A Pure Heart

“The sincere man stumbles as any traveler might do, but he gets up and resumes his journey with more caution and speed than before.

Sincerity does not guarantee we will not ever fall but it helps us up again when we do. The hypocrite, however, lies where he falls until he dies. Thus he is said to "fall into mischief" Proverbs 24:16.  The sincere man stumbles as any traveler might do, but he gets up and resumes his journey with more caution and speed than before. But the hypocrite plunges as a man from the top of a mast who is engulfed past any hope of recovery in the devouring sea.

We see this principle in King Saul's life. When his false heart discovered itself, he tumbled down the hill and did not stop, but went from one sin to another. In just a few years he had plummeted far from the place where he first left God. Once he had been so ready to worship God that he could not wait for the prophet Samuel to arrive-- but later he was so far from seeking God that he went to a witch for counsel. And in the last act of his bloody tragedy, Saul desperately threw his life into the devil's mouth by self-murder.

The reason Saul's sin crushed him to death was that his heart was never right with God in the first place. Samuel hinted at this truth when he told Saul: "The Lord hath sought him a man after his own heart" 1 Samuel 13:14.Of course David himself fell into a sin far worse than Saul's wickedness-- for which God rejected that first king-- but the difference was that in David's life sincerity was "the root of the matter" Job 19:28.

There is a double reason for the recovering strength of sincerity. One stems from the nature of sincerity itself and the other proceeds from God's promise which settles into the sincere Christian's soul.

The restoring nature of sincerity itself kindles the soul. Sincerity is to the soul as the soul is to the body, a spark of divine life kindled in the man's heart by the Spirit of God. It is the seed of God remaining in the saint”. 


Quoted material from, ”The Christian in Complete Armour Daily Readings in Spiritual Warfare” by Gurnall and James S Bell. http://www.moodypublishers.com/pub_productDetail.aspx?id=41823&pid=53617