These are the notes from the message Trevor didn’t get to preach last Sunday:
God has been speaking to us about preparing for his presence. It is true that the church is always being prepared for the ultimate coming of our bridegroom, Jesus (Rev.21:2), but there is also a sense in which we are being prompted to prepare for his coming in a time of refreshing (Acts 3:19) in the coming season.
The first thing that needs to be prepared is the heart. Everything flows from the heart (Prov.4:23). Just as the inner sanctuary, the holy of holies, was prepared for the Ark of the Covenant, which represented God’s Presence among his people (1 Kings 6:19) so the inner sanctuary of the heart needs to be prepared for his Presence. There are many things that the Bible says about a good and prepared heart, but one quality is that it is ‘soft’ – receptive, responsive, and pliable. Like the good soil in the parable of the sower, the softened soil of the heart is ready to receive the word of God when it comes. The prophet Hosea declared in his time:
break up your unploughed ground;
for it is time to seek the Lord,
until he comes… (Hosea 10:12)
This feels like a relevant word for us now. Note that we prepare our hearts not just for his coming, but for our seeking until he comes. In this season, we prepare simply to pray.
So how do we break up any hardened ground in our hearts? And how do we keep our hearts soft? To begin with, I would make four recommendations
Ask God for help
David asked God to search his heart and see if there was anything ‘offensive’ in him (Psalm 139:23-24). He knew that he could not trust himself to do it. We deceive ourselves. We are past masters at rationalising, minimising, blame-shifting etc. And so, we must honestly ask God to show us where there are hard clods of soil in our hearts, so we can break them up. Ask him to reveal any areas of sin, cynicism, unforgiveness, unprocessed pain, deep anxiety, etc. He exposes it not to condemn, but to heal and to make our hearts ready.
Confess and repent
We do well to re-establish a pattern of confessing where we sin and fall short, and to repent – set out to change in those areas where we identify sin. I know in the past some Christians have been too sin-focused but that is hardly the problem in our age! I know that in our new identity in Christ, we are no longer sinners, but saints. But let’s be honest – we are saints who sin! Let’s also remember that ‘God cannot forgive excuses.’ We must be honest with ourselves and God. As David said, God requires truth (radical honesty) in the innermost parts of us – our heart (Psalm 51:6 KJV).
Be a constant learner
We live in the age of the opinionated. On social media, anybody and everybody can express their opinion on anything and everything. People want to ‘say what they like’ and ‘no one can tell me any different.’ But Christian leader and writer, Tim Keller, wrote: “We should have an entire life marked by being teachable rather than opinionated.” And before him, the writer of the Proverbs put it like this: ‘A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion.’ (Prov. 18:2). To keep our hearts soft, we must humble ourselves to be teachable, and willing to learn from anyone – not primarily because of who they are but because of who Christ is in them.
Recover reverence
The apostle Paul wrote that we could learn from each other, and actually submit to one another ‘out of reverence for Christ’ (Ephesians 5:21). A literal translation would be ‘in the fear of Christ.’ Throughout the Bible we are taught that wisdom begins with ‘the fear of the Lord’ and it was a characteristic of the New Testament church (Acts 9:31). This is not a cringing fear, afraid that God might punish us, because his perfect love has dealt with that kind of fear (1 John 4:18). It is, rather, a sense of awe, wonder and reverence at who God is. The Creator of all things, the King of Heaven, the Lord of Glory is among us and within us. No wonder that Paul encourages us to ‘work out your salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works in you’ (Philippians 2:12-13). Let us not be flippant and casual as we seek God until he comes. Such recovered reverence will take a great plough to any hardened part of our hearts!