Avoid evil and get closer to God!
That God loves us, we already know. In each contact we have with Him, we see his goodness, his love and his justice, which are priceless and eternal. In the last blogpost I approached on how is your intimacy with God. I spoke of how we should be pure in heart to get closer and closer to Heavenly Father. And to understand his plans and feel his love without the barriers that we ourselves build.
Where do these barriers come from?
If purity of heart is essential for rapprochement with God, we must also talk about some key points in order to purify ourselves from all the evil that we witness daily in the world.
Before we go to the practical points, it is interesting to understand the nature of the evil that we see every day. That is, where evil begins. So get ready, because we’ll have a great deal of Bible in the next few lines.
Jr 17:9 “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? (10) “I the Lordsearch the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve”.
Through the Bible, there is no doubt that wickedness comes from within our hearts. Because of the seed of sin that has been established in our being since the first sin of mankind. The deceitful and corrupt heart quoted by Jeremiah plans evil. That walks a path between bad thoughts and comes out in the form of fire, contamination and deadly poison through our indomitable tongue, which ends up hurting our purity and that of the brothers around us.
What hinders our purity?
We come to the central theme of this post. It was the passage that the Lord placed in my heart to pass on to the brothers who accompany the messages I publish here.
We will talk about seven things that should be unthinkable among people. Since they are things that God hates.
Pv 6:16 “There are six things the Lord hates, the seventh is detestable to him: (17) haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, (18) a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, (19) a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community”.
The first reaction that everyone takes when reading this text is that of “this isn’t talking to me”. The second may be “well, maybe yes!”.
It is sad and disturbing to see how much we practice these seven things that the Lord hates in our day to day. I will go over each one in order to show you my thoughts on all this.
1 – Haughty eyes: we can define it in many ways. But the main one of them for sure is selfishness. As we have seen in “Christ vs. Anti Christ: You Look Like Who?” looking at yourself above looking at your neighbor is a fundamental characteristic of everything that is opposed to God’s will. We let our pride take over our eyes as we look at brethren who we think know less than we do or have more things to fix than ourselves.
Mt 7: 3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? (4) How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? (5) You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye”.
2 – Lying tongue: about this, I think it is not necessary to talk so much. But sometimes we think only of big, sudden lies. But this also refers to the basic issues of everyday life. The simple “tell that I’m not at home” when the phone rings with someone who I do not want to answer already enters this point.
3 – Hands that shed innocent blood: I hope all of you are safe! However, thinking that blood is the greatest biblical symbol of life. Shedding innocent blood here can be interpreted as the simple fact that by our attitudes we destroy the image of some person to a third person, based on our own personal opinion or experience with her.
4 – Heart that devises wicked schemes: It is not just evil plans that are architected or planned crimes. Are those thoughts that one has when a brother steps on his callus. When a perverse person does to us something evil and we are eroding it inside and thinking of ways to return that evil in the same coin. Which obviously makes us a wicked person as well.l.
5 – Feet that are quick to rush into evil: This is for brothers who love gossip. In my short life experience it is the thing I have most witnessed within churches. A brother did something to someone and the first thing that happens is everyone knowing through people who have more difficulty than usual to hold their tongue. In a flash, everyone knows about a fight, a sin or an error. Instead of striving to help the person in question, they mistreat her and end up creating more weight than she would carry if few people knew.
6 – False witness who pours out lies: How many times have we not seen someone trying to get rid of some guilt by putting it on someone or dodging it to avoid being harmed? I do not only speak in churches. It happens all the time. At work, in studies, in the family. It is something that we must avoid.
7 – A person who stirs up conflict in the community: It is most interesting to think that the seventh thing, which the Lord detests, is but a summary of the six other things. It is to put ourselves in front of others (1), to lie to the people around us (2), to destroy the image of an innocent person (3), to erode evil to return it in the same coin (4), to gossip about people and things that happen (5) and utter lies to dodge the guilt and let it fall on someone. God in his infinite grace created us to live in holiness and communion with all people. Since discord means “disagreement.” Whatever is this disagreement with any human being, God sees it as a detestable thing.
So pray and self-analyze! Ask God to tell you what things you have done that displease Him and prevent your relationship from becoming ever more pure and intense!
May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the pure love of God, who abhors all wickedness and the full communion of the Holy Spirit, be present in all the brothers! Amen!
by
Marcelo Brandão
Marcelo Brandão, 24 anos, profissional de comunicação. Fui desenhado no barro para ser um elo de amor entre Jesus e as pessoas.
