Purity of Heart: The Path to Divine Intimacy

1) "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, who have a longing and a desire to be in right standing with God. That's what spiritual righteousness is about, that you are in right standing with God. You are walking in God's will, and we learned about the difference between God's perfect will and his permissive will, right? Its permissive will. Permissive will is that God will allow some things to go on for a certain period of time in your life. But his perfect will is when we are just completely surrendered to him." [12:12] (39 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


2) "Blessed are those whose hearts are pure. Remember last week we looked at this word blessed and we just kept breaking it down because it has such a deep meaning to it, right? It's more than just happy. It's just more than joy. There's so much depth to when Jesus says blessed are those. So listen to what the Amplified says here now in this verse. Blessed are those. After blessed, it says this. Anticipating God's presence, spiritually mature are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." [14:07] (40 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


3) "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God notice everything that jesus is teaching here in these beatitudes he's talking about kingdom right he's talking about kingdom qualities kingdom character in his disciples and followers of him and those that are kingdom citizens and he's talking about these characteristics and these qualities that we should have here while we are here on earth he's talking about the ability to see god here necessarily physically with your physical eyes but he's talking about a closeness he's talking about an intimacy with god that has now been afforded to you because of the blood of jesus you can now come boldly into the presence of god." [15:12] (50 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


4) "The Bible says that man looks at the outward appearance. But God, God looks at your heart. That's what he's concerned with. I mean, who did Jesus criticize the most in the Bible? It was the religious people, right? It was the Pharisees that he criticized the most, right? Because they were hypocrites. These Pharisees, they were outwardly righteous. That's all they were concerned with, was being outwardly righteous before men. But inwardly, their intentions and their heart was full of impurity. And Jesus knew that. Jesus saw that. Jesus can read through all of that outward stuff. He's saying, but your heart." [22:10] (63 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


5) "Fire tests the purity of silver and gold, but the Lord tests the heart. So what it is describing here is the refining process. Like we sang about today. For gold and silver to be refined, it is melted down in the fire. Yeah. what testing is. Testing is refining. When you're going through tests and trials, it's refining that you're going through. So fire tests the purity of silver and gold. Silver and gold is melted down into fire, and what happens? The impurities that are in the metal rise to the surface, and then the refiner will take something and scrape away the impurities that have risen to the surface. And then when the metal cools, now it has been purified. It's pure." [26:25] (57 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


6) "So he's not testing our heart so that way he can see what's in our heart. So why is he testing our heart? So we can see what's in our heart. Because we have to be a part of this process. When things begin to rise up, we have to be willing to say, God, man, I didn't even realize I still had that in me. But now that you're shining a light on it, Lord, I surrender that to you. Help me with that. He's a gentle surgeon. Think about this. A surgeon is not going to just do surgery on you without permission. Right? He'd be locked up real quick. In the same way, God, he needs us to surrender these things to him." [29:03] (56 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


7) "Pure gold can't be tarnished no matter what atmosphere that it's put in. So in light of that, and it's interesting how much the Lord makes these parallels about refining and gold and silver and our hearts and what he's doing. So when we go through God's testing, because some of you are going through testing right now. You're in the refiner's fire right now. It's hot. It's uncomfortable. You're going through it, but you have to have a perspective that is able to elevate you above your testing, above your trial, above what you're going through. You need to kind of be able to see that God is up to something. He's doing something. There's purpose in your pain." [40:33] (47 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


8) "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Closeness, intimacy. You're blessed because you can have closeness and true intimacy, like beyond definition with God. So really, this is what the Lord showed me in all of this. He's bringing you through this. He's bringing you through this pain and this trying and this refining. More than anything else, because he wants to be close to you. As simple as that. It's not all about what you're going to be able to do on the other side. You get that? This is the heart of God. Yes, he's going to use you. He's going to, in a good way, you know, he's going to do some things in you and through you for his glory. We have assignments, but above all, he purifies us for intimacy. Intimacy and closeness. That's the heart of God. He just wants you. He just wants you to be close to him, to be close." [48:25] (73 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


9) "God is saying I will do whatever it takes because I love you so much. And I will lead you into the wilderness so I can finally speak to your heart in that place. Because where you were at before, you were just running, you were just doing, and the whole noise and everything of life and everything that's been pulling at you, you couldn't even hear my voice. And I've been crying out to you. So because I love you, I'll lead you to the wilderness if that's what it takes. So finally, everything else is removed. And you can finally hear my voice. You can finally understand that my heart is for you. Would you repent and turn back to me in that place?" [52:08] (44 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


10) "Brokenness. It's not a bad thing. Brokenness leads to surrender. Just like mourning and grieving over our sin leads to repentance. Repentance. brokenness leads us to just saying lord i just i let go of the pieces of my life and i just have to hand them to you because you're the potter and i'm the clay and i fell off the wheel but i know you could put me back together again my life is broken broken but i know that you can put me back together god wants to heal you." [53:44] (49 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)