04-07-24-ENG.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

Matthew 5:8
To see God who is holy means we need to look toward Him with spiritual eyes. We need to purify our hearts. We are told that we are blessed when we have pure hearts, and we will see God as a result. Many of us are not seeing God for ourselves because we are taking in that which has contaminated our spiritual systems. We are allowing in the pollutants of the culture, which then produce watery, itchy spiritual eyes. Anyone knows that it is more difficult to see clearly when your eyes are watering and red. These cultural contaminants cloud our vision to such a degree that we no longer recognize or experience His work, power, provision, transformation, deliverance, and victory firsthand. Sure, we may hear about these things from others, but when we look around our own lives, we cannot see God up close and personal for ourselves.

To see God, your heart must be pure. Your heart must be undefiled. Spiritually speaking, a pure heart means singleness of devotion. It means to love all of God with all of you, not just a portion of you for a time. Purity of heart means you are no longer disconnected from God by allowing something else to defile your relationship with Him. As we’ve seen earlier through some of the other kingdom values, God and sin are irreconcilable. The two don’t get along. You wouldn’t want to live in a house with rotten garbage piled up all around you, and neither does God want to abide in the temples of our souls with rotten, sinful garbage. In order to get rid of the trash in our homes, we take it out. Similarly, we must repent of sin and turn from it in order to be clean within and have a pure heart. God simply can’t be comfortable where unrighteousness is allowed to express itself freely. This description of being “pure in heart” has to do with not allowing the contaminants of sin to penetrate the heart so as to cause God to have to remove himself or to distance himself from intimacy with you.

Many Christians today carry on a long-distance relationship with God. They are more like Pluto than Mercury. They are a long way off. And because they are a long way off, they are cold like Pluto, too. The further you are from the proximity of God, the colder your heart grows because He is the Source of love, compassion, and light. What Jesus reminds us in this kingdom value is that if we are going to get to see God at a more intimate level than the average person does, and if we are going to experience God more deeply than we ever have before, then we must chase after the cleansing of our hearts. We must live with a pursuit of purity. Now, don’t misunderstand this. Jesus’ concern is about purity—real purity. It’s easy to camouflage ourselves so that we look a lot cleaner than we are. We can dust off some wrong desires or scrub away some sin for a season. It’s easy to mask unrighteousness with a righteous look or by saying seemingly righteous sayings. Jesus knows us intimately and can see through any façade we may erect to fool people around us. That’s why He called the Pharisees out like He did when He said, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside they are full of robbery and self-indulgence” (Matthew 23:25). In other words, Jesus told them He saw through their external façade that made it appear they were on the up and up.

He saw past their external attire that made it look like they and God were running buddies. He didn’t fall for their fancy words or inside jokes that made it seem like they were hanging out with God on the regular. No, Jesus told them they were nothing but whitewashed tombs full of dead men’s bones. A whitewashed tomb may appear crisp and clean on the outside, but once you peer inside, you’ll find nothing but stench, rot, and filth of all kinds. God is not after a purity of look, or a purity of location, or even a purity of religious activity. None of that matters if the heart itself is impure. None of that means anything if you have a heart far removed from God. In order to see God and recognize His hand in your life and His guidance to your heart, you must purify your heart so that you can dwell near Him, in close proximity relationally. 

Reaction:
What is one thing you can work on to help purify your heart more than it is right now? What are some hesitations you may have toward purifying your heart, if any? What happens in your life when you draw close to God and recognize His hand in your life? 

Prayer:
Jesus, purify my heart to such a degree that enables me to clearly see God and His work in my life. I repent of the sin that contaminates my life. I want to be rid of bitterness, unforgiveness, and all other sins that I have become comfortable with allowing. Help me be pure, Jesus, as You are pure. I pray this in Your name, amen.