’t watch the entire movie, but they had about a 15 minute introduction done at that time, looking as a retrospective over all the artistic works of Michelangelo. Especially the sculptures that he had done. Of course, the famous David sculpture that’s in Florence and the images of Christ, of course they are all world-famous. But they showed how the slabs and blocks of marble cut out of the Italian hillsides and then shaped at the hands of a talented sculptor. That, of course, was Michelangelo’s life, that’s what the movie was based on, but they showed some of his actual works. The finished, highly polished works as well as some of the unfinished works that he actually did not complete before he died, of images emerging out of the rough stone, not yet finished but yet having their own energy and dynamism at the same time. As they talked about that it was a fascinating art history lesson of Michelangelo’s sculptures.

And I thought to myself as I was watching that, that's really what we’re engaged in. During the Days of Unleavened Bread and really in our whole relationship with God. God is working with us, in a sense, like a sculptor works with a slab of marble and he chips away all of the pieces and out of that stone emerges a figure. A finished figure when it’s all done. Highly polished and remarkable in the artistic beauty that so many of the sculptors through the centuries have had in accomplishment. Now we can take exception with, perhaps, some of their religious expressions, but there is no doubt the talent that they had. Any sculptor today has today as they chip away bit by bit the rough stone and out of it emerges an image of a human being.

I thought, isn’t that really what God is doing with us? Bit by bit, through the years and through the decades with us. Almost from a heart of stone, which we have in our per-conversion state, He’s chipping away at us, and out of it we hope and pray, is emerging a heart of the spirit. God’s spirit writing upon our own hearts the law and covenant relationship as we are told.

And as I was looking at that, thinking about it, the Days of Unleavened Bread were winding up, and looking at what I was reflecting on during that period of time, I came down to thinking, how is that we really do change? How is it that we get those chips, those rough spots, knocked away until there is a refined, polished, perfected form that somehow emerges as God’s work is done with us out of a life. Out of a total experience of decades for many of us. And faith, and walking with God, and letting Him do that. We all know it’s hard, and every year as we approach the Passover and Unleavened Bread, it is a time of examination and spiritual focus. I look at myself those times and I ask myself: How much have I really changed? And perhaps you ask yourself the same question. How much have I really changed? In all the years, in all the sermons I’ve given, in all the sermons I’ve heard, in all the work and all the years, how much have I really changed? I won’t answer that question for you, that’s for me to answer before God as it is for you to answer before God. But it is what’s been on our mind.

You know, in Psalm 51:10, David wrote in this highly charged, emotional psalm of repentance before God a great deal and he said in Psalm 51:10. Create in me a clean heart, oh God and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Just focus on that one verse for a moment. Create in me a clean heart, oh God, and renew a steadfast spirit. How do we understand this process? How is it that we approach it and how should we understand the work that God is doing with each of us in creating a clean heart within us? As we have just observed the Days of Unleavened Bread we have had a number of items on our mind as we focus, beginning with the Passover, foot washing, the bread and the wine, the Days of Unleavened Bread and the process of putting out the leaven, eating unleavened bread for seven days and the spiritual work that all of that teaches us from humility to repentance to the life of Jesus Christ within us. There are many, many aspects of that process and as I think it through, not just to teach it, but also to live it in my own life and what I want to understand. And we all are working to understand in terms of what God is doing with us in this whole process. The deep spiritual teaching that the entire experience should leave us with. There are a number of things that are still on my mind, as I am sure are on yours because it was only this past Monday that we observed the last holy day of unleavened bread, and here again we’re gathered again on the weekly Sabbath. In Hebrews 9, there is a verse that for the last couple of years has deeply impressed me as I think about the time and the matters. Hebrews 9. If we kept the Days of Unleavened Bread and focused on all the rituals and all the matters that are there, one of the many parts of the Days of Unleavened Bread that we focus on is what takes place, what did take place according to the teaching in Leviticus 23. On the morning after the Sabbath during the Days of Unleavened Bread is what is called the wave sheaf offering. Now we don’t do a wave sheaf offering today for many reasons.  There’s no temple, there’s no priesthood. But on that day, the high priest would wave a sheaf of barley in a ceremony that signaled the beginning of the early harvest in ancient Israel. But the real spiritual lesson for us is we don’t do anything like that but we should certainly note it and understand it because that wave sheaf offering was actually fulfilled by the very act of Jesus Christ being accepted by the Father on the morning after His resurrection during the Days of Unleavened Bread when that stone was rolled away and He rose from the dead and He told His disciples, Mary, the one that tried to handle Him by the feet, He said, don’t touch Me, I’m not yet ascended to My Father. And a short time later we find in another gospel of Matthew, we find the disciples crowding around Him and touching Him. Somewhere in that interval He had been accepted by the Father as He said He had to be. And what that did was set up the actual fulfillment at a moment in time of what that ancient ceremony back in the temple of the wave sheaf offering, described in Leviticus 23, pointed to.

And I think Hebrews 9:11-12 describe that moment when Christ was accepted. When the Logos who had emptied Himself of the Divinity came and lived as Jesus of Nazareth and died for our sins and after three days and three nights was resurrected. When that Logos returned to the throne of God, to the Father, and became the Christ, our high priest and all that we are told here in the book of Hebrews. It says, Christ came as the High Priest of good things to come with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is not of this creation. Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. There was a moment in our time when Christ entered the Most Holy Place, which is the throne of God in heaven, which was what the holy place of the temple was merely a symbol of. The high priest only went in there and he only went in once a year. But Christ entered into the real High Holy Place, and He became the ultimate High Priest, thereby obviating all need for what was on the earth in the terms of that temple and it‘s priesthood. Now He had returned and He was, and is, our High Priest.

And this verse here shows us, perhaps, in that moment when that took place. And it is something to think about because then He was the high priest and His sacrifice is once for all people as a means of obtaining eternal redemption. And as it is described in Hebrews 3:1 He became our heavenly apostle. Paul writes: Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High priest of our confession, Jesus Christ. We have one Apostle. He is a heavenly apostle. Always has been. And it is Jesus Christ. And that is His role. And Hebrews goes in to great detail to explain that. But He’s also the head of the body.

In Ephesians 1, it is described also here by Paul to the church. The exulted role of Jesus Christ, as a result of His life and death, and His resurrection. In Ephesians 1:22-23 Paul brings this magnificent chapter down to a conclusion where he says, He put, speaking of the Father, He put all things under His feet, under Christ's feet. And He gave Him, Christ, to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him, who fills all in all. And so Christ is our high priest, He is our Heavenly apostle, He is the head of the church. It is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. And He has been given that role by the Father. This sets up the process that we walk through during the Days of Unleavened Bread, the real spiritual meaning behind that festival of God.

In Galatians 2:20, we are told, again Paul's writings, how this really plays out in our life, our everyday life. Paul connects himself, and as he does he connects each one of us to Jesus Christ, the resurrected Christ, whose life should be within us. He says in Galatians 2:20: I have been crucified with Christ. So he bonds himself. And this is also brought out in more detail in Romans 6 where we are risen with Him through the act of baptism just as He rose. I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. It's one of the deepest, most beautiful scriptures to think about and to come to understand. Because that's why we keep the Days of Unleavened Bread. We put out the leaven of malice and wickedness and we keep the feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. As we eat that unleavened bread we picture Christ's life within us just as Paul writes here, that's now the life we need to live. And we can only live an unleavened life of sincerity and truth as Christ lives within us. And that's what those days are all about. Every year that we have. And it builds on what Jesus told His disciples the night that He died. The night before He died.

The scriptures that we read on the Passover in John 14. These are scriptures that typically we do read, and we always read them as part of the Passover service, the Christian Passover. But these are scriptures not just for one night of the year. These are scriptures for every day of our life, every year of our life. What Jesus describes was to happen after He died as He encouraged His disciples that night. In John 14:26-28, He tells them the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you. Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give you, let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. You heard me say that I'm going away and coming back to you. If you loved me you would rejoice because I said I'm going to the Father for My Father is greater than I. He was casting it all in a positive note as they were all kind of mournful that night because He had to go away that He would come back. And He is talking about this in the context of the work of the Holy Spirit which is the means by which He does come to us and came back on the day of Pentecost as that was poured out upon any believer today who in faith accepts the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and is baptized and receives the gift of the Holy Spirit, Christ does come to us and lives His life in us as we just read in Galatians 2:20. That's how it all works out and this is what Jesus put into the minds of His disciples as He encouraged them here as well as John 16:5 where He says: I go away to Him who sent Me and none of you ask Me where are you going. And He goes on again to explain more of the work through these succeeding verses, the work of the Holy Spirit and what it will do being the spirit of truth that will guide you into all the truth and not speak of his own authority but will glorify Me and he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

And so He shows how that work of the spirit would be done in these verses and it was the means by which he was able to triumphantly say by the end of John 16:33. These things I have spoken to you that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. Be cheered up, be encouraged, he said. I have overcome the world. And because Christ overcame the world, became our Passover sacrifice, we can overcome our world. That's where we bring it home. He overcame the world, he said. And because He did, and because then He can live His life within us as we yield to Him in faith, we can overcome our world, and the rough stone can be chipped away from our minds and our lives and our hearts and replace the heart of flesh with the heart of spirit and a changed life. And that's what we learn. 

God the Father has created for us an environment for spiritual growth. Back in Ephesians 1 we are told exactly how this environment for spiritual growth is accomplished. Ephesians 1:3-5. Paul writes this: Blessed be the God, the Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every blessing in the spiritual places, in Christ. Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of His will. Paul opens by showing what the Father has done by establishing a spiritual blessing in Christ for us. This is what the Father has done in all that we have read before of Christ dying for our sins, being our High Priest, being our Heavenly Apostle is all because of what the Father has enabled through His plan and His purpose. So it is what the Father has willed as Christ Himself came to show and that is made possible for us. Ephesians 1:7 here it says: In Him, in Christ, we have redemption through His blood, forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace. And so he lays a foundation here, a groundwork, for an environment of growth within the Body of Christ, within the church. And this is where Ephesians begins and builds. Over in Ephesians 4 it's carried on as he talks about this and again Christ's role as He ascended in Ephesians 4:9-12 where Paul jumps into a thought here where we jump into his thought and he says: This, He ascended, what does it mean that He also first descended into the lower parts of the earth? By coming in the flesh and certainly by dying and being put within the earth for three days and nights. But He who descended is also the One who ascended far above the heavens that He might fill all things. He gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints and the work of the ministry for the edifying of the Body of Christ. So he begins to show how this environment is created within the spiritual body of the church, Christ's body, for the development and the growth spiritually of all who are added to it. Ephesians 4:13-16 Till we are the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God to a perfect man to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. That is what it's all about. That we grow in the stature and the fullness of Christ and what He is doing in our lives as we yield to Him in faith. That we no longer be children tossed to and fro, carried about with every wind of doctrine by the trickery of men and the cunning craftiness of deceit, plotting, but speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head, Christ. From whom the whole body joined and knit together by what every joint supplies according to the effective working by which every part does its share causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love. This, in so many verses, is Paul's description of what we tried to term then for our uses in the United Church of God today in an environment of growth, spiritual growth of the individual members. Growing in the fullness of Jesus Christ. As Paul says here in Ephesians 4:13. That life within us, being lived day by day in faith and confidence in hope creating a new creation. Down in Ephesians 4:17-21, Paul lays it out. He says: I say therefore testify to the Lord that you should no longer walk as the Gentiles walk and walk in the futility of the mind having their understanding darkened being alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that's in them, because of the blindness of their heart who being past feeling having given themselves over to lewdness to work all uncleanness with greediness, those are past works. Those are among the works of the leaven of malice and evil wickedness that are to be put out that Paul is describing here only in part. He says to the Ephesians, and he says to us, God does, you have not so learned Christ.  If indeed you have heard Him, and have been taught by Him the truth as in Jesus. What have we learned of Christ as a result of observing the festivals this spring and now as we anticipate the feast of Pentecost? What have we learned of Christ and His work within us? Ephesians 4:22 he says: that you put off concerning your former conduct the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts. That's a perfect description of what we typify, as we put out the leaven prior to the beginning of the days of Unleavened Bread we are to put off the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts.

I love how that was described in the sermonette here, by Jason Nitzberg, I'll give Jason credit here for he gave the sermonette, some here will remember it, I'm trying to remember if it was here in the morning service or the afternoon service that day, but he used the analogy of zombies to describe the old man trying to come back to life. The undead. I don't watch too many zombie shows, but it's a brilliant way to explain from a piece of popular culture today what our old man is like. Sometimes we have this zombie called the old man that keeps reaching up and trying to drag us back to something and we haven't quite put the lid on the zombie within us. But that's what Paul is saying here. We put off the old man. Ephesians 4:23, we're renewed in the spirit of our mind and we put on the new man which was created according to God. True righteousness and holiness. A new creation. That stone being chipped away, and an image, created in the image of Christ emerging out of that stone, the hand of a master sculptor, God, working with us.

That's really the work of the Kingdom of God that is to be accomplished and working within us and is filling us up throughout our entire life. You know, in Matthew 13, Christ used another illustration about leaven to show something positive, righteously, about the Kingdom of God by using leaven, and he likened the Kingdom of God to expanding to leaven. In Matthew 13:33, The Kingdom of heaven is like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened. Leaven is also a type of sin, but it is also used here as a type of the Kingdom of God that ultimately fills all. And that's the work that is being done by God today is the work of the kingdom is being done through our life. When Jesus came preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God in Mark 1:15, He said: Repent, the Kingdom of God is at hand. One way to understand that is that for you and I, when we repent and are baptized and we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Kingdom of God is at hand in our own life from that point forward until the time of the resurrection and that work of the kingdom should be building, expanding, and growing like this leaven of the parable in Matthew 13:33, in our life because it is at hand to us. And that's how we understand it. And that's what we look at as the work that is being done within us.

And after all these years, let me come back to my original question, after all these years of being in the church, being in the faith, being in Christ, do we start anew? Where do we begin? Sometimes I think that it's not just the Passover that gives us a new beginning every year, but perhaps certain moments for us as we come to kind of a stage in our life, we come to a point where we may even take a bigger, broader view of where we are in our relationship with God, the work that God is doing within us that I've described through all these scriptures. And perhaps this would be a time for any of us to seize a moment and ask how much have we really changed? How much of the rough stone has been knocked off of our lives as you look back over ten years, twenty years, thirty years, forty years, fifty years? Anybody here got sixty years in mind? What do we see? What do we truly see as we look at that? That's for us to answer and to consider it, it can be encouraging and sometimes it can be a bit sobering. If we still see that we are struggling and working against matters that we just haven't quite overcome. Attitudes. Specific sins, perhaps. And so I ask, where do we start? Where might we start? The title of this sermon is “Living a Transformed Life, Start with the Heart”, the only place we can start is with the heart because that's where it all flows from. The good as well as the bad.

In Mark 7, Jesus was talking to the Pharisees about their traditions of eating bread with unwashed hands. They found fault with Jesus and His disciples because they didn't quite go through all the rituals that the traditions of the Jewish elders had built up through the centuries. And this was centuries of Jewish tradition and ritual that they were talking about that Jesus and His apostles were basically ignoring by not washing their hands and doing other things according to this and Jesus really gets to it, He says, looks, it's not what's on your hands, and goes in, down to Mark 7:21, He shows really what it is.  Mark 7:20-23 He says: What comes out of a man that defiles him? For from within, out of the heart of men proceeds evil thoughts. This was His real teaching that it is from the innermost heart of each of us that evil thoughts come out. The sin. He gets specific. He mentions adultery, fornication, immorality here. Murders. Thefts. Covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye. Blasphemy, pride, and foolishness. Now that's quite a range, from adultery and murder to pride and foolishness. Most of us would probably say we don't follow the first two, but can we say that we are excluded from the last two? When was the last time we did something, thought something, foolish? That falls into the category that He was talking about here. You know, as we approach sin, this is not just one passage, Romans 1 is another passage where Paul lists a whole number of sins. Again, immorality to sins of pride and rebellion and they are all on equal footing. And so we all have to look at that and not just categorize and weigh one sin more than another. But the point that he is making here is that all of this comes out of the heart. And he is speaking to the condition of human life and therefore he is speaking to us. That out of the deepest part of our emotions and feelings come these complex matters that we have to grapple with in our life. That we can make progress in them with the help of God's Spirit. To even get to a point where we overcome some of the major ones such as the adulteries or fornication here, in the area of immorality, but we might fight a bit of envy, and maybe from time to time certain feelings toward our brothers that don't measure up to the spirit of the law that we find from time to time we all have to examine. These are complex matters. They really get down to the heart of it. That give us pause to stop and consider. I think, it's my personal feeling, it's the list, I mentioned Romans 1, there's another list that Paul writes in Colossians 3:8 of things to put off. And I have to wonder, did he pull this from Jesus' list here when he wrote his own list in Romans and to the church at Colosse? Maybe. But they are all involved in what we have to deal with. And they are there for us to look at and to examine ourselves by and to think about and to recognize that it is from the heart, from the inside, that we have to make these changes and it's not just window dressing. We have to change the way we think in the deepest moments, parts of our life. And it's in the heart that those rough pieces of stone have to get chipped away. It's where change has to be made.
And so I ask again: How do we change? How do we allow God to create a clean heart within us, as David prayed back in Psalm 51? I prayed it, as I'm sure many of us have prayed it from time to time. God, create in me a clean heart. A heart that has Your law written upon it, a covenant relationship that has your in youe heart the one covenant that will endure throughout eternity. How is that done? And I thought it through a lot and I have a solution. It may not be the ultimate solution, but it is a solution that makes sense to me this morning. And I'll leave it with you here. Perhaps it will help you, as well, as we come off the Days of Unleavened Bread and as we think about this as we move toward the feast of Pentecost and all that it teaches us about the first fruits and the work of the Holy Spirit within us, which is the work of the resurrected Christ in our own lives when it's all said and done according to these scriptures we've read. How do we change? And how do we allow God to create a new heart within us? Let me leave you with three thoughts that I have.

Number One. I think I have to acknowledge the need. I have to acknowledge the need just as David did. We didn't read the entire Psalm 51, but he said, I've sinned. Against You, only You. Done this evil in my sight. Create in me a clean heart. That's an acknowledgment of sin. And that's what John writes about in 1 John 1. We do have to acknowledge. Sin resides in us at times. We are confronted with it. Call it a pang of conscience. Call it a moment of grief. Call it an awakening that we might have as a result of a sermon. A time of prayer and fasting. Or even something that we just go through. An event that we go through. Maybe nothing more than just a conversation with a fellow member at services and something dawns on us. You walk away a bit sober. And we have to acknowledge that. Here in 1 John 1:5-10, this is what John writes. And I have to utter again, when John penned these words, was he thinking about what David penned in Psalm 51? This is the message which we have heard from Him. Declare to you that God is light and there is no darkness in Him at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. Whatever shade of darkness we might be walking in, maybe a little bit of gray, a little gray area, maybe sometimes it is completely dark, but if we walk in darkness, we lie. We don't practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, see in the light we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, in other words if we fail to acknowledge a sin when it's staring us in the face and it's something that we have to act on, it's nothing more than a bit of pride and foolishness, much less something like a thought of hatred or envy or immorality. If we say we have no sin then we deceive ourselves and truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, if we acknowledge them. He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. To cleanse us from all unrighteousness. To say we have not sinned we make Him a liar and His word is not in us. 1 John 2:1-2 continues the thought. Little children these things I write so that you may not sin and if anyone sins we have an advocate with the Father. Jesus Christ the righteous, He, Himself is a propitiation of sins, not for us only but for the whole world. This is the ongoing lesson from the Days of Unleavened Bread. But the key is that we have to acknowledge, I think, as a first step the need for us to understand that something is there.

The second point, then, is that we must ask. We must ask. We must ask for help. In Matthew 7, I told you this was not going to be complicated. This is not rocket science. Starting with the heart is not difficult. It's just heart. Matthew 7:7-12, Jesus says this in the sermon on the mount. Ask, and it will be given unto you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened unto you. You have to ask God for help. You have to ask God for forgiveness. We have to ask for that need. This is what God tells us to do. Because it's not within us. Even in the act of asking we then acknowledge our need for God and Christ to be within us. We acknowledge and then we ask. For everyone who asks receives, he who seeks, finds, and to he who knocks it will be opened. What man is there among you who if his son asks for bread will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him. Therefore whatever you want men to do to you do also to them for this is the law and promise. Ask for help. Ask for understanding. Ask for discernment in our own life. But ask. And God says we will receive.

The third step, the third point, is to get specific. There is a need to be specific. That, to me, is part of the acknowledgment that we acknowledge that there is something about us that we do need to change. Need help getting knocked off the rough parts of our life, but it's important to be specific with God in prayer, in thought, and in study, and to, because in that getting specific we're also acknowledging something and we need to to ourselves. And God knows the heart, He's going to honor that. We all know the verse back in James 1 where a very practical statement James says if you lack something, ask him. And he's talking about wisdom. Wisdom can help us avoid foolishness. Wisdom can help us avoid pride. Wisdom can help a person avoid immorality. Step into that dark corner of life. Wisdom can help us in a lot of things. In James 1:5 James gets specific. If it's wisdom we need, ask for it. If it's discernment that we need, or if it's understanding that we need, ask for that. If it's a 2x4 between the eyes, from God, figuratively speaking, ask for that. And if any of you lacks wisdom let him ask of God who gives liberally without reproach and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave in the sea driven and tossed by the wind. Let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord, he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. Ask in faith. Paul said that the life he now lives, he lives by faith, the faith of the Son of God in him. Ask in faith that God will give us that help through the power of His spirit, the life of Christ within us, that we can grow in Christ, in an environment for spiritual growth. But ask in faith.

Three simple steps. Acknowledge the need. Ask for help. And then get specific. To me, that is the beginning point. Not the fullness, or the complete explanation, but at least the beginning. Starting with the heart to live a life that is transformed. A life that is the life of Christ within us. And if we start there, then from our hearts will be brought good fruit.

Back in Luke 8, in Luke's version of the parable of the sower, he makes an interesting statement that Matthew doesn't make. Luke 8. As Christ explains the parable of the sower, He talks about the s the seed that fell on good ground sprang up and yielded a crop of a hundredfold. His explanation of it down in Luke 8:15 is this: The ones that fell on the good ground, are those who having heard the word with a noble and good heart, a noble and good heart. That's you. That's anyone who has repented and accepted in faith Christ's sacrifice and has received the gift of the Holy Spirit, and in whom Christ lives His life. Then we have a good heart to the degree that that life is within us. It's no longer a purely carnal heart that is enmity against God at that time. That is the heart we have been living with and developing for decades for some of us, and bringing forth good fruit out of we have heard the word with a noble and good heart. We keep that word that has been sown there and it bear fruit with patience. That's where we start. That's how we live the transformed life. That's starting with the heart and making sure that it's right and it is bearing the fruit as a result of it's contact with the word of God and the life of Jesus Christ within us. That's how God works in knocking away the stone from our lives so that year by year, bit by bit, what emerges is an image that is created in the image of God. And that's what we're all about. That's what God's all about. His work with us. I hope that's what we can take and think deeply about coming out of the Days of Unleavened Bread as we approach the Passover service. So to live the transformed life, we have to start with the heart.