How CAN I Purge Evil from My Heart?
Have you ever read this verse?
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
-Matthew 5:8 ESV
Or what about this one?
“For the Scriptures say, ’You must be holy because I am holy.’
-1 Peter 1:16 NLT
How in the world are we supposed to be pure in heart and holy?
Don’t these sound like nearly impossible states to attain? God calls us to be pure and holy. But seriously y’all, I know I’ve done a whole bunch of impure and unholy stuff in my life.
Where do we even start? Well, we must begin by recognizing a truth.
It Doesn’t Start with Us
We lack the ability to be holy without Christ first intervening for us on the cross and in the resurrection. It starts with His work.
“For God’s will was for us to be made holy by the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ, once for all time.”
-Hebrews 10:10 NLT
We cannot be holy without the sacrifice of Jesus and the Holy Spirit living in us. Without Christ, we are all going to Hell. There is no way to reach God without Christ. So, first we must come to Christ and be cleansed from our sins.
But that’s not the end, that’s the beginning
We Have a Part in Our Holiness
I have to be very careful here. It is 100% true that if we accepted Christ as our Savior and died in the next breath, that we would go to Heaven. However, if we continue to live, we have a responsibility to become holy. In fact, if the Lord just made us automatically, permanently pure and holy, then why did he tell us that only the pure in heart would see God AND command us to be holy?
No, beloved, we have work to do to be holy. Holiness is a choice we make every day and throughout the day. Once we are cleansed by the blood of Jesus, we make the decision to stay clean. We do that in two ways…and the first is what makes the second FAR easier.
Purging Evil from Your Heart: Part 1
The initial salvation by God through Christ provides forgiveness from sin. But staying in relationship with the Lord requires purity of heart. Remember, the pure in heart will see God. The problem is, for most of us, we have evil habits in our lives when we are saved that are holdovers from our lives before we encountered Jesus. And we make a critical error that increases the difficulty of our purity in heart. Here is the error:
We fight against sin.
Please hear me beloved, sin separates us from God. And we don’t have to sin every day. But the way to defeat sin is not by fighting it. The way to defeat sin is through heart purge and Holy Spirit power.
The heart purge occurs through removal of sin inducing influences from our lives. How do you stop eating junk food if you want to get in better health? Not by storing junk food all around your and fighting the temptation to eat it. No, you remove the junk food from your home so you can’t easily get to it.
This method is also how you start to purge sin from your life. If you deal with any particular sin regularly, then the first step is not to fight it. The first step is to remove anything in your life that makes it easier or more tempting to commit that sin.
Can I say something that may seem a bit harsh? You cannot play with sin. You will lose EVERY SINGLE TIME! You have got to mercilessly cut out anything from your life that leads you back to the sin that so easily trips you up. Don’t hesitate, don’t think about it, you don’t even need to take it to the Lord in prayer. If you already know what it is, then it is the kindness of the Holy Spirit telling you it’s time to immediately wipe whatever it is completely from your life. Some people in Acts took this very seriously, destroying literally thousands of dollars’ worth of material that kept them bound to sin. And God’s word prevailed!
“Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices. And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily.”
-Acts 19:18-20
Purging Evil from Your Heart: Part 2
The second part of purging is through the power of the Holy Spirit. It consists of surrender and confession. Again, fighting against sin will not work. After removing that which tempts us, we must then surrender our hearts, minds, and actions to the Lord and confess to another believer.
Surrender your heart to God, turn to him in prayer, and give up your sins—even those you do in secret. Then you won't be ashamed; you will be confident and fearless. Your troubles will go away like water beneath a bridge, and your darkest night will be brighter than noon. You will rest safe and secure, filled with hope and emptied of worry. You will sleep without fear and be greatly respected. But those who are evil will go blind and lose their way. Their only escape is death!
-Job 11:13-20 CEV
When we surrender, we do something that we’ve never been able to do before we gave our lives to Jesus. We set ourselves apart from the ways we used to behave. In short, we choose holiness. That’s what becoming holy means, setting yourself apart for God’s purposes. Every time you surrender and choose God’s will, you are setting yourself apart from the ways of sin. You are choosing holiness.
And the last part? It’s the one step of healing many of us avoid because it is potentially embarrassing and always involves some risk. After confessing to God, removing all the inducements to sin, and consistently choosing holiness, we must also confess to at least one other sister or brother in Christ, and then we can find healing.
How CAN I Purge Evil from My Heart?
Beloved, there is no complete elimination of temptation in this life. But the likelihood of falling prey to it can be reduced to a level FAR below what you may believe possible. That reduction comes as you continue to remove from your life anything that might lead you astray, surrender to the Holy Spirit, choose holiness, and confess to another believer.
This is the path to continually purging evil from your heart.
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Love you Jesus follower!