How is your heart?

This past week I had the opportunity to share some thoughts with our church. The theme was purity and specifically purity of heart. The thoughts came from a passage in Titus. As the story goes, this one was more for me than for everyone else. So here is just a simple recap of the thoughts.

“Everything is pure to those whose hearts are pure. But nothing is pure to those who are corrupt and unbelieving, because their minds and consciences are corrupted. Such people claim they know God, but they deny Him by the way they live. They are detestable and disobedient, worthless for doing anything good.”
Titus 1:15-16

Paul talks like he's from Jersey. Straight and to the point. Our usefulness to God is tied to the condition of our hearts. A corrupt heart is worthless for doing anything good. Ouch. Not worthless to God, just worthless for doing anything good. Our hearts are the key to making our lives count.

I'm sure you are familiar with computer files. They carry data. Occasionally, this data has unintended information introduced to it, which corrupts or damages the file. The result is an error message that indicates the condition of the file as "Corrupted." There are two things you can do with a corrupted file, you can try a system restore, and go back to a previously backed up file. Or, you delete it. Electronic pruning. Because that file is only taking up space and is no longer useful.

Our hearts are the key to our usefulness. When anger, bitterness, sin, doubt, pain, and other symptoms of brokenness are introduced into our hearts, they begin to corrupt us. We have two options: We can try to repair the broken things or we can prune and start new. Both of these are only accomplished by the Master Fixer and the Master Cleaner. I once heard someone ask, "How do you stay pure in an impure world?" The answer? "You don't. You just wash often." In order to keep our hearts pure and worthwhile for accomplishing good, we need to maintain pure hearts. Not perfect, just cleaned regularly.

So, how is your heart? Is it clean? Or is corruption beginning to affect who you are? Read 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 to be reminded of the role our hearts play in our usefulness to God. It all boils down to God's presence. In order to maintain a clean heart, you have to stay close to the Master Cleaner. Then, you'll be able to hear those words, "Well done, good and faithful servant."