enjoy companionship with others who have pure hearts

#Enjoy companionship with others who have pure hearts full

The long-term effect of that tragedy nobody knows. So over half of the next generation in the black community is being raised without a dad at home. “Jesus came into the world because we have such dirty hearts that need to be purified.” Only about one percent of these are put up for adoption. The statistic was given that fifty-eight percent of all black babies are born to unmarried mothers. Have you thought recently how helpless the local, state, and federal government is to solve problems of our society? A month ago, CBS aired a program called “The Vanishing Family - Crisis in Black America.” The focus was on the black community but the problem is true in differing measures in all groups of our society. He came into the world because we have such dirty hearts that need to be purified. Jesus did not come into the world simply because we have some bad habits that need to be broken. What we are in the deep, private recesses of our lives is what he cares about most. So the heart is utterly crucial to Jesus. For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:33–34). “Either make the tree good, and its fruit good or make the tree bad, and its fruit bad for the tree is known by its fruit. These are what defile a man” (Matthew 15:18–19). For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart. From the heart are all the issues of life. “Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). And what you are at the invisible root matters as much to God as what your are at the visible branch. The heart is what you are, in the secrecy of your thought and feeling, when nobody knows but God. You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery.” But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:27–28). So, for example, Jesus would not be satisfied with a society in which there were no acts of adultery. The aim of Jesus Christ is not to reform the manners of society, but to change the hearts of sinners like you and me. You blind Pharisee! First cleanse the inside of the cup and of the plate, that the outside also may be clean.

#Enjoy companionship with others who have pure hearts full

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of extortion and rapacity. It is not enough to clean up our act on the outside. The first thing we learn from this beatitude is that Jesus is concerned with our heart. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.