Your Wretched Heart

# 440 - Today's Living Word comes from Mr 7:20,21a, “And He said, "What comes out of a man, that defiles a man. "For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts,

The human heart is a cesspool of filth and wickedness! We don't like to face that fact. We like to think that we are basically good people. The Bible tells another story. Jer 17:9 says, "The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?”

It has been that way since Adam and Eve tasted of the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In eating of the fruit, an awareness of what is good and evil, that had been lacking, entered the human heart. Until that time Adam and Eve did not have to differentiate between good and evil, all was good.

But now they would see the stark contrast. Their hearts now forever contaminated with evil thoughts, capable of breaking out in evil actions at any time. This is what we have inherited from them. Even as Christians, we know good and desire to do it, but our heart, contaminated with the knowledge of all that is evil, keeps getting in the way.

As the Apostle Paul wrote in Rom 7:14, 15 “but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” This is our dilemma and the only solution is Jesus Christ! As Paul concluded the seventh chapter of Romans with these words, “ Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

Give Jesus your wretched heart today! It is your only hope for redemption.

I'm Duane Matz and that's Today's Living Word.