The Overflow of My Heart
What is the overflow of my heart revealing about me? This question is one I have been asking myself lately. Every time I catch myself having a mental conversation, I silently engage in my mind and it’s here that I express my frustrations, dislikes and/or annoyances towards a person or particular situation that I deemed unfair or to have wronged me.
Now a pure heart would not be asking this question. But being honest with myself, (and now with all of you reading this blog), I must admit the motive of my heart is usually sinful. Why sinful? Well, because I have come to recognize most of the time, these mental conversations contain words of war. The war raging inside my flesh, desiring to speak out what I actually think or feel. This was in hopeful preparation or practice for any chance where I have courage to actually speak it to someone.
It was during one of the most recent pretend conversations that I caught myself hashing out, I experienced a sobering realization enter my mind. As soon as I silently said something inside my head, I realized that what I just thought about a particular person and situation, not only sounded selfish, but was actually also unkind. At that moment, I wondered what these words truly were revealing about my heart? Would God ignore my sinful heart and understand why I was feeling this way? Especially considering the person I am pretending to be talking to was none the wiser and completely unaware?
“A tree is identified by its fruit. If a tree is good, its fruit will be good. If a tree is bad, its fruit will be bad. You brood of snakes! How could evil men like you speak what is good and right? For whatever is in your heart determines what you say. A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart. And I tell you this, you must give an account on judgment day for every idle word you speak. The words you say will either acquit you or condemn you.” Matthew 12:33-37 NLT(emphasis mine)
It’s pretty black and white, these words of red, spoken by Jesus. I was speaking out of the abundance or overflow of my heart. Words we speak silently to ourselves are no less sourced from what has been stored inside our heart than the words we speak out loud. If anything, our thought life is an opportunity to examine our heart’s condition before we allow sin to take up any more of a stronghold. Eventually, if left unchecked, the heart will transform silent thoughts into spoken words. This tends to lead us to more sin in areas like angry outbursts, slander and gossip.
In the days that immediately followed my realization, I took up a new war against my sinful heart instead of the person I felt had wronged me. Though it took a lot of prayer, accountability, and a taking of my thoughts captive to the obedience of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5), things got a lot better. Not only was my mind free from hours of unhealthy and negative conversations, my heart posture toward the person and situation changed as well.
While I would love to say I have experienced complete victory over my sinful heart, the reality is there will always be a struggle (Jeremiah 17:9-10). We can either fight our flesh or fall victim to its power; the choice will always be ours. Will you join me in choosing to care about the condition of our hearts?
