An idol-free heart

 Posted at Reformation Scotland:

When someone is saved, it means that Jesus now reigns supreme in their heart. Whatever sins and idols were lurking there before, they are all now dethroned. Although those old idols are still influential, and there is still something even in the believer’s heart that tugs back towards the old sins, yet as our king, Jesus keeps working to subdue the sinfulness of our hearts. As well as the truth of the Bible and the encouragement of other believers, He also often uses difficulties and suffering as a way of having us die more and more to sin, and live more and more to righteousness. The Covenanter Katherine Collace, Mrs Ross (c.1635–1697) reflected on this in her spiritual autobiography. She recalls how the Lord took certain things out of her life, and introduced various forms of suffering into her experience, all in order to make Himself more precious to her and so that she would more comprehensively reject the old, sinful ways. Although this cleansing and purifying process is never brought to perfect completion in any believer’s life in this world, Collace’s testimony in the following updated extract is that it is real in principle and can and should increase.

Come, my friends, I’ll tell you what the Lord has done for me. He has blotted out my iniquities, He has loved me freely. He is altogether lovely, He is infinite love, and in Him is a fountain of love. Shame on you, you worldly minded creatures, whose minds are on the earth, and who think that Christ is a hard-hearted master! Do not believe it. For the Lord’s sake, do not believe it, for it is not true.

But I will entreat you to do this, my dear friends. Try before you trust. Come and taste of Him before you harbour evil thoughts of Him, and when you have tasted, then come and tell me your thoughts of Him. I will seal this with my blood. If He deceives you, believe me, you will be the first He has ever deceived. I may say by experience that He has not deceived me.

I will tell you what He did to me. When I sought after my lovers, He blasted them all to me. I saw that they were all empty. When I had gone to thousands of idols, He blasted them all to me, and showed me fullness only in Himself. Oh, let Him be blessed and adored, the one who was content to take me when I was the off-scouring and refuse of all my idols!

He said to me, “When you have tried all the things a discontented heart can show you, you shall find them only emptiness without Me, for,” He said, “it has pleased the Father that in Me all fullness should dwell. I will give you all that your heart can desire. Your lovers and your idols may seem to give you contentment in one thing, but not in all. But if you take Me, and quit them, it shall not — it cannot — enter into the heart of man to conceive what I have laid up in store for you. O lost daughter of Adam, what can your heart desire, or your ear hear, or your eye see, but I can give you it?”

Continue here...