Being Happy in an Unhappy WorldSample

In Scripture, the heart is considered the source of the will, the intellect, and the emotions. Fear and courage, love and lust, joy and jealousy, hatred and happiness — all make their habitation in the heart.

There are halos and horns in human nature. We have been created just a little lower than the angels (Psalm 8:5), but at times our thoughts and conduct are downright devilish. Locked within the heart is the divine spark to achieve the sublime. But often we do the ridiculous.

Paul was a faithful Pharisee and became equally as zealous for the Gospel. But he also wrote in his letter to the church in Rome, “For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice” (Romans 7:19, NKJV).

If we are to be happy in an unhappy world, Jesus teaches, we must have a pure heart. This doesn’t mean we can attain sinless perfection, a spiritual state in which it would be impossible for us ever to sin again.

Nor does it mean we must live in a monastery, looking pious and mouthing religious slogans.

A pure heart comes from God. “I will give you a new heart,” the Lord says, “and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26, NIV).

A pure heart is the result of a divine miracle made possible by the will of God through the death of Christ on the Cross. It happens when we are born “not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God” (John 1:13, NIV).

When we mourn over our sin, our hearts are purified. Purity comes from facing the reality of who we really are inside. It comes from having looked into the mirror of our souls, seen the unspeakable, and mourned over our moral and spiritual imperfection, permitting the Master Potter to create a new heart within us.

Will you see God face-to-face? If you allow God to make your heart pure by the washing of the Word and the cleansing of the crimson stream that flows from Calvary, you will see the living God face-to-face. God guarantees it!

Happy are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.