Hello and welcome. This is Pastor, lucy painter with your daily insights. We are covering matters of the heart this month. You know, we live in a world where everyone is trying to maintain an image of themselves whether real or imagined. I think we all want to be known or to be remembered for something. And I think we could agree that under the right conditions who or what we are eventually comes out whether you are a bad person, pretending to be good or a good person, pretending to be broad the right circumstances. The right conditions eventually draw the real as out the feelings and thoughts in our hearts eventually become evident through our words and actions. And I think that's why jesus said and you worry about it. You shall know them by their fruits.

The truth is we try as much as we do to maintain certain characters and images of ourselves because what others think of us matters to us. But as build levers, what we know about ourselves, our affections, our intentions, our thoughts and feelings also counts because that's what the Lord searches for. That is what he weighs us by. And this is why we are talking about matters of the heart because at the end of the day, this is what matters. But the fact is sometimes we look inside and all we see is what we have painted and justified on that internal mirror as true. We put so many layers of paint on that internal mirror that it can no longer reflect back our real self to us and sure what I'm saying. sometimes we deceive ourselves to the extent in the in the process of deceiving us that others we end up deceiving ourselves.

You know, we flood our hearts and concise science with so much noise that it cannot echo back what really lies within us. We mask our intentions, our thoughts and feelings until we can no longer tell which ones are true. But the Bible tells us in Psalms 27 verse 19 that as the war reflects back a man's face, so does the heart reflect man to himself. And this is what I want us to talk about today. How do we examine and judge our own character? You know? How do we d fog the looking glass that is our heart so that it does not reflect back a distorted image the way to bid or disturbed water. Does you know when you go to look at the water and the water shows a reflection of of your face, If the water is disturbed, it doesn't show a clear image of yourself, how can we d fog that glass?

That is our heart? How do we do that? And you know when we become believers, when we let the Holy Spirit takes possession of us or leavin us? That is when the de fogging process begins. I know this is a new word that I'm using the fogging, taking away the fog because we get a new standard, a higher standard, like we said the other day, to wear ourselves against the Spirit of God, the Word of the Lord becomes the silver backing of our hearts. A medium of vision through which we can see our own true self, a medium through which we can design our sins and the plagues of our heart. The Spirit of God sets a true light before our hearts. You know, we said the other day that the human heart is wicked, Our wheels are adverse and our concern, sciences are defiled. And so it's only when we wear ourselves against the Word of God and the Council of the Holy Spirit that we can really design our sins.

It's only by having the Word of God as a standard that we can get a clear echo of the condition of our hearts. It's the only way we can get a true understanding of how our hearts are and this understanding, this design mint is what underlies genuine conscious repentance. It is my prayer that we may have the grace to open ourselves to the scrutiny of the Holy Spirit, that we may be able and willing to look deep into ourselves for what contradicts the will of the Spirit of God, that we may be led by the truth in our assessment of ourselves. You will get into that place of saying all right. I am going to do a self evaluation. A self assessment. I am going to check and allow the Holy Spirit to check anything that contradicts the will of the Spirit of God.

And I will be true and honest with myself, not get into that place. That is my prayer. That we may have the grace to open up ourselves to that scrutiny of the Holy Spirit. That assessment by the Holy Spirit in jesus mighty name. This is Pastor, lucy painter. With your daily insight, matters of the heart pad. Eight shalom, mm hmm, mm hmm.