Proverb 3: 1 – 2
My son, do not forget my teaching but let your heart keep my commandments; for length of days and years of life, and peace they will add to you.
Proverbs is one of my favorite books of the Bible and this has long been one of my favorite proverbs. However, now that I am studying the heart I am hearing everything differently. Before when I have read or even when I have meditated on this scripture I have focused on “keeping His commandments” and the benefit that confers onto me. However, that isn’t really what this passage says. It doesn’t say for me to keep the commandments but rather for my heart to keep them. Why the distinction? Well, anything else would be a work of the flesh. Keeping the commandments might make me a good Pharisee but my heart keeping them makes me a good Christian or “friend of Christ” which is my definition of Christianity.
We can help ourselves to remember His teaching by continuing in Bible study. To keep it in our hearts requires us to spend some time with our hearts. We have learned that God has inscribed the entirety of His word on our hearts as part of the New Covenant which we have become a party to through the new birth. However, there is an uncovering or a discovery of all that is written there that must take place in order for us to actually keep His Word with our hearts. Head knowledge is not going to satisfy the condition precedent for the promise that God has given us in this passage. In order to have fullness of days and length of years we must keep the Word with our hearts. That first means falling in love with Jesus since He is the Word and then it means going into our hearts where God resides and allowing that Word to be revealed in the heart library. It must become real to our hearts and we must guard and keep it with our hearts rather than our brains for it to have power. Everything else is just, as one friend calls it, intellectual Christianity; fun for your brain and intellect but without life and power. The Holy Spirit doesn’t live in your brain.
God isn’t promising to do something for us if we will do what He says. He is teaching us that long life is the natural byproduct of keeping His statutes with our hearts. He isn’t so much giving a promise here as showing cause and effect. When you worship God through and with your heart you touch all that He is and when you do that, your life is always improved. So, open up the library vault of your heart through your discovery of the Word of God. Meditate therein until the indelible ink of God has saturated your being. Then all manner of blessing will flow from it.
You thought this was going to be a devotional on healing, didn’t you? Well, it is. To your good health ….
