...the way you purify your mind is to see everything through the hands of the Creator. Otherwise you’re not going to be able to push out the world. The best gauge I know of to have the pure heart is that I can see God every day. When I see it, I worship the Lord. Even just acknowledging, God, You’re the Creator. You’ve created it and it’s marvelous. And just as You created something I can’t do in this earth, You must create in me something I can’t do. In that place you’ll begin to have a pure heart. Let’s turn to Matthew 5:8, Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. You can’t remove all thoughts of the world. We live in a world that is not pure. Therefore we can’t use our mind to make a pure heart. That’s the start. As we work with creating a pure heart, which is yielding ourselves to the Lord, He is the potter that develops us to be what we are. Probably the biggest single thing that I judge myself by is that everything I see in this world is the handiwork of God. People who don’t believe there is a God still know that something happened for there to be an earth in spite of all the things they try to say how it came about. Say someone develops a battery. You can’t have a car just because someone created a battery. And you don’t have a car just because someone created a motor. And you can’t have a car if it’s just a transmission, or wheels and a frame. It has to all be put together. The only way that can happen is through an intelligent source to cause that to happen. There is no better life for understanding that truth than farming, because you are every day confronted with all kinds of animals, growing things, insects, diseases, and feeds. Everything you see around you, you should be saying, how did God do this? And when you see it, you begin to worship the Creator and in doing that you come to a place of brokenness and humility because there is no way you could do it. So that brings you to a place of purity of heart. We don’t worship the creation, we worship the Creator. But we enjoy the created. All around us in the creation is a witness to the Creator and who He is. To see the Creator in everything is to have a pure heart. A pure heart says, it’s not I that has done it, but God. He has given us the ability, the tools, the wisdom and understanding, to take care of it but there is nothing that we can create in the way that He did. But we can create within us by using His word what His word wants to do. That’s as close as we can get to creating. And it’s done through the tools and the life that’s in Christ Jesus. So it says, blessed are the pure in heart, because if you are pure in heart you will see God. If you are pure in heart you’re going to see God. In everything you do, every day you get up, when you see something, you’ll see God. What do you think of that? If you want a gauge for a pure heart, do you see God in the middle of everything that exists upon the earth? That’s pure in heart. Matthew 6:19, Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. In this case, single means pure. In other words, your eyes, when they see, they see God. They don’t see the option of God and satan. They know the ways of God and they do it and they don’t desire the other part. Being single minded is pure. Verse 23, But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If you are looking for pleasures of your flesh your body is full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Mammon has many representations; money, pleasures of the flesh, whatever of the kingdom of satan that leads us from being pure in God. And yet God wants to bless us, so how do we then let God bless us? When God first called me I was sick of making money and I had a prophesy that I was going to have money and be blessed, and I was mad. I told the Lord after that, I don’t want money, I want You. All I want is You. The next time I went to a meeting where someone was prophesying, a person spoke to me and said, you don’t understand, God really does want to bless you. Allow Him to do that because you’ll need money to do what God has called you to do. But at that time I didn’t know that what He was really saying was if you are pure in heart you can use that prosperity for those that don’t have prosperity to help them to jumpstart their journey with God. If you don’t do that then God shuts the blessings off. To lay up treasures in heaven is to sojourn. Sojourning is looking for a city that is still in heaven, not built by man’s hands. This life is just a journey of learning to know God and God testing us for us to be qualified to enter into that city built without hands. That’s a pure heart. And He can bless us. But you must stay on that journey because the enemy can pull you away at any time. But that also is part of the testing to see whether you will stay faithful to Him. So if you want to know where you are at with God, what is your treasure? My treasure is sojourning. My treasure is the everlasting life, living with God. That’s the most important thing to me, and that puts the fear of God in me. My soul is in His hand. That decision of Him saying come unto Me or go away I don’t know you depends upon me choosing the right path towards God and being pure. And seeing God every day. I really love that. The pure in heart shall see God. You’ll see Him everywhere. Matthew 6:33, But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. If you seek God first and get in that place of seeing God, then He blesses you and you’re safe. But if He blesses you beyond your ability to handle it, you would be shipwrecked. Those that win the lottery have a totally messed up life within just a few years because they go from not having much to having so much that they can’t handle it. God doesn’t do that for us. He blesses us according to our ability to handle it. If He wouldn’t we would go bankrupt in God. It’s the same way with the power of God in us. He gives us enough for what we need to get the job done. Then when we get a new assignment of what God wants us to do He will give us more, enough to do that job. Matthew 11:28, Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. How does God do that? All He has to do is speak to His creation and say, bless that man. Bless that woman. And they will be blessed. The earth will labor for them. The earth obeys God. A lot of people work hard but not everybody has the same amount of money in their pocket. It’s not because God doesn’t give you the ability to work, it’s how you handle it and what you do with your money. The blessing of the Lord comes when we labor for Him. Verse 29, Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. To be meek and lowly in heart means that He’s not a king that we can’t come to but He is a king that cares about us. Sometimes that’s hard for our minds to comprehend. How can God care for me when He has so much? Yet He’s saying right here, I care about every person that wants Me. Verse 30, For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. To have an easy yoke, someone that speaks truth has a question asked to them and within thirty seconds they have the question answered. But someone that has a heavy yoke of lying has to dodge around so they don’t get caught in that lie; they have to weave in and out of all the lies they have said and it will take them ten minutes to say what someone that speaks truth can say in thirty seconds or less. That’s another way you can tell if it’s satan or God speaking to you. God may say three words. Satan will just sit and blabber at you, and satan speaks often to you. God may not speak to you for three months. But His heart goes to your heart and your heart goes to His heart and there is a communion there of knowing without having to speak that doesn’t happen with satan. Now we’re going to get into a little bit of why God doesn’t speak to some people. Matthew 13:13, Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. A parable is an example of something to demonstrate who you are or what you are doing. For instance, those that are pure in heart see the work of God everywhere there is. But the person that doesn’t know God sees the same thing but doesn’t understand what they are seeing. He is looking and seeing but he doesn’t know. So they spend all kinds of time, money, labor, and everything else to try to figure out how everything came about and everything else when all you would have to do is read in the Bible and it tells you how it came about. They see but they don’t see. And they hear, but they don’t hear. What they do hear they don’t understand. Most of the time when someone utters four or five words, I know who they are and what their values are. Within just a few words I can get a pretty good idea of where they’re at and what’s happening, because they see not, they hear not, and they understand not. Verse 14, And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them. What’s wrong with God healing somebody because they see? Well, if you deal with people very long you’ll find that people that have a real need cry out to have that need fulfilled. And when that need is fulfilled they leave. They only come to the Lord because they have such a great need. How do I know that? I do it too. We all do it. The difference is, how many times has God helped you but you stayed with it, increased, and grew? God knows if you will increase and grow if He does that thing you are asking for. But if you’re not ready to change He doesn’t want to heal you. If you get healed, you’ll leave and you’ll never make it because the spiritual forces will carry you off. Verse 16, But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear. For verily I say unto you, That many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them. Then he goes on to teach about the parable of the sower. The first three soils are the reason that God doesn’t always heal. Some of the seed that God puts in a person’s heart falls on rocky ground and the birds just come and eat it up. The second one they may have a desire for the Lord but their desire is so shallow that when the seed sprouts there is no moisture there so it perishes and dies. Then the third one is pretty good soil but it’s full of weeds and the weeds grow up and choke out the seed. So God throws good seed to three areas that will not produce. God knows what will produce and what won’t. He’s a good farmer. He wants to put the seed in those that have weeded and taken care of their soul, and have labored to do that which is good and God comes to them and heals them. God can do whatever He wants and I know there has been times that God has called families to go through great hardship so that a seed can be placed in that setting. The only way He can get it is through hardship. When that hardship gets you to a place that you are meek and poor in spirit, He can then drop that seed in and that plant will grow and it will be precious, because that seed needs to be dropped in a pure heart. God is looking for people that have a heart for God that everything they see, they see through the creation of God’s hands, and when you see that you’re coming close to entering into the kingdom of God. Verse 19, When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart. This is he which received seed by the way side. God sows the seed in the covenant of your heart. He doesn’t plant it in your mind because your mind is full of the world. That’s why I say you can’t totally push out of your mind the world. It’s not possible. But the way you purify your mind is to see everything through the hands of the Creator. Otherwise you’re not going to be able to push out the world. The best gauge I know of to have the pure heart is that I can see God every day. When I see it, I worship the Lord. Even just acknowledging, God, You’re the Creator. You’ve created it and it’s marvelous. And just as You created something I can’t do in this earth, You must create in me something I can’t do. In that place you’ll begin to have a pure heart. Matthew 15:8, This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoreth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. Jesus really hammers the religious leaders of His time because they tell what the people are supposed to do but they themselves don’t do it. Verse 9, But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. If you listen to men that don’t have a pure heart, that everything they see is God, then you’re going to end up having the pollution of the world just dumped more into you and you become less pure. But when it’s God that’s speaking through somebody, or those that speak life, that life goes into you and you begin to see the prosperity of an easier life by removing all of the worldly things that try to draw you away and it becomes easier. That’s why Jesus said, The yoke that I put on you is easy and light, because truth is simple. Lies are complicated. What we’re finding out is many laws that our government has put into effect give the elite the right to do what they want to and they can still be covered under the law. But the laws of God are different. Verse 18, But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. Do you ever say something and then you say, where in the world did that come from? Man, I haven’t said that for years! It came from your heart, the parts of it that still are not pure. It comes out from your mouth. It doesn’t come from your mind, it comes from your heart. Your heart is the thing that you settle what you’re going to do to achieve the goal. Whatever it is that you have desired to achieve, you can find the kingdom of God or the kingdom of satan to help you achieve that. If its things like being able to sojourn, God will help you sojourn and see everything so you can see Him and also someday live with Him forever. But if you are interested in the affairs of this world you’ll have to go to the kingdom of satan and he will help you. Many of the rock stars and all the different people that come up from nowhere, they don’t come up there from their own ability. There are supernatural things that take place. To defile means to cause you to walk in sin. Verse 19, For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man. Physical things that we have to do to live don’t defile us. It’s either the kingdom of satan or the kingdom of God that defiles us or purifies us. John 12:40, He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them. Not everyone that says Lord, Lord is going to enter into the kingdom of God. But those that have a pure heart will see God. Romans 1:21, Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. They didn’t acknowledge Him as the Creator. Only God can create. We as human beings don’t create, we reorganize what was created. We can’t make gold, but we can purify it. We can find the gold and make it pure. We can take iron and heat it up and take the dross off of it and put in different elements to make it the characteristic of what we want it to be – a spring will be springy, something that needs to be extremely hard we can add elements to make it hard, or whatever we need, but we can’t create it. It has to be something that was already created. Verse 28, And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; They didn’t want to retain God in their knowledge. It says there also that they didn’t glorify God. If you glorify God it does two things. It acknowledges Him and it also puts us in a place of remembering who the Creator is all of the time. We have to constantly remember who He is. I don’t want to just say, We acknowledge You as the Creator, as something that is just a habit. When I say it I want to say it out of my heart, that I really mean it every time. When I pray for whatever reason I always want to end up saying, God, You are the Creator of all things, and all things exist because of You. But every time I stop to say it I set myself, I mean this. Every time. God, I mean this. So that it’s not a habit and it comes from the heart to reestablish every day that He’s the Creator and I want to see God. Everyone can do that. So just for a second I pause and I put myself in a place, this is coming fully from my heart, God. You are the Creator. You are my God. And if you do that it keeps God in your knowledge so that you don’t run off with some kind of strange doctrine or ideas. Romans 6:17, But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness. I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness. The doctrine is to be formed in us. It is to become who we are, to become a part of us. To know God, acknowledge Him, honor Him, so everything we do we see through our heart that God has given us that we now know He’s the creator of all things. Romans 10:1, Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved. Paul is saying here, Lord, my burden I’m giving to you is that I want to see all of Israel saved. And God gave him a burden for not just Israel, but for everyone. Paul was probably the greatest, bravest, and boldest evangelist that ever walked the face of the earth. Nothing stopped him. He had three times he was shipwrecked out at sea. How many want to get back in a boat after being shipwrecked three times? Verse 2, For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. The children of Israel had a zeal. They wanted to obey the law. But they did it according to man’s laws and ways. They didn’t really know God. Verse 3, For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness… You can’t establish your righteousness. Why? Because you’ll do it from the mind and the mind is dangerous unless it’s been taught by the heart. God doesn’t speak to the mind, because the mind functions so you know what’s going on in your surroundings but you can’t trust your mind to make a correct decision. You can look at someone else and say, they seem to be getting along all right and look what they’re doing. Right there you are beginning to be led away from what you’re called to do. …have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God. Jesus spoke to the leaders and said, if somebody like you would come in and speak you would believe them, but I’m coming to speak to you from heaven and you don’t listen to Me. You don’t recognize that I’m speaking from heaven. I came from heaven, I know heaven, I know My Father, and I’m trying to help you understand and see it that way too but you won’t listen to Me. The righteousness of God is not what you want, it’s what’s right and holy before a holy God. Verse 4, For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth. For Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, That the man which doeth those things shall live by them. But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above:) Or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.) But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; If Christ is in you and you live in Him, you don’t need to go look for God, because God is speaking through your mouth if you know Him. If you have a pure heart where everything you see is the workings of God, then the word that comes out of your mouth doesn’t come from your mind, it comes from your heart. But if it comes from your mind it’s not everlasting. The everlasting comes from the covenant that’s in your heart. The covenant of the heart converts the mind to the ways of God. Your mind can be converted so everything your mind sees is in direct covenant with the heart so what the heart knows, the mind sees and helps you push away the world. That’s how you know you have a pure heart, or if it isn’t totally pure it’s at least going in that direction. A pure heart that sees God is what keeps you from going astray. Verse 9, That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. The first thing you have to do is confess. You can’t just think it, you have to speak it. Speaking activates the creation of God. If you believe with your heart that God has raised Him from the dead then a covenant is established in your heart and you become saved. Verse 10, For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; Righteousness is the power to remove sin in your life. …and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. Right there it says for you to have righteousness, which is required to get rid of the sin in your life, it comes from the heart. And salvation then comes when you speak. Now there are times that you can worship just by thinking, but when you’re by yourself and you see something, don’t just think it, speak it. Verse 17, So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. If we reverse it, and say, if you hear the word of God and receive it, you have faith. If the word of God comes to you and you believe it, then you have faith. We’ve laid a good foundation for checking to see whether you have a pure heart, which is extremely important. If you can’t see God you’re going to lose Him. You have to have fellowship. Jesus said the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me. That’s how you see Him. Jesus was also in the creation of this world. The Father told Him what and how to do it and He did it. They were partners together in it. He let the Son create it and He’s given it to the Son now to be His. But the Son said, as soon as I’ve done everything I’m supposed to do, I’m going to hand it back to the Father because He’s so awesome and so good that I want My Father to be in charge. That tells me we’re going to have an awesome time in heaven. The Father is also laboring to help us become pure in heart.
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