The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.
Who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17:9, NIV)
Will it make you nervous if I confess to being uncomfortable with a passage of Scripture? Because I am more than uncomfortable with Jeremiah 17:9. In truth, I hate it.
I hate it because it tells me there is something inside me I cannot understand or control.
I hate it because that thing is the same thing I am told I should follow.
But I hate it most because it is true. As true as cancer.
You may have missed it, but last week 26-year-old major champion Justin Thomas posted a photograph of a well-stitched scar on his calf. Three or four inches of repair. It came after surgery to remove melanoma. Thomas wrote in all caps, “EVERYBODY GO GET CHECKED!!”
If you’re a golfer, you should know this by now. The sun can kill you. And not just if you fly too close. You’re already too close. Exposure can set you up for some nasty consequences. Including melanoma, one of the most aggressive forms of the disease. So yes, get checked. Annually. Methodically. Wisely.
Jesus came to fix these broken hearts of ours, to fill them with his Spirit, not the bread of our devices or the wine of our desires.I do not say this as a someone who has had melanoma, though I have been biopsied twice this year for suspect spots. My cancer has not been so kind. Instead of tipping its hand somewhere where I can see it, it has been hidden inside. The photographs to find what threatens to kill me have to be done in imaging centers designed to see below the surface.
I suppose this is what Jeremiah 17:9 does to me. It shows me what’s below the surface. You see, I don’t have to fly too close to sin to suffer its consequences. I’m already too close. It lives in me, all the while trying to fool me that it is something else: a simple pleasure, a basic human right, even a blessing.
Oh, how careful we must be with the flatteries and wooings of our heart! We must speak right back to it, question it, call it out: “Are you saying this is what the Lord wants, wily heart of mine? Because if it isn’t, I know you don’t really care about me.”
Jesus came to fix these broken hearts of ours, to fill them with his Spirit, not the bread of our devices or the wine of our desires. “A glorious throne, exalted from the beginning, is the place of our sanctuary,” Jeremiah went on to prophesy. We don’t take ultimate refuge in our own heart or even the heart of a trusted friend. Our heart is regenerated at the hands of the Original Generator. Only his design works. All else wants only to fool us.
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Jeff Hopper
September 24, 2019
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The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.
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