13The Lord says: “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men.”
One of the fundamental challenges of all times is bridging the gap between head and heart, intensions and actions. It is easy to have a religion of outward actions. It is harder to have one that changes the very nature of who we are as individuals. That is exactly what Jesus calls us to have. He wants our hearts, not just our actions. It can be pretty easy to clean up our talk, at least around certain people. We can hold our tongue. But the LORD wants our minds cleaned as well as our words. He wants the thoughts and intents of our hearts to be filled with things that honor Him. He wants to change us to the core, not just shrink wrapped with a pretty wrapping. He wants radical change, not just superficial campaign slogans. But we live in a world of superficiality. Many people have never had this kind of all-encompassing change. But that is exactly what the LORD is calling for in the lives of the Israelites, and in our lives as well. They were facing captivity. We are captive to sin already, and we need freedom. And freedom only comes when we fully surrender to this kind of top to bottom, inside-outside kind of change. Everything else will leave us with a strange empty feeling. Keeping a set of rules might help in the short term, but for permanent change, the LORD must change our hearts.
The Arnold Journey 