Our goal as Christians is NOT to act a little bit better than the moral atheist who lives next door. God wants His children to aim and shoot higher than that. Our goal is to be like Jesus – think, talk and live like Jesus did when He walked on this earth. That takes a lifetime of growing and changing because we have a lot of growing and changing to do; however, God will work through us in spite of our spiritually clumsy ways if we have a pure heart. The song Purer in Heart, O God states a biblical truth: We need God the Father to help us live like Jesus by sending the Holy Spirit into our hearts. We are to be holy and wholly devoted to him.
David wrote in Psalm 24:3-4, “Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? And who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood and has not sworn deceitfully.” In Psalm 51:10,17 David is repenting before God of his sin and makes these two powerful statements, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me…The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise”. Jesus said it very succinctly, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8).
Read I Peter 1:13-21; 2:11-12 and listen to Purer in Heart, O God.
If you address as Father the One who impartially judges according to each one’s work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your stay on earth; knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ. For He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.