When you pray, God not only listens, but He goes to work. Angels are dispatched, chains are broken, favor is released. You can send up prayers for someone that doesn’t know how to pray. You can stand in the gap while they’re off course, not making good decisions. That lonely neighbor has been single a long time, but you can go to God on their behalf and ask Him to send a spouse, or to send healing, turn a situation around.

And the Bible says, blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see god.
Well, saying that your pure in heart is the same as saying that you’re authentic.
You truly are on the outside what you are on the inside.
And, uh, so I’m gonna read you just a few things first.
Those who are pure in heart are powerful.
being pure in heart is another way of saying that we are authentic.
And god wants us to be authentic.
Actually, the Bible tells us that he’s much more concerned about the purity of our heart than he is, how we look our what we do in front of other people.
When people are pure in heart and they sin, they are very quick to repent.
They do things with right motives.
And, you know, motives are very, very important to god, and they should be important to us.
And a motive is has nothing to do with what you’re doing. It’s about why you’re doing it.
I think so many people do things with impure motives.
And and I don’t even know how often we stop to think what our motives are.
Why am I doing this? We just get all caught up in what we’re doing.
They do what they do because they sincerely believe god wants them to do it.
Their desire is to please god and to help people.
and they are happy to learn anything about themselves that helps them do that.
If God were to show you some things in your heart that were not right, would you be happy for him to show you that?
Would you embrace that and even thank him for showing it to you.
We need to take the time to do what the psalmist David said to commune with your own heart.
He said that he laid in his bed at night and communed with his own heart.
I think sometimes we need to stop and think what’s in my heart.
What did Jesus mean when he said that the pure in heart would see god?
Well, he didn’t mean that we would see god with our natural eyes.
But I think he meant that people who are pure in heart can hear from god more quickly, and I think they can much more easily discern what god wants them to do.
Discernment is a wonderful thing to be able to see into the depths of things and not just live on the surface of life all the time.
The message bible translation of Matthew 55 says you’re blessed when you get your inside world, your mind and heart put right.
Then you can see god in your outside world.
You know, Leonardo DaVinci was a famous painter who was once visited by children while he was painting.
And one child accidentally knocked his canvas over, and he became very angry.
And he was actually trying to paint the face of Jesus, and he just kept having problems.
He couldn’t figure out what was going on, why he couldn’t seem to paint the fate of face of Jesus.
And god showed him that because of the anger that he had he wasn’t able to do it.
And so until he repented and that hindrance was removed, he was not able to paint the face of Jesus.
I wonder how many things we are not able to do even in our ministries because we have things in our heart that need to be taken care of.
What’s going on inside of you? I want you to take some time to think about that.
you know, we can smile at somebody and be angry at them at the same time.
We can read words out of a hymnal and sing and be thinking about what we’re gonna fix for dinner that afternoon.
We are able to do two things at one time.
Well, what kinds of things pollute your heart?
Negative emotions like anger, self pity, or jealousy? Unforgiveness, bitterness, resentment.
I can tell you there are so many angry people in the world today.
and so many even Christians who are harboring unforgiveness in their heart.
Being offended Judging others critically, how often do you find yourself talking about other people in an unkind way.
That’s something that we need to really pray that the Holy Spirit would point out to us when we do it and start to realize that that’s not our place to do.
And I think it’s gonna be very helpful to you.
murmuring, complaining, grumbling, and finding fault with everything, and everybody can pollute your heart.
Hidden sin, that you fear will be discovered or hidden sin that you have not repented of, or even sin that you even though, you know, it’s sin, you really don’t intend to stop it, you’re gonna do it again.
How can people do that?
Well, We were talking just with somebody recently who was living with someone they weren’t married to.
And when the person was confronted about why they were doing it because he was a Christian, he said, Oh, I think God understands.
Well, you know what god understands is his word.
We don’t get some kind of a special dispensation for sin because we think there’s a good reason for us to do it.
And boy, I really believe in the world today, we need to be we need to wake up and realize that morally things are on a downhill slide.
And we have to be so careful that we don’t slide with them Fear can also keep you from being pure in heart and being bitter toward god because you feel your life has been unfair are your prayers have not been answered?
Let me ask you a question, and you might have to think about this.
It sounds kinda bad, but Are you maybe just a little bit mad at god?
Because he hasn’t given you what you want or you see other people with what you would like to have, and yet God has not given it to you.
The pure in heart always believed the best.
The Bible says, love believes the best of everyone.
So purity of heart and walking in love are very much connected