Mark 7:20-23
He went on: “What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.”
Devotion
Yesterday we looked at the importance of acknowledging the reality of pride. Today we will look at the importance of acknowledging the source of pride. According to Jesus, “What comes out of a man is what makes him unclean. For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil…All these evils come from inside and make a man unclean.” In this text, Jesus challenges the normal Jewish understandings of defilement with the truth that defilement comes from an impure heart, not the violation of external rules. The Jewish people became very good at externally observing the law. Yet when Jesus spoke concerning the law, He said this, “You have heard it said to the people long ago, ‘Do not commit murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who has hatred in his heart toward a brother is guilty of murder.” The point that Jesus is making is that sin is birthed in the heart long before it ever reveals itself externally.
Sinful pride is birthed in our hearts. The heart being referred to here is the center or seat of human emotions. This has to do with both the intellectual and emotional makeup of a person. What we think about people of another race becomes part of our intellectual and emotional DNA. There are many factors that influence our thinking. Things that are said by others have a profound impact on out thought processes. Things that we see, this could be in real life or though social media, have a significant influence on how we think. What we think determines what we feel. What we feel determines what we do.
So, you see, pride and prejudice are birthed in our thought processes. We spend a lifetime cultivating these things and reinforcing these thought patterns. In the above text, Jesus is not downplaying the wrongness of murder. Instead He is pointing to the root cause of the behavior. Hatred in one’s heart leads to murder. This hatred is nurtured in one’s mind through reinforcing these negative thoughts over a long period of time. Therefore, we are instructed in 2 Corinthians 10:5 to, “take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ.”
As we begin to accept responsibility for the thoughts and attitudes that we have nurtured over a lifetime, let us start by acknowledging the depravity of our own hearts. Let us recognize that prejudice and racism come from a prideful heart that is birthed in our sinful nature. If you find that you have been influenced by hatred over the course of your life, begin to saturate your mind with God’s Word. Start to develop new thought patterns that will lead to new attitudes and new behaviors. Let the healing begin.
Questions to Ponder:
What attitudes and thoughts lie below the surface of your life? Do you daily saturate your mind with the truth of God’s Word? Will you be the one to break the generational curse of the sins of pride and prejudice? Would you be willing to share your answers to these questions with a person of a different race? If not, why not?
Prayer Points
- Ask the LORD to reveal to you any negative, hurtful attitudes, thoughts or experiences in life that are leading you to a place of pride.
- Give a trusted friend or co-worker permission to share in a loving way things they see that do not glorify God.
- Ask God to help you make time to be in the bible daily. Do what you need to do to protect that time, think of it as an appointment with the LORD.
- Walking in the Spirit is active and on-going. Praying without ceasing is also on-going. To be able to take every thought captive, we need the help of the Spirit of God living within us to do that. Ask Him for help! Metacognition is a fancy teaching term that refers to thinking about your thinking. That’s what we need to be doing throughout the day as well as talking and listening to the LORD. Then as we start to meditate on evil things you will notice it. The Holy Spirit will be grieved inside of you and you will notice and take that thought captive by having another thought.
- Pray for us as a nation to humble ourselves, to ask Holy Spirit to search our own hearts, minds and lives. Ask Him to reveal to each one of us our wicked ways. That we may repent.
Suggested Prayer
Eternal Father, I worship and adore You for You are worthy of all my praise. I declare Your goodness even in the midst of so much sin and heartache. You are perfect and good, I am not! Forgive me Abba for I have sinned against You and I have sinned against others. Have mercy upon me and lead me into Your truth I ask in the Name of Jesus Christ.
God, I ask for myself and Your greater one church to repent from any passivity, greed, pride, selfishness, abuse, pain, racial discrimination, prejudice, racial blindness and inequality- have mercy upon us LORD and grant us Your forgiveness. Forgive us Father for all the times we have been part of the problem rather than allowing You to work in all our hearts and to allow for the process of restorative justice to take place.
We have sinned against You LORD and our brothers and sisters in Christ and those made in Your image by all the times we have tried to put a Band-Aid over the real issue of race. Have mercy LORD and enable us by Your grace and power to invite those we have wounded into conversations to really hear their heart and hear their reality.
Grant us grace to enter into a conversation to understand why, what, how, when, and for how long. Forgive us for not looking back at history and for not really listening from our hearts so that we could join in with reconciliation. God for myself, Oak Pointe Church and Your greater one Church Family, I ask that You grant us perseverance, strength and unity to be real, honest, transparent, humble and broken before You and others. I ask that we would all be grieved by our sin and that You would make something beautiful out of all this tragedy. Forgive us LORD! I ask in the Name of Jesus Christ. Amen.