Purity of Heart?
Today’s verse is found in Matthew.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” – Mattthew 5:8
Purity. That’s a pretty hard thing to achieve. In fact, it’s something that we cannot achieve without God.
But there has to be something that we can do to help that along, right?
Absolutely.
We can guard our heart from impurity.
Think of the old adage – “Garbage in, garbage out” – what we put into our hearts is what will come out of our hearts. But how do we put things into our hearts?
By putting thing into our minds.
Our eyes and ears are the portals through which ideas enter our mind. What we take in will affect us – even when we don’t realize it.
Have you ever been reading a book or watching a movie and you felt uncomfortable? That’s God’s Spirit nudging you to remind you that you shouldn’t be taking that into your mind.
One of the lines from the movie Inception really encapsulated this perfectly. They were talking about the most powerful virus being an idea. Once an idea is planted inside your mind, it will begin to grow and take shape and can take over your life – if it is powerful enough.
There is a lot of truth to the old kids song we used to sing – “Be careful little eyes what you see! Be careful little ears what you hear!” If we will be careful what we let in, we won’t be haunted by ideas or images that shouldn’t be there, but we can’t ever get rid of.
I remember once sitting at a friend’s house and her husband had rented the movie .8mm. Not something I want to watch! There are images in that movie that a person may never be able to get rid of – very sexually violent images.
She and I chose not to watch it, and I took my 5 month old daughter up with us to another room. But he kept his 1.5 year old down with him to watch it. I don’t know how old a person has to be before those kind of images will stick, but I would rather not chance it. Who is to say whether or not one of those images will come back later in his life – and he would have no idea where that idea came from.
22“The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light.
23“But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” – Matthew 6:22-23
If our eye is clear, it will be easier to live a life of purity. We will not be so stained and tarnished by this world if we do not take part in the wickedness of this world.
Be careful little eyes what you see.
1 comment
Makes a person think about what we watch on the tube and what we listen to on the radio. This was even a good lesson for the kids. Thx Jen.
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