ARME 3: Leoni Meadows, CA - Aug 2010

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ARME Bible Camp

Don Mackintosh

Issues of the Heart

We're gonna study about the heart, issues of the heart today.

And I want to just kind of tell you, that's actually the first time I've ever made this presentation, which means it probably will be better the second time, but you guys can have a heart-to-heart with me on it first here.

The reason that I wanted to study more about the heart was because I want a revival in my life, So I was asking, Lord, how is it that we can have a revival in heart?

And then I was reading another little book about the importance of preaching.

And in this book there were so many of these quotes that talked about the heart, which I'll show you some today, that it just totally convicted me.

So I started to then study all of the different passages in the scripture.

You might do that, you know, like when you're studying, you have a Bible program and you can see here that I searched out everything on heart and then I put it into like a document and, well, I'll just show you some of these documents.

These are all the preparations that, you know, different things, different documents where I went through different quotes and different things.

And then it all, I kind of then categorized them into different texts, you know, like what is the heart.

And then I put it into another document that even looked more closely at different aspects of the heart, then I started studying through all of the quotes on Ellen White on the heart, which will take me a couple years, and so I didn't get that done, but they're so rich that, you know, it was powerful.

So then came to a document about ways to prepare the heart.

So you know, when you're preparing for like a sermon or a talk, you can literally spend weeks or months, right?

And you have to discipline yourself not to do that sometimes.

So like for instance, tomorrow I'm going to give a talk on how to study the Bible, but I'm just going to narrow it down.

I don't like to give talks that are like all over the Bible, because I find that Bible students can't follow those.

I don't find that that's profitable with people, because they don't really know what you're doing.

When you go from Genesis to Revelation to Exodus, they have to take your word that all those contexts make sense.

So I would rather study just verse by verse with them through something and that way they start to get confident.

If I go to the Bible study and I have blown so many Bible studies that I know what to tell you what not to do.

If you go to a Bible study, they can like the Bible study because of their cleverness and because they like you, but when you leave, they don't know what to do.

But if you study with them how to just go verse by verse, then they have a clue.

Or if you show them, okay, we just looked up all the texts in the Bible about something, and that's called a topical study, and you show them how you did that, then it helps them.

They can never reproduce that study, and then when they say something to their friend or their pastor or their relative, they just look at them and go, you don't know what you're talking about.

And it's an embarrassing moment for them.

So I don't like to put people in that situation if I can help it.

So anyway, that was this little preamble before this.

Father in heaven, we're thankful today we can study issues of the heart.

We ask that your spirit would be with us and Lord that you would speak to our hearts.

We're told in scripture that your heart, that your heart and Your soul is in the sanctuary.

Your mind, you're in that heavenly sanctuary and you want to communicate with us.

So we ask that we could, from what we learned today, that you could and we thank you we come in Christ's name.

Okay, so I wanna look now at the actual presentation that came out of all that little preliminary work I showed you, which I'm just calling issues of the heart.

And the reason I wanted to do this is because when I got the invitation to come to RME, they sent me a little email, and This is 1 of the things they said.

Prayer and heart preparation when opening the scriptures and the word is what they wanted us to talk about.

We may specifically request a particular speaker to address this topic.

However, every speaker may want to include some aspect.

And heart preparation, they said, is important.

It maximizes the ability of the Holy Spirit to work and bring understanding.

I think this is so key, I mean, that sounds like a simple sentence.

And then as I began studying it, I realized how key it was.

Okay, here are some of these quotes that I came across in Spirit of Prophecy and we'll look at some Scripture too.

Third volume of the Testimonies, 237-238.

By the way, I'm going to post all these on my website at amazingfacts.org, go under the AFCO tab, Amazing Facts Center of Evangelism, and you'll find director's notes, and that's me, the director, and you can find notes from many different presentations across the country.

And then I will ask them to link to that on their army page.

I also put the notes from this morning's study of the chiastic structure of Psalm 85.

You guys can make that your own sermon freely.

I have received freely I give so you then can give to others.

Ministers should first feel the sanctified influence of the truth upon their own hearts and in their own lives, and then their pulpit efforts will be enforced by their example out of the desk.

Ministers need to be softened and sanctified themselves before God can in a special manner work with their efforts.

I read that quote and I go, whoa, I mean, basically what it's saying is what?

You need to be ministered to before you can minister to others.

You need to be connected before you can help the other get connected.

So it doesn't matter how artful your Bible study is.

If you're not connected, and you can have fairly clever and artful Bible studies, but if you're not connected, you're not gonna connect.

This text really convicted me out of many of the texts.

This 1 convicted me the most that I read.

Amaziah was 25 years old when he became king.

And he reigned 29 days, I mean 29 years, rather.

His mother's name was Jehodah Dan of Jerusalem.

And he did what was right in the sight of God, but not with a loyal heart.

So in other words, you can be doing everything right, but your heart can be wrong.

And in other words, Not with a perfect or blameless heart, the Amplified Version says, or not with a whole heart.

So, you can put on a show and then it looks like you're doing the right things.

And I had to confess, unfortunately, many times I have been.

And I don't want to be like Amaziah, do what's right but not with a perfect heart.

We have to have revival to have our hearts back where they need to be.

And of course, the heart is the seat of the will and the emotions in the Bible.

And he gave us the ability to have the emotions and the will And yet we sometimes steal it for our own things.

And what he's saying is his heart was not right.

Look at the parallel passage, and by the way, whenever you're finding something in Chronicles, you always can look in Kings and you can see the parallel passage, right?

Notice this nuance in 2 Kings, that passage.

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Issues of the Heart

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