Dear Friends

Hope life is treating you well today. Life has been really busy here............I had this idea a few weeks ago that it would be great to take a week off and go hiking....so I have a hiking trip planned next week and I'm really looking forward to it. I will be visiting Carnarvon National Park and taking a trip up to the tableland to a part rarely visited. I'll send photos when I've been, but I'm not leaving for a week yet.

Anyways, I wanted to take just a minute to pen a few thoughts on being clean on the inside because I have come to realise that it is our hearts which are where everything starts. Proverbs 4:23 says to "guard your heart because it affects everything you do" (NLV) As I thought about this more I have come to realise that its very true.

In churches we often look at people on the outside and tell them to stop smoking, stop drinking, stop swearing.........that is we look at the appearance of a person but not at their heart and we think if we fix up what they look like we have fixed them up. But Jesus said on Matt 23 that if we fix up the inside first then the outside will also be taken care of. What is very sad is that often a person does fix up their outside but leaves their heart neglected.........and then they think they are doing a great job pleasing God, but the sins and bad desires are all still there.

A good example is a person who swears or curses frequently. This person can learn to stop doing this by self control and by developing good habits but it won't stop them from "cursing on the inside" or from bad attitudes to other people from still lingering in their heart. The key is to change the heart through prayer and God's grace and then our behaviour will also change.

Some of the areas we need to watch are to avoid being greedy, being contentious, complaining, thinking we are better than others, being arrogant or proud or unthankful. All of these are just examples of the kind of things that grow and develop in our heart if we don't keep a good watch over it. If we allow these attitudes or similar ones to grow in our hearts we can really fall away from watch God wants.

So keep a close watch over your heart.............and God bless you
Cheers
David