Cleansing the Heart

What the Lord—pardon the redundancy—laid on my heart is the subject of cleansing the heart. And I chose this subject of cleansing or healing the heart because I have realized that it is a great need among God’s people, beginning with me. I need the Lord to cleanse my heart frequently, every day. And I know that each one of us needs the Lord to do that.

Many times, our hearts are contaminated, and we contaminate our interpersonal relationships as well. Does that ever happen to you in your homes? Even though they are Christian homes, there can be discord, difficult moments, unresolved conflicts, and wrong attitudes. And all those things originate in the heart. So, seeing that need—because I see it every day, not only in my life but in those who are close to me, in the world, and in the church—I think it is something that needs to be addressed here in the church.

We have a tendency to divide sins into major sins and minor sins. And the major ones—well, there is no need to mention them—murder, for example. Killing is a major sin, right? No one doubts that it is a great sin. But what we often do is say, “Well, I don’t do this, I don’t do that, and I don’t do the other thing, so everything is fine.” But we fail to see that we often sin in ways that are, in quotation marks, “minor,” yet those are ways that gradually poison our environment. And we are responsible for putting a stop to it, for taking note of those things, asking the Lord for healing, and doing something about them. That is the responsibility of every Christian. We live by inertia. A Christian, by definition, should be someone who has an impact on their world, who has an impact on those around us.

So, for that and many other reasons, I decided to bring up this subject today, because one important thing is that when our heart is not clean, when it is not pure, our relationships become poisoned, right? And we have to do something. Otherwise, we do not have the abundant life God has determined for us to have. We do not live it; instead, we live like beggars despite having so much wealth stored up in heaven because Christ paid the price. Yet we live here amid discord and problems. And at some point, we have to say, “Enough already. Let’s do something about it.”

And that is something that does not happen—I mean, day by day, this is not so that we will feel guilty or condemned. It is simply that when we see a difficult situation, when we know that our heart is contaminated, we should do something about it. That is what God desires. And we are going to be better people, those around us are going to be happier people as well, and love is going to grow.

So, what I want to do this morning is, first, talk a little about what the Bible calls the heart; it is an entity in the Bible. What is the heart according to the Bible? Second, I want us to talk about some principles for life regarding the heart, and third, about some strategies for how we can care for our heart so that it remains healthy. So that is what we are going to do today. And now, let us pray before getting fully into the message.

Lord, thank you, Father, for this opportunity. Lord, thank you for your Word, which is so rich, Lord, for your effective Word, Lord. Father, you know that I have prayed for the message to go directly where it needs to go—to the heart, Lord. Father, I ask you to perform miracles today, Lord—miracles of healing in the heart, of cleansing in the heart, Lord. And because we have heard what your Word says about this, Lord, may we live different lives. Lord, may our mind and our heart be transformed so that, from this point forward, we set goals to honor you well in everything, Lord, even in the meditations within our heart, Lord. May we bring honor and glory to you, Lord. And even more, Lord, may we bring honor and glory to you, Lord, in the way we treat others. Thank you, Lord. I know that you are in this place, Lord, and I know that for days now, Lord, you have been working, Lord, so that this Word will reach where it needs to go, Lord, and bear abundant fruit. Thank you, Lord. Thank you for your faithfulness, God, in the name of Jesus. Amen.

There are 955 mentions of the heart in the Bible. That is quite a lot, isn’t it? If we consider that God mentions it so often—mentions the heart so often—it must be an important subject to him, right? That is quite logical. From a biblical point of view, the heart is the seat or source of our passions, our motivations, our will, and our mental or intellectual processes; it is the source of wisdom. In other words, the heart is the center of the personality.

And it is there, in the heart—not in our limbs, not in the central nervous system, but in the heart—that all human actions take place. You must first process them in the heart for an action to occur. So it is a very, very important biblical entity.

We know that Christ came to redeem our entire being, right? He not only paid a high price, a great price, an exquisite price for our spirit so that we could have eternal life, but he also came to redeem our entire being; he came to redeem the mind, the body, the soul, and the heart. In other words, he wants to be the owner of everything, and he came to redeem our entire being. Therefore, as children of God, we must live balanced lives and attend to every area of our being.

In fact, our salvation begins when we open our heart to the Lord, right? So many times, we ourselves responded one day to the Lord’s call: “Open your heart and come to me.” And the Word says in Romans 10:9: “...if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved...”

So, right from there, from the beginning of the Christian life, God deals directly with the heart—and in fact, even before that, right?—when we feel those tugs from God, when God calls us and sometimes we resist until, finally, one day we say yes to him and truly open our heart. And it is when the Lord comes to dwell in our heart that we begin to be able to savor and experience the love of God. Before that, we had merely heard about it; we heard about the love of God. But once we truly say, “Yes, come into my heart,” then we begin to experience what the love of God is.

And sometimes it takes us a while. I know, because that was my process as well, and I know that perhaps it was the process for many of you, when we begin to love the Lord in a somewhat strange way. We love him with our head, and even with our head we say, “I would even be willing to give my life for you, Lord, and I want to do this and that for you.” Yet it still has not reached the level of the heart. And that process we all go through—I believe it is a process. At first, we sometimes love the Lord intellectually, and then, when we truly understand the love of God, that love becomes real and we love him from the heart.

I know that when I accepted the Lord, I acknowledged him; my mind was one hundred percent focused, and I believed. Yet my heart still had not caught up with my intellect. And the Lord did a work so that I could finally fall in love with him. And that is what God wants from each one of us: not only that we love him with our mind, with our head, intellectually, but that we be in love with him. There is a big difference, right? When you are in love, you will do anything; you see little birds flying where there are none, you have butterflies in your heart, and everything looks more beautiful. And the Lord wants us to have those kinds of experiences with him as well, to surrender our mind and our heart so that we are in love with him too.

Because God is love. He loves each one of us. God paid a great price so that we could be here and have eternal salvation. Sometimes we think others invented love, but God is the inventor of love. It was not Hollywood with its movies; it was not Hallmark with its syrupy little cards, right? Nor was it Saint Valentine—none of that. It is God, and God’s love is different from every other love. God’s love is eternal and true. In God there is no emotionally charged imitation of love. It is genuine love, one hundred percent real.

And God is a specialist in heart surgery. Since he created us, since he is the originator of love, he is a specialist in heart surgery. And notice that in Psalm 51, verse 10, David says: “...create in me, O God, a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within me...”

David knew that God could renew the heart. And the Lord also performs heart transplants, and I can prove it to you from Scripture as well. It says in Jeremiah 36:26: “...I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh...”

So trust God: God not only changes the heart you have, but sometimes he also takes that heart out, throws it far away, and puts in a new heart—a heart of flesh, as it says, a heart that truly beats and is tender.

And another truth about the heart and about God is that God knows everything about you. If he created you, if he created your heart, he knows everything about it. Nothing shocks him; nothing troubles him beyond his power, because he has the power to heal it. Nothing like that. He knows it, and in fact, Jeremiah says that the heart is the most deceitful thing there is. Therefore, no matter how hard you try, even you will not know what is in your heart.

Doesn’t that happen to you sometimes, when you are surprised by the things you are feeling or the things you have done? And you say, “But where did that come from?” We think we know ourselves, but the truth is that the heart can deceive even us. But that same verse says that although the heart is deceitful, it also asks, “Who can know it?” And the answer is: Jehovah. Only Jehovah knows it, only he does. Therefore, we must place our trust in what God says about our heart and in God’s purposes for our life, instead of placing it in our own heart. We often need to change our focus.

Many times, we let ourselves be led too much by the heart, and I have seen people like that. Whatever their heart tells them, that is what they do. And what happens? To use a very common expression, they keep putting their foot in it all the time, because there is no clear awareness of what God wants to do—only of what my heart dictates. And that is seen continually in this society.

We constantly hear people say, “Do whatever seems right to you, whatever feels right.” What a ridiculous thing. How are we going to do whatever feels right? Some of us might be in jail, and we would have many more problems than we already have. We cannot do whatever feels right. We must do what is right according to the Word, correct? So let us not be deceived by what the heart says, by where the heart leads us; instead, let us see what God wants us to do.

In Colossians 3, there is a passage where the Apostle Paul describes the relational behavior of a child of God. It is a very, very beautiful description. And what I did—we are not going to read it directly from the Word—is personalize it. Instead of presenting it as it appears in the Word, I rewrote it using the same words and the same content, but from the perspective of “I,” the pronoun “I.” And what I want is for all of us to read it together. As we read it, we are going to treat it as a diagnostic test. When you read the Word, the Word should help us discern what God’s purpose is and what I am doing in comparison with what the Word says, right? That is the point; otherwise, we are reading like parrots.

So what we are going to do is view it as a diagnosis. As we read it, let us consider whether each of these things applies to me as a person. So let us begin... We are going to read it together; you more or less follow my lead so that we are not all reading in our own tone. So let us begin.

This is Colossians 3, verses 9 through 17, and I hope it is projected up there, so read it with me.

“I am a new man; I have put off the old man and his deeds, and I have put on the new man, who continues to be renewed according to the image of the God who created me. I am chosen by God, holy and loved by him. I am clothed with heartfelt mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Therefore, I am tolerant of others; I ask for forgiveness if someone has a complaint against me, and I forgive when I have a complaint against someone else. I forgive in the same way Christ forgives me. In addition to all these things, I am also clothed with love, and this enables me to live in unity with others. The peace of God rules my heart, and I am thankful. The Word of Christ dwells richly within me so that I can teach and exhort others with all wisdom, and for that reason I sing psalms and spiritual hymns to the Lord, which flow from the grace he has placed in my heart. And whatever I do, whether in word or deed, I do it in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. I do everything wholeheartedly and for the Lord. Amen.”

That is Colossians 3. Okay. How did the outfit fit you? How did it fit? Was it nice and snug? Was it a little loose? Was it much too loose? Someone here says it was too big for her. In one sense, it is somewhat too big for all of us in a way, but this is a passage that speaks to us... Notice that part of it concerns this person’s spiritual relationship with God, and part of it shows how spiritual relationships have repercussions on interpersonal relationships.

And there we see many, many details in that passage. We are not going to discuss it, but if you look, this is a person who has been clothed with the new self. It is a person who is conscious of her identity in Christ. She has the qualities of the fruit of the Spirit, such as gentleness, humility, and all those things. She asks for forgiveness and has a grateful heart. She is filled with peace. The Word of God is not merely something she reads, but something that dwells within her. And so on; and everything she does, she does for the Lord.

So all of those are qualities we need in order to live in peace and have healthy relationships with others. And all of those things originate in the heart. You saw that the passage mentions the word heart several times, because that is where everything originates.

So, when we read the Word, let us see how that fits me. Am I clothed with what that Word says I must clothe myself with? Does that Word describe me? How does it describe me? There are things I am doing and other things I am not doing. Is this what I practice in my life? Does my home resemble the description I am seeing there?

In other words, we have to ask all those questions and answer them truthfully. It would be ideal if we lived out what that Word says. If that were so, we would all have wonderful homes, wonderful workplaces, wonderful churches—everything would be well. So let us practice what that Word says.

That Scripture contains the elements all of us need in order to live harmonious lives. And notice that the person who can achieve this is not an exceptionally gifted or extraordinary person; she is a very ordinary person like you and me, who has simply taken the Word of God seriously and has truly prayed and acted so that her heart may be clean.

In other words, let us not read these things and think, “Oh, if they knew about the problems I have at home, they would know that this is impossible. Oh, this is just the way I am, and I cannot act that way.” That is a lie. Every one of us can aspire to this—not through our own strength or our own abilities, but through what God has placed within us by the power of God.

So do not think, “I can’t.” Think exactly the opposite: “Yes, I can, and that is the way I am going to live.” What has characterized the person in this passage is that she has put off the old self. She has rejected the nature contaminated by sin, with all its problems; and, on the other hand, she has not merely rejected it and then remained empty. In other words, we first have to empty ourselves, but we cannot remain empty; we must then fill ourselves with the identity God gives us.

What does God say about me? Well, that is what I am. If God says that I am a new person and that I can do all those things, then yes, I can; and that should be the goal of every one of us, even though it may be difficult to fulfill all of God’s purpose for my life.

And that reminds me of a story I heard some time ago. I heard Toñita tell this story several times. It was a story that took place in the Dominican Republic. There was an elderly woman who visited a church for the first time with a friend who had spent years urging her, “Come on, let’s go to church, let’s go to church—you’re going to like it,” and she always said no. Finally, her friend was so persistent that she said, “I’m going to church.” Well, this elderly woman, a very dignified married lady, went to church and liked everything: she liked the songs of praise; she even liked the announcements. She was very pleased with the sermon, but the pastor was one of those very fiery Pentecostal preachers—and, Lord, we know that we are Pentecostals, which is why I can say that—and at the most fiery point in the sermon, the pastor said, “No one is leaving here today until each person puts off the old man.” Upon hearing this, the woman stood up in great anger and said, “Well, now, I’ll do whatever you want, but I am not leaving my old man, no!” So the woman got up, went home, and to this day she is still with her old man—with the old man.

So, if you have one of those old men, do not leave him. Do not leave that one, but do leave the old self. Exactly: stay with the one who is at home. As for the one who is inside you, in your heart, put him off.

There is a similarity between the natural heart and the spiritual heart. We know that the heart as an organ is essential to life, right? In order for us to function healthily, the heart must be healthy. Conversely, a diseased heart—a diseased heart organ—will affect the whole body, and we will not be able to feel well. The same thing happens spiritually. If your heart is healthy, if your spiritual heart, according to the Bible, is healthy and free of impurities, you will be able to go into battle against anything that tries to contaminate your heart, and you will overcome. Conversely, if your heart is sick, you will contaminate the rest of your being, and you will also contaminate others.

So it is very important for us to take care of our hearts. And I want to speak to you about some principles concerning the heart, about what the Word says regarding our relationship with this entity we call the heart. The first thing is that the heart is strategically important. Remember that we said at the beginning that the heart is the seat of the will, the passions, the motivations, and the intellect. The heart is the very center of the personality. Therefore, if it is so important, it has strategic importance. And so it is important for us to ask ourselves: Who owns my heart?

Because what happens is that whoever owns the heart owns everything else. So who owns your heart? We know that from the very beginning, from the beginning of creation, Satan has known this. Satan goes straight for the heart, and from the Garden of Eden we see how he went directly for Eve’s heart first. And what did he sow in Eve’s heart? He sowed doubt about God’s character and about whether what God said was true. He sowed doubt, and as a consequence of that doubt came disobedience and sin. And we know that Adam and Eve, who lived in a privileged, protected place and had a very beautiful, harmonious relationship, suddenly lost all of that, and all kinds of complications began to enter their lives.

So Satan goes straight for the heart. In other words, we have to contend with him all the time. This happens to you, doesn’t it? Sometimes you are in a difficult situation—don’t you hear it? If you look at the cartoons—I do not know whether they still show this, but when I was little, a little angel would appear here and a little devil over there, a little drawing of the angel here and the devil there—and the angel would whisper, “Look, what you have to do is what is right,” while the devil would say, “No, what you have to do is this other thing.”

Well, that seems funny, but many times that is what actually happens. We have Satan whispering these things in our ears, telling us what we must do, which will obviously go against God’s plan. So, if that is real, we have to be aware of it: aware that he wants to harm us and contaminate our hearts. And we have to do something to fight against him.

I believe that—and it makes me angry. I believe it is time for each of us to say to Satan in our own lives, “Enough already. Do not even talk to me, because I am not going to listen to you. The owner of my heart is Jesus, not you. You have no part or place in my life.” You know what? That is the best spiritual warfare we can wage. If we lived out Colossians 3 in our lives, that would be the most exquisite form of spiritual warfare, the thing most opposed to Satan’s purpose. So let us live according to what Scripture says. Let us live in peace. Let us control our emotions. Let us cleanse our hearts.

And just as Satan attacks our hearts, God also speaks to our hearts continually. He knows that, for us to live full lives, he must be the owner of our hearts. We cannot have divided hearts. We cannot have two owners. We can have only one, and that is the Lord Jesus. No one—no one else.

And that is why, in Matthew 22:37, the Lord says, “...you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind...”

He knows that the only way we can live full lives is by loving God with all our hearts. We have the privilege of having a God who is not distant. Our God is personal; he becomes involved in our lives. He attends to the great matters of our lives and also to the tiniest details of our lives. He is our beloved. A little while ago we were singing—I do not remember the song—but we were singing a song about how I am his beloved and he is my beloved as well. It is a personal relationship: God wants to have intimate fellowship with us. He is not a God who is far away; he is a God who is here now. He is the one beside us; he is like the Comforter who is right here by our side, continually acting on our behalf. That is our God.

And if that is our God, why not entrust our hearts to him every day and recognize that our hearts have strategic importance and that we must therefore take care of them? And since sin is born in the heart, every change or transformation must also be born in the heart, right? So why is it so difficult to overcome bad attitudes, prejudices, a bad temper, verbal abuse, a controlling attitude, jealousy, bitterness—and the list goes on? Why is it so difficult? Why? Why is it so hard for us to overcome those things? Why do we allow ourselves to be ruled by the flesh so many times? Sometimes it even happens unexpectedly, and we do not even know why it happens to us. Why does what Paul says—the passage Roberto has been reading in Romans—happen to us? “...For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I do...”

Why do we do that?

Why do I curse others instead of blessing them? Why do I wound people through words and actions? Why do I sometimes give free rein to my anger instead of controlling it? Why do I so often choose not to forgive and to imprison the other person? Why do I sometimes want to take revenge on people? If I am already a new person, why do those things happen?

You know the general answer, right? Why? Because there is sin in the heart, right? That is the general answer, but I have learned in my life that unless I examine the matter more carefully and in finer detail, I will not discover my own reason why—one that will help me improve as a person. So let us think about several specific reasons why we do not do what God says and allow ourselves to be ruled by the flesh.

One of the first things is immaturity or ignorance. We must acknowledge that many of us have stopped developing emotionally and decided to remain little children. The tantrums we threw when we were little are the same tantrums we throw as adults. And we decide, “No, that is just the way I am.”

I had an uncle who has since died. I was speaking with him about something, about a bad attitude he had, and I said to him, “But, Uncle, you can change. Look, do this,” trying to strike up a conversation with him. And he asked me, “How old am I?” I said, “Uncle, you are 75 years old.” “Well, then... at 75 years old, I am not going to change.” That is a lie from Satan. Of course we can change. How can we choose to remain stagnant and small when we can continue growing? We can grow until the final day of our lives. There is no excuse for us. For those who are in God, our life is a dynamic life. Christians have dynamic lives. They must never say, “This is as far as I go; I am not going to grow anymore.” Never. We have the opportunity to continue growing because all the resources of heaven are at our disposal.

So that is one reason: immaturity or ignorance. Sometimes we think that we can hurt others because others have hurt us, and that this justifies us. Or, “Since he does it to me, or she does it to me, I will do it back. They deserve it anyway.” Then all those justifications begin, and once again, they are lies.

At other times, we assert our rights: “I have the right to feel this way or that way because of what he did to me or did not do, what he failed to do, what he did not say...” And we have all these tangled thoughts that then keep us from growing. We remain very small, and we cannot do that.

The other thing is that we are creatures of habit. Many times, in our relationships, we are used to this pattern: he does something, I respond; the little girl said something, so I say such-and-such to her; and so it goes—they did something to me, so I do something back. And they are simply habits that, if we could truly observe them carefully, if we stepped away for a moment and asked, “What is happening here? Do I have to keep acting the same way, contaminating my environment, or can I do something about it?” Sometimes a very small change can bring about a great transformation in an entire environment. Sometimes all it takes is a small change in your attitude and for you to say, “I am going to control such-and-such; I am going to master this.” That can create a change in your environment. Try it. I have tried it, and I see that it always works.

In any case, look, even if there is no change in your environment because you changed, you still win. You win anyway because you are growing. Forget about what others think, do, or say, or how much they kick and scream. That is their problem. Our responsibility is for us to change. If we change, we will very likely see a change in others as well.

It is also because we are selfish. Are you selfish? Are any of you selfish? We are all selfish. No one can say that they do not like things to be done their way, right? Perhaps you have learned to yield and negotiate, but truly, if we are honest, we all like others to do what we want. So we are selfish creatures, and we function very well when everything is going well for us. But when there is conflict or difficulty, then the old man comes out from inside like a monster, returns once again, and bares his claws. And we simply have to tell him, “No, old man, you stay hidden; you stay thrown away where you were. Down there in hell—you have nothing to do here.”

Sometimes it happens in things as simple as a food line. I have seen it several times, and I have seen it in church. When the people at the back see that the food is already running out... the bad attitudes begin, and they think, “Look, so-and-so took two drumsticks instead of the one she was entitled to.” And they start going, “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah...” And they get upset, fidget, and grumble. Why? Are we going to die because we do not eat that, because we get three grains of rice instead of a full plate? No, nothing is going to happen to us. So let us not think that someone is offending us over those things. Let us simply let it go.

On the road, right? Because sometimes... that is where the worst in me comes out. I control it in the name of the Lord, but sometimes you see things, and people do things to you on the road that make you immediately want to do the same thing back to them. So there are moments when that is going to come out. In the division of inheritances, how many siblings who loved one another up to that point stop speaking to or associating with one another for years, or mistreat one another, because something in the inheritance did not turn out exactly as they wanted? Because instead of receiving 35,000 dollars and 5 cents, they received only the 35,000.

Life will always provide opportunities for conflict, and from the outset we have to say, “Conflicts are not going to control me. I am not going to bring bad attitudes into the situation; I am not going to hurt anyone because there is conflict. I am going to act in those conflicts as God wants me to act.” That is a principle for life, and unless you resolve that now, when the moment comes, you will fail. That is a principle by which we should live.

Sometimes we are also afraid to try something and have it not work. You say, “Well, what if I treat my husband lovingly and he keeps saying harsh things to me? What if I do this and it does not work for me?” Again, let us not do it only for the sake of change; let us do it for ourselves.

And another reason why it is so difficult, and why we persist in making the same mistakes time after time, is that we find it very difficult to make changes in a heart that has already hardened. There are many degrees of hardness of heart, but sometimes we reach a point when our heart is so hard because we have all been hurt. No one here, unless perhaps it is a baby, can say that they have not had a significant wound in their heart. All of us have, in some way. You may even come from a very privileged and loving home, and when you go to college, someone may hurt you or fail to treat you with respect. In other words, at some point in life, someone is going to wound our heart.

And what happens when we are wounded is that life, so to speak, begins to write messages on our heart, and those messages begin to determine our life—messages such as: “No one cares about me,” or, “No one loves me.” “I have to defend my own rights, because otherwise someone will take advantage of me.” “I will not tolerate from any man what my mother tolerated from my father.” “If someone does something to me, I will make them pay.” You get the idea, right?

Many times we live by maxims like those, and it is up to each one of us to find out why. In counseling, I have seen how, for example, a woman who grew up with a womanizing, abusive father develops an overbearing attitude when she enters into her own relationship with a husband—an attitude of, “You certainly will not do that to me.” Imagine: if from the very beginning we start with defensive attitudes, what can we expect from that marriage? There will be separation and division from the very beginning.

And I know that many times we have attitudes; we have messages written on our heart that God did not put there. We have to recognize that they are lies with which Satan and others wanted to brand our heart, and we have to say, “No, no more. That does not describe me. That describes the old man or the old woman, but it does not describe me.”

And that is liberating. When you truly look at your heart with great intelligence and discernment and realize what is written there, and you take off that label, tear it off, throw it far away, and replace it with the identity of Christ in your life, you will see how your life changes. It is something wonderful. I challenge you to do it.

Because when we allow those messages written on our heart to control us, what we do is cover our heart with a protective layer so that no one will wound or harm us. But that interferes with having healthy relationships with others and with what God can do in our heart, because no one can penetrate it.

Haven’t you met people whom you look at and say, “This is a facade; this is not the person as they truly are. This is a facade. What pain, what wound was there that marked that person in that way?”

So let us analyze our own lives, because I know—I have had to remove labels from my life, and when I have removed them, I have realized how free I am in the Lord. So if you have problems of that kind, if you consistently have problems with people, if the same people are always telling you the same thing—“Look, you did it again; you did this, the same thing over and over”—I truly believe it is time for us to say, “Well, perhaps there is some truth to this. Let me at least analyze it and see what I can do about it.”

And you will see. Then call upon the presence of the Lord and the healing power of the Lord, and I assure you that He will heal your heart and cleanse your heart. As we said before, God places purity in the heart and cleanses the heart, and if our heart is so damaged, He throws it away and gives us a new one. So if we have those resources, why not take advantage of them? Ask the Lord for healing and commit yourself to doing what He wants you to do.

Another point, which we have already seen indirectly, is that you have the authority to decide what enters your heart. Our heart is not completely vulnerable unless we allow it to be vulnerable. We have the power of God within us, so we have to guard our heart and pay attention to what enters it, because we have the authority to do so.

Someone once said that we cannot keep birds from flying over our head, but we can keep them from building a nest on our head, isn’t that right? And it is the same with the heart. Many times we cannot prevent the situations that happen and bring strong emotions into our lives; those emotions may hover around the heart, but under no circumstances do we have to allow them to enter the heart, settle there, and cause harm. So we do have control over that.

Remember that temptations and emotions that could be harmful are not sin in themselves. Feeling anger or feeling upset is not sin in itself; the problem is what we decide to do with temptations and harmful emotions. That is where the problem lies: in what we do, not in feeling them, because sometimes a person says, “Oh, well, I feel that,” and then feels guilty. No. Go before the Lord; ask the Lord to take the emotion away as well if it is affecting you, but do not think that you have sinned. That is a completely different process.

Proverbs 4:23 says, “...above all else that is guarded, guard your heart, for from it flows life.”

And that is a reality. I practice that verse and am always watchful, because that verse tells me that I am responsible for what enters my heart. I am not a puppet that emotions manipulate according to their whims. No, quite the opposite: I decide what enters my heart and what does not enter my heart. And in the power of God, I can strip away what entered my heart before and is contaminating it, and then I can ask the Lord to replace it with things that please and honor Him and that bring healthy relationships into my life.

Never ignore your heart. Most of us ignore the heart. We go on with life because what is easier? Going on with life, continuing to busy ourselves with our work and our affairs, rather than paying attention to the heart, because sometimes it hurts and because it takes work. But I believe that we always have to remain in conversation with the heart.

If we are in conversation with our heart and with God every day, we will be able to remain alert to what is happening there. I practice that. In fact, there is something I do when I am facing a very difficult situation, do not know how to handle it, and my emotions are confused. You know, I have a mental shelf; in my mind, I have a shelf. You cannot see it, but I know I have it there. It is a bookcase; it is there. Then I say, “Okay, I do not understand you right now. You are a strange animal to me.” I do not understand this emotion; I do not understand what I have to do. Perhaps I do not understand God’s purpose in it.

So what I do is take that strange thing that I do not understand, put it on the shelf, and leave it there to mature for a few days. I say, “Okay, now you stay there, and later...” You are thinking that I am strange; you are looking at me as though to say, “This woman is strange!” I leave it there. And then afterward, when I am calmer and have prayed, I revisit it, and then—look—God has always given me new insight into how to view that problem and how to resolve it. It really works every time. Never make decisions; never react at the moment when the emotion is strongest. Wait a little while, let it soak, marinate it a little, and then revisit it and see... But first, obviously, bring the Lord into the matter. Cover it in prayer, and you will see how it is resolved much more easily. Remain in continual conversation with your heart.

I am going to give you an example from my life in which I practiced that. I asked permission to share it because it is an example involving my oldest daughter, Sonia; I asked her permission to share this. When Sonia was about 14 years old, she went through a somewhat difficult stage. That happens to some teenagers, right? They go through somewhat difficult stages. The thing was that if I said yes, she said no. If I said green, she said red. In other words, everything was contrary—very, very difficult—and it was something that went on and on and on. The moment came when, one day, we had a difficult situation in which she said some hurtful words to me, and I responded—or rather, my heart, not I, my heart responded with hatred, because I was already so burdened and already had so much resentment in my heart. And at that moment I thought, “Make her disappear.” I even felt violence toward her.

When I felt that, I said, “This cannot be. This is not from God. How can I relate to my daughter in this way?” And what I did was nothing; I did not say anything to her. The situation simply happened, I shut myself in my room and began to pray, and I said to Him, “Lord, this is what is in my heart. I have discovered that at this moment there is resentment in my heart, there is hatred, and there are even violent emotions toward my daughter. God, I know that does not please You. I ask Your forgiveness. Forgive me, Lord,” because it had already reached the point where I did not pray for her anymore, I no longer wanted to see her; it was a difficult situation. And I know that many of you can identify with me because you have gone through those situations with your children, with your wife, with your husband—with anyone; that happens to us.

And so, when I shut myself in my room, I opened my heart to the Lord and said to Him, “Look, Lord, this is what is here. You know it anyway, and this is what is here right now. Heal my heart; do not allow this to take root in my heart in such a way that it determines how I am going to relate to my daughter.” Because I thought about many things. “She is 14 now, but one day she will be 21 or 22. Lord, I know that You have called her to be a great woman of God. I know that You love her. I know that You have a purpose for her, but right now I do not know what to do with her.”

And I stayed there praying and said to Him, “Lord, I am not leaving here until You do a work in my life.” The thing is, I was on my knees beside my bed, praying and praying before the Lord, and when I got up from there, I felt such tremendous peace. And the Lord changed my heart, and I began once again to pray with her and to declare the purpose that I knew God had for her. Then something wonderful happened. When she turned 15—when Sonia was 15—she reconciled with the Lord. She had accepted the Lord with me when she was 6, and at 15 she reconciled with the Lord, and all those negative attitudes that she had adopted as part of her personality disappeared. And I can declare to you that, not just now but for a long time, she has been a sweet, wonderful daughter. I am so grateful to the Lord for the daughter He has given me, and ours is a relationship that, with each passing day, is becoming more and more like a friendship.

You can say that because you acted correctly at some point in your life in the past. But if we continue to indulge our resentment and those emotions that control us, then that good day when we can reap the fruit of our love will never come. So this is something we must practice always, always.

So remember: God is on your side, and what He requires of you is not too much. He will always, always fulfill the promises He has for you. Another thing is that we must value others, especially those closest to us. Every person around us was created in the image and likeness of God, just like you and me; for that reason alone, they deserve respect.

You know, insults and disrespect are never, never, never justified. Never. The situation may be as horrible as can be, but insults and disrespect are never, never, never justified. Never. There is no reason—no reason—for you to return curse for curse. On the contrary, the worse the situation is, the greater the words of blessing you should give. So do not allow those situations to contaminate your life. Love in such a way that God’s purpose may be fulfilled in your life.

The Word says that God wants us to love with genuine love, and do you know where genuine love springs from? From a pure heart. And when we are so focused on our own needs and our own emotions, what we are doing is staring at our own navels. That is what we are doing. We spend all our time like this, concerned only about ourselves, and there has to come a moment when we say, “Look, I am not going to be centered on myself anymore; I am going to be centered on others. I am going to love the way God wants us to love.”

So now, very quickly, because I know I have run out of time, we are going to touch very briefly on some strategies we can use to maintain the hygiene of our hearts.

As we have said, the heart must be cared for and maintained. The first thing is to accept that we have a problem. That is the hardest part: accepting that we have a problem. We must accept responsibility for the situation that is arising—at least for our part in it. Even if it is not one hundred percent our problem, we must at least accept our share of it.

That is the first victory, a private, internal victory. But if you have that victory, you know that you can move on to the other victory, the external and public victory in which you can do what God wants you to do. So, number one: accept your responsibility; accept that you have a problem.

The other thing is that we must stop being reactive and become proactive. That is a very, very familiar word now. We must stop being reactive and become proactive. Decide to stop being a victim, and decide to become a person who is victorious over the circumstances. Not always, “They did this to me, so I do this... Poor me.” No, none of that. I am going to be proactive. A proactive person sets specific goals. Such a person does not merely say, “Oh God, bless my life; let my relationships be good.” No, be very specific. What is the problem? Well, the problem is this and this. What is my part in it? This and this. Then I am going to do something to resolve it.

Some time ago, a sister from the church blessed me so much with a testimony she shared with me. This sister comes from a home where there were many difficulties, where she suffered verbal, physical, and even sexual abuse; and her relationship with her father was... there was no relationship. This woman accepted the Lord here in our church and has been growing beautifully in the Lord. And some time ago, she decided to take the bull by the horns, as they say, and said, “I have to do something about my relationship with my father.” There was obviously distance between them, but there was no peace in her heart; she wanted to have at least some contact with her father.

What she decided was, “I am going to take a trip. I am going to visit my country. I am going to visit my father.” And that is what she did. While she was there, she found an opportunity to meet with her father, and she went with terror in her heart because she did not know how she was going to react when she saw him. She had not seen him for years, but she went with her heart willing to do whatever would please God. That was the only thing she knew: “I want to please God.”

She arrived there and says that God performed an extraordinary miracle. She saw her father, and instead of feeling all the anger she had felt for so many years and all the resentment over everything he had done and failed to do, over never having been a loving father, she was able to take his hand—by then he was an elderly man—and say to him, “Dad, I am a daughter of God now, and I love you.” And from then on, it was a wonderful thing. They talked. She says she felt a great weight lift from her heart, and she is a free woman because at that moment she realized how bound she had been by her unforgiveness toward her father.

So those are the things that happen when we are proactive. Do not let life, the days, the months, and the years keep passing by. Do something. If it turns out badly, look, at least you know that you did it in the name of the Lord and that you wanted to please Him. And if it turns out well, everybody wins, so we must not miss those opportunities.

Another thing we can do is enlist a companion for the journey. Sometimes we find ourselves in situations where we have patterns of behavior for which it is good to be accountable and to have someone with whom we can share our difficulty. But to do that, we must have a teachable spirit.

I know that most people do not like being told the truth, isn’t that right? Someone says, “Look, what happened is that in that situation you did this, and you were feeling that.” And the person says, “No, not me. Me, angry? How dare you say I was angry? I was not angry; I was very calm.” We do not like being told the truth, and we must reach a point at which our spirit says, “Yes, I am going to accept the truth.”

So if we find someone we trust, someone of our own sex with whom we can discuss these things so that we can change, that is a great help, because that person can ask us questions about our progress and help us with it.

Another thing is to recognize that the hygiene of our hearts is a daily matter; do not let down your guard. As I said before, keep the conversation with your heart flowing time and again, and always continue.... Even if you think you have mastered an area of your personality or your heart—and this has happened to me—sometimes another trial suddenly comes, and I realize that I am still so immature, so immature, so immature, and I have to make adjustments in that area again. Isn’t that what happens to us? Sometimes we think that everything is fine, and suddenly a situation arises and those emotions dominate us again. So the hygiene of the heart is a daily matter.

We also have to pray and put the Word into practice, which is everything we have been talking about, right? God knows what is within us, and He always, always answers the prayer of the righteous. So we can approach Him with confidence.

And the last thing is that we must actively trust in the Lord. We must learn about His attributes and take hold of His promises. God has not moved away from your side, nor will He ever do so. He is always there beside you and will always be willing to give you what you need at the moment you need it.

Luke 4:18 speaks about one of the Lord’s missions and says this: Jesus, speaking about Himself, says, “...the Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted....”

Who here does not have a broken place in their heart? Right? We all have some brokenness. So, if that is the case, we know from the Word of God that we can be certain He will heal our hearts if we are willing to trust Him.

And to conclude, I want to bless you through... In many religious traditions, there is what is called the final blessing; after the sermon, there is a final blessing. What I want to do is declare Colossians 3 over you, along with another part of the same things we have discussed. So I ask you to stand, and if you feel comfortable, close your eyes, listen to the words, internalize them, and seal them in your heart and in your spirit as though that person were you. Amen.

In the name of the Lord, I declare that you are a new man, a new woman; that you have put off the old self and its deeds and have put on the new self. I declare that you will faithfully guard your heart from all contamination and will continue to be renewed according to the image of God that He imprinted upon you from the moment He created you. I declare that you are chosen by God, holy and loved by Him. Every day you will clothe yourself with tender mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, and therefore you will be able to be tolerant of others. You will ask for forgiveness if someone has a complaint against you, and you will forgive when you have a complaint against someone else. You will forgive generously, in the same way that Christ forgives you. You will also put on the garment of love, and therefore you will be able to live in unity with others. The peace of God will rule your heart, and you will live gratefully.

In the name of the Lord, I also declare that the Word of Christ will dwell richly within you so that you will be able to teach and exhort others in all wisdom, and because of the abundant grace He has placed in your heart, you will continually sing hymns and spiritual psalms to Him. Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, you will do it in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him. You will do everything wholeheartedly, for the Lord and not for men. And you will live with the conviction that He who began the good work in you is more than faithful and more than willing to continue perfecting it until the end of your days.

Lord, in Your name, Father, I seal this word in the lives of my brothers and sisters, Lord. Lord, You are the owner of their hearts, Father. And Lord, from this day forward, Lord, each one of us has a covenant with You to keep our hearts clean, Lord. Lord, in Your name, Father, we are going to rid ourselves, Lord, of all contamination, and we are going to allow You—and plead with You, Lord—to be the One who fills our hearts, Lord, and to place within them everything we need, Lord, to maintain healthy relationships.

Oh Lord, heal our hearts, Lord. Heal the relationships, Lord, in our homes, in our marriages, Lord, with our children, Lord, with our brothers and sisters in the church, Father, with our extended families, and in our workplaces, Lord. Heal all those relationships, Lord. Heal our land, Father. Lord, I believe, Father, that this word that has been proclaimed today, Lord, is Your Word, Lord, and that You will continue, Lord, working within us, Lord, according to Your power, Lord, and according to the riches You have in glory, Lord, reserved for each one of us, Lord.

Lord, take us safely to our homes, Lord. And continue the work, Lord, until the end of our days, Lord, in the name of Jesus. Amen.