Heart Attitudes

Heart Attitudes

January 4

Amaziah was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem . . . He did right in the Lord's sight, but not with a perfect or blameless heart. —2 Chronicles 25:1,2When God asks for our heart, He is asking for our entire life, which includes our personality, character, body, mind, emotions. The heart is the real person, not the person everybody sees. The church and the world are looking for someone who is real. In 2 Chronicles 25:1,2 we read about a king who had a negative condition of the heart. In this passage King Amaziah 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 it still will not be acceptable to God because we do it with a wrong heart. Let's take giving, for example. In 2 Corinthians 9:7 we are told that God loves a cheerful giver, one who does not give out of compulsion or with a bad attitude but out of a willing heart. In fact, it says that God loves a cheerful giver so much that He is absolutely unwilling to do without one. He will take our gift even if we are stingy and unwilling. He may take our money, and He may use it for His kingdom, but that is not the heart attitude He wants us to have when we give. There is a physical heart and a spiritual heart, and the two are parallel. Physically speaking, the heart is the most important bodily organ. Spiritually speaking, I believe the heart is the most important aspect of the spiritual body. And it is the most important thing the believer or the leader can give to God. That is why the condition of our heart is so important. It is not lack of ability or potential that prevents most people from making progress and enjoying fulfillment in life; I believe it is wrong heart attitudes. JM