My wife and I spent the day yesterday in the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario with our daughter Emma for an exploratory heart cath to check her pulmonary pressures. We are very thankful that the results came back positive, that her levels are lower than expected, and we want to thank you all for your prayers, thank the doctors and nurses for their work and most importantly thank the Lord for His sovereign care! For those of you who don't know, Emma had open heart surgery two years ago at which time she was also given a pacemaker.

All of this is a continual reminder to me of something much deeper... that our primary problem as sinners is not behavioral but an issue of the heart. As Jeremiah 17:9-10 tells us , "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? 'I the LORD search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.'" A difficult diagnosis to be sure, but one that we should not avoid or deny! Here is what JC Ryle has to say about it...

The first of these two verses contains a very strong saying, and one which the world in general is not at all disposed to believe. "The heart is deceitful above all things," says our text. "I deny it," says the unconverted man. "To be sure, my heart is very careless and very thoughtless, but it is an honest heart after all." "The heart is desperately wicked," says the text. "Nothing of the sort," replies the sinner. "I know that I neglect the means of grace very much, and perhaps I do not live as I ought to do, but I am sure I have a good heart at the bottom." "Who can know it?" asks the text. "Know it!" we are told: "why, we do not pretend to be such saints as you want men to be, but at any rate we do know our own hearts, we do know what our faults are."

And so, it appears there are two statements--and one of them must be false. The everlasting Bible is on one side--and human reasoning on the other; God says one thing, and man says another. My belief is that the Scripture account of the heart is strictly and literally true and correct; it is a faithful likeness, a lively picture, and it must not be softened down and called figurative and extravagant, because it sounds rough and plain, and leaves you no room for boasting. O that the Holy Spirit may bring many of you to a right understanding of your own hearts! It is almost impossible to say how immensely important it is to have a clear view of their natural state: "with the heart man believes unto righteousness," "out of the heart are the issues of life"; "man looks on the outward appearance—but the Lord looks on the heart."

In short, unless you really know the character of your own heart, you will never value the Gospel as you ought, you will never love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, you will never see how absolutely necessary it was that He should suffer death upon the cross, in order to deliver our souls from hell and bring us unto God.

This then is the focus of our daily warfare and spiritual disciplines as we seek to grow and mature in Christ... the heart. As Jonathan Edwards once said, "The first and the great work of a Christian is about his/her heart. Do not be content with seeming to do good in outward acts while your heart is bad, and you are a stranger to the greater internal heart duties." Again, our need is to preach and apply the gospel to our hearts everyday.