Seeking Him with a Pure Heart

We are studying a very important subject, one that is not complicated really, and yet I think I would venture to say that many of God's people have not considered these principles. Many of God's people have not really thought long and hard about this whole idea of knowing God, knowing and loving Him, that requires that we seek Him, and not just once seeking Him for salvation, but seeking Him daily for a very vital kind of fellowship and communion with Him every day and day in and day out.

And we don't consider it. You know, quite often, I think we Christians, and I say we, I mean that with all my heart, because I'm one of you. We're all together in this.

I really believe that we get far too practical in our Christianity, that our faith and our relationship with Christ is just simply a kind of a practical thing and not a real devotional thing.

devotional. That is, that we have a desire and see that we ought to have a desire every day to commune with Him.

And I'm not just talking about, you know, time set aside in the day for prayer. I'm talking about that, but in addition to that, a walking with Him, a communing with Him, a consciousness of His presence and desire for His presence all throughout the day.

It's easy. It's easy. We're humans, and not any of us could ever be perfect on this. It's easy for us to just be so focused on life itself and things of life, whether they are difficult things or even the really good things and fun things and exciting things.

It's difficult for us. It's difficult for us. It's difficult for us. We get so focused on these things that we don't think about God. God thinks about us all the time. David even mentioned that. Your thoughts about me, they cannot be numbered. And the idea being that His thoughts are always on us. And how, what percentage of the day would you suppose our thoughts are upon God?

So, my desire in this study is not only to teach some principles, but to get us to think more about that aspect of our relationship with God.

That it is one of intimacy, one of communion, and one that really, at the very basis of it, is defined by a desire just to know Him and to experience Him.

Whether He ever answers any of our prayers or not. Now, He will and does. But I'm talking about a priority in our thinking. A first desire is not that God would give us the things we need and want, but our first desire is that we would know Him in a very intimate way.

Day in and day out. Alright, so enough of that. Let's get to the study. Day in and day out. Just to kind of set this up again, as we look at these various principles that I'm going to lay before you.

We've been, of course, on this, what? This will be the third week, I guess. Is that right? It has to be, because we've only seen two things, two principles. So this is the third one tonight.

But over these two weeks, we have been focusing our attention upon really a two-fold thing, two things. A desperate need that we have and a wonderful promise.

A promise of God. So we're focusing on those two things. It's not two separate things. This all comes together. What we're studying and focusing on involves these two things.

A desperate need that we all have and a wonderful promise of God. And what is it? Finding God. Finding Him. I always feel like I have to explain or qualify what I mean by finding God as if we don't know Him and have never found Him.

I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about finding Him in terms of a closeness, a communion with Him. And we want to find Him.

And we've read several times now the great passage in Jeremiah 29.13, a tremendous verse of Scripture, where the Bible says, And you will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.

Now, that highlights a need that we have. I mean, it presupposes that. It's implied there very clearly. More than just implied.

The need is to find God. But it also presents to us a wonderful promise. That when we seek Him with all of our heart, we will find Him. We will.

We will find Him. It's a wonderful promise. And, you know, really, if you'll think about it, we take the promises of God very lightly. Now, there are certain key promises that we don't kind of just pass off.

But there are many, many promises in God's Word. And we take them too lightly. In fact, there are many promises contained in the Word of God that are ours for the asking.

And yet, for various reasons, usually neglect or sometimes ignorance, we miss out on getting them. I read a story. I don't know how many years ago it was.

And it was a story about an old Indian chief by the name Crowfoot. That was his name, at least as the story goes. And Crowfoot was an Indian chief who lived back in the days when, you know, European expansion across the West.

And we were moving toward the West and building railroads as we went. And, of course, the railroads had to be built through Indian lands and such.

And so a lot of deals were made. And some things happened, of course, that were not so good. But they made a deal, this railroad made a deal with Crowfoot, chief Crowfoot, that if he would allow the railroad to go through his land, through his people's land, that they would give him a free pass to ride on the railroad any time he wanted and it would be for life.

And so he agreed and they gave him this certificate, this pass, and it was, you know, very decorative and so forth. And it was very official. And so what did Crowfoot do with it?

Well, he was very proud of that. And so he built or made a little leather pouch to hang around his neck. And he put that little pass inside there and he wore that everywhere he went for the rest of his life.

But as far as we know, he never, ever rode on the railroad. You know, he had the pass, free pass, go anywhere he wanted to go, see places he'd never been, to go absolutely free.

But he never used it, never used it. And that's very much like we believers, you know, whether it be ignorance or neglect or disbelief or whatever it may be.

There are many of the promises of God that we do not realize, do not experience, because they are therefore asking and we never ask. Never ask. And the promises of God, of course, are not just to be hung on the walls.

We've got them hanging on plaques and such and decorative places. But they're not just to be hanging there. They are to be experienced, to be received.

Vance Havner, a great preacher many, many years ago. And I've got a number of his books and highly recommend him. I've read a number of his sermons. But he had a way with words, kind of like some preachers do over the years.

You know, there are just some that just have this way to turn a phrase. And Vance Havner was one of these. And he said this. He said God's promises are checks to be cashed.

I'm not going to write this down. I didn't put this in your notes. I don't think. This is a good one. It's real short. God's promises are not checks to be cashed. Excuse me.

Wait a minute. God's promises are checks to be cashed, not mere mottos to hang on your wall. All right, there it is. I had it all backward.

So, you know, I'm just going to tell you to reverse that. All right, here it is again in case you didn't get it. God's promises are checks to be cashed, not mere mottos to hang on a wall.

All right? You know, one of my favorite hymns, old hymns, Standing on the Promises. Do you know that one? Well, of course.

It's, you know, one of those regular Baptist hymns we sing all the time. I don't know if a Baptist wrote it or not. But Standing on the Promises of God is a great hymn.

And yet, we'll sing that hymn and we'll often claim or fail to claim these promises for ourselves.

And especially in times of need. I've got another story for you. A story about a man who was living in England. He was very desperate to get to America.

And it was back in the days when the only way to get there was by ship, by boat, sea liner. And so he sold everything he had to get a ticket to get on board that ship and sail for America.

And so when he got on board, he didn't have enough money even to buy any food. He was able to scrape enough just to get a little cheese and some crackers.

And that didn't last him very long. And the voyage was quite long. And by the time they got there, he was just so ill and so emaciated physically and not eating anything.

And the steward found him in his room just almost near to death. And he said, well, what is wrong? What's happening? He said, well, I've had to make this journey and I didn't have any money to buy food and so forth.

And the steward just shook. He said, didn't you know that the food comes with the ticket? You know? And so that, again, is illustrative, I think, of we believers sometimes when God's Word is full of His promises and so forth.

And we don't avail ourselves of them. Even though they've been given to us. All right? So we desperately need this promise. The promise that we're studying here that if you will seek me, you will find me.

We desperately need that promise. We need it. And we need it not only for ourselves, but we need it for our families. And not just for our families, but our larger families, spiritual family or the family of God.

We need it for our church to seek and find God, to experience His manifest presence in our church. We need it for our country. Boy, do we need it in our country.

We need the manifest presence. We need God. We need Him. And God says and promises so tenderly. And you can take this to the bank.

He says, you will seek me and find me when you search for me with all of your heart. That is a promise. All right? So that's what we've been looking at for the past couple of Wednesdays.

And so we're answering this question, how do we seek and find God so that we can know and love Him? And that's where we're going. You know, to seek God, to find God, to know God, to love God, and to understand that when it comes to the Christian life, not only here, but on into eternity, love defines it all.

So how do we seek and find to know and to love God? Number one, remember, seek His face and not His hands only.

And the idea, of course, being, again, just by way of review, and it's very clear, we don't seek God only for what He can do for us. We seek God because He is God, the one and only.

We seek Him because of who He is. He's God. And when we seek God, we will find God, and then we'll get what only He can do.

So, you know, we get the whole thing. You know, what His sovereign and all-powerful hands can do. So we seek His face and not His hands only.

Second, we seek Him with an obedient spirit. An obedient spirit. Or from Scripture, the Scriptures we studied last week, a broken and contrite spirit.

What kind of spirit is that? It's a spirit that says what? It says yes. It says yes. Yes to God even before He asks the question.

See, it's not a blind faith we're talking about here, but it is a resilient spirit that so trusts God that we approach Him with our minds already made up.

The answer is yes, God. Now, what is it you want? That's quite different than asking first what do you want, and then I'll decide whether I say yes or no, which is what we do generally, even though we don't maybe conceptualize it in that way, honestly, as we ought to.

But that is the way we normally approach God. We want to know what He wants first, even before we've made up our mind whether or not we're going to obey. And that's not the way to approach God.

And really, when you think about it, it's very logical. So, you know, imagine coming to God with a question mark. I don't mean a question mark as in, you know, why this or what this.

I mean, we do have questions and we search. But I mean, when it comes to God's will and obedience to His Word, imagine coming to the God, the Lord of the universe, always with a question mark.

And imagine, really, when you think about it, the absolute gall of saying no to God. And I know you've never done that.

Never said no to Him, right? Can I get a witness from somebody? All right. But now, think of it, because I want to put this in strong terms, because we need this to be put in strong terms.

Think of the gall of saying no to God. I mean, we're just puny, fleshy, weak human beings, and we have the audacity to say no to the God of the universe, of the one who created us and saved us and so many other things.

And really, this is, I think, highlights what sin has done to us. It helps us understand that, how it has destroyed us and corrupted us, that we would have the audacity to say no to God, or to come to God without our minds made up, to come to Him with a question mark.

All right. Now we come to the third truth about seeking and finding God. And really, in my opinion, and by the time I'm finished, you may agree with me, this is the hardest one.

This is the hardest one to do. And here it is. Seek God with a heart that is pure. Now that bears some explanation, and so we're going to spend some time explaining that.

But there's the principle. If you're going to seek God so that you can find Him, so that you can know Him and love Him, then seek Him with a heart that is pure.

Now here's some verses that highlight this. 1 Chronicles 28.9, and I have that there in your notes, I think, but I don't have it in mind, so I'll just have to look at a Bible.

And I left my New American Standard at home, so I've got my big hardback here. Because I think I put it in the New American Standard there in your notes. So here's what 1 Chronicles 29 says.

As for you, my son Solomon, know the God of your father and serve Him with a whole heart and a willing mind. For the Lord searches all hearts and understands every intent of the thoughts.

If you seek Him, He will let you find Him. There's that promise again. But if you forsake Him, He will reject you forever. Then, 2 Chronicles 16.9, For the eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth, that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His.

And then, of course, Jeremiah 29.13 again. And it's okay to quote it again. We'll have this one memorized by the time we're done.

You may already have it memorized. You will seek me and find me when you search for me with all of your heart. All right, now, let me ask a simple question, and you can answer it.

I've given you a little hint there anyway. What part of the human body is emphasized in each one of these passages? The heart. Not the heart in terms of a physical organ, but the heart in a spiritual sense.

It's the heart that's emphasized here. And so, then, the basic key to seeking God so that you can find Him and know Him and love Him, the basic key is the heart.

It's the heart and the condition of the heart. In the Bible, the heart, not the organ, but the heart of a person, is mentioned more than a thousand times.

A thousand times. Mentioned metaphorically. A heart is a big subject in the Bible. It is a key part of our lives spiritually. The heart.

Let me give you just a few scriptures, and you can jot these down. Proverbs 4.23 Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life. That's a tremendous verse of scripture.

Keep, or really, the idea is guard. Guard your heart. The heart's very important. Guard it with all diligence. Set a guard there.

And because out of it, the heart are the issues of life. Or, how about this one? Proverbs 23.7 As he thinketh in his heart, so he is.

That includes the ladies there, too. I always have to feel like I have to give some kind of help to the Bible.

I don't. That's how it's word. He, as he, or you could say she, or as a person thinks, in his or her heart. You know, the decision you make in the heart.

The mindset of the heart. The desires of the heart. That's what you'll be. Whatever your heart is, that's whatever has your heart, rather, has you.

We could go on with that, but I'll just go on from there. Here's another passage. Matthew 22.37 Love the Lord your God with all your heart. All your heart.

And there are many, many more. Like I said, there are a thousand. Really, over a thousand references to the heart in this sense. All right, so, then, what's the principle?

It takes a pure heart to find God. It takes a pure heart to find God. All right? If that's the case, then what is a pure heart?

What is a pure heart? Well, two things. Probably this is an oversimplification, but that doesn't make it any less difficult for us, but two things.

A pure heart is a heart or is a clean heart. A pure heart is a clean heart. Clean from sin, of course. Now, I say this with all love and concern, but, you know, many, many of God's people have sin that is unsettled in their lives.

Unsettled. Undealt with. I'm talking about many of God's people in this church. Maybe some right here in this room. sin that is unsettled.

Unconfessed. Unrepentant of. Undealt with. Scripturally. And it may be sin that's been committed. I'm not necessarily talking about habitual sin.

That's another subject entirely. But sin. A struggle with sin. A weakness to sin that has not been dealt with.

And the way you deal with it is through confession and repentance. And there are many of God's people in churches like ours and all around the world who have undealt with sin.

And it's a serious, very serious problem. And you should know that you're wasting your time seeking God as long as there is unsettled sin in your life.

You're wasting your time thinking that you could ever find God without dealing with the sin. This is pretty serious stuff.

And it makes us uncomfortable, but it's true. Isaiah 59.1 Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot say, neither his ear heavy that it cannot hear.

But your iniquities have separated between you and your God. Iniquities is just one of several words in the Hebrew text that means sin.

It's a certain type of sin. Iniquities. And it's sin, then, that separates between you and your God. That's very clear from Scripture. It puts up a barrier.

And it goes on to say, and your sins have hid His face from you. Then He will not hear you. I've heard Adrian Rogers say, I don't know how many times when I'd hear him preach.

He said, we read the Bible and find all kinds of promises, many promises, that God will hear our prayers. But there are several promises in the Bible where God will not hear your prayers.

This is one of those promises. It's a promise. It's a fact. It's sin. And when sin is undealt with in your life, no matter what, from our perspective, no matter how serious it may be, and with God, all sin is serious.

no matter how small or big it might be, again, by our kinds of measurement, all sin undealt with is a barrier between us and God.

And we need to understand that. We need not be deceived. We deceive ourselves, but the basic fundamental teaching of Scripture is that sin cuts us off from God.

It cuts us off from Him. Not eternally, if you're a believer. You're not going to spend the time to delve into those passages that give assurance of salvation and the perseverance of God in our salvation.

I'm not talking about that, but cutting off our fellowship with Him. Sin cuts us off from God. It is taught throughout Scripture. Alright, so, then number one, a pure heart is a clean heart.

The sin has to be dealt with first, or you will never find God. Never find Him. In this way that God, once again, manifests His presence in your life.

And you have sweet communion with Him. So a pure heart is a clean heart. Secondly, this is very important. A pure heart is a single-minded heart.

This is the difficult, difficult one. A pure heart is a single-minded heart. What is a single-minded heart? Well, you could define it this way.

A single-minded heart is a heart that wants one thing. one thing. That's all it is.

A single-minded heart is a heart that wants one thing, and that one thing is God. it's God and Him alone.

The word pure really carries two meanings, and not two separate meanings or meanings that apply to different contexts, but two meanings that come together.

Both apply. pure. When you use the word pure, especially in the sense of when you're in the context of spirituality. Pure carries two meanings.

First, it is always the absence of something. Pure, I mean, it goes without saying almost, doesn't it? Pure means the absence of something.

Now, in this case, what would that be? It would be sin. Sin. But it also means the presence of something.

The presence of something. And probably a good analogy would be gold. Gold as it is refined, so that you have pure gold.

When you have pure gold, there is the absence of something. Right? Dirt, rocks, other minerals, other material, various things.

There's the absence of those things when the gold goes through the purification process, but there is also the presence of something. And that's pure gold. Pure gold.

Now, do a little self-evaluation or personal evaluation. And, you know, our eyes might be open to the truth of this.

What is your greatest desire in life? Number two, what is your greatest love? And thirdly, what is your greatest fear?

And we're not going to take the time for you to really think about that long and hard. I'm going to make a point from this. But what is your greatest desire, greatest love, greatest fear?

Now, a truly pure heart has the same answer for all three of those questions. It's God.

And I'll show you what I mean. If your greatest desire is God, then your greatest love will be God. love is God. I'm not saying that God would not allow you to have other desires.

I have a desire for my wife. But my greatest desire is for God. It's God. That's my greatest desire. And when my greatest desire is God, then my greatest love is God.

God. Now, if your greatest love is God, then guess what? Your greatest fear is God. That is, fear of disgracing Him, dishonoring Him, fear of disobeying Him, fear of not having His presence.

The absence of His presence. That should be a great fear for the believer. That because of sin, and we just have not dealt with it, and there's a broken communion and fellowship, that we don't sense the presence of God.

It's not that God has gone anywhere. He didn't move, we moved. As, you know, it's usually put. And it's very true. But we ought to fear these things, because our greatest desire is God, our greatest love is God, our greatest fear is losing Him, or not experiencing Him, not having sweet communion with Him.

And even that, I think you could argue, is the marvelous grace of God, that He would allow us, as a part of His design, to have that leanness of heart, that kind of fear of missing fellowship with Him, because that then compels us to, first of all, self-analyze, see what's wrong, spiritually, and then seek to make it right with God, so that we, once again, experience the thing we desire the most, and that is God Himself, and communion with Him.

all right, now, two things describe a pure heart, a heart that is absence, unsettled sin, that's a clean heart, and a heart that wants one thing supremely, a single-minded heart, and that one thing is God.

I've used this illustration before, but I think I have, some of you will remember if I did, but it kind of illustrates this final thing, this single-mindedness, this heart that wants one thing.

Suppose, when I was a young, unmarried man, and I'm courting Sherry, Sherry Carter, and so, one day, as I did, 31 years ago, so I came to her, and I said, Sherry, I love you.

I love you, and I love you so much, I want to marry you. I proposed to her. And I say, Sherry, I want you to be my one and only wife.

Okay? That's part of my proposal. And suppose I say it, Sherry, I will be your devoted husband.

364 days out of the year. But I just want one day for all the other girls.

That's just one. That's 99.7%. Huh? Do you think she'd marry me on that basis? Absolutely not.

It would. But you see, why should God have any less? That's such a simple point, isn't it? And yet, if we would be honest with ourselves and look at our lives, we would discover that we give God way less than 99.7%.

God deserves to have us all the time and be that devoted to Him. Finally, there are three things we must do to have a pure heart.

You could probably guess these. Oh, but maybe the last one. Although, I think I gave that one to you. Anyway, number one, confession of sin.

confession of sin. That is, just simply agree with God about the sin in your life. I know you've heard this many, many, many times, and hopefully you have, and hopefully you got it.

And I keep reminding myself, confession is not informing God. Confession is agreeing with God. Agreeing with Him. And, you know, and so, we see our sin and we agree that it's sin and we confess our sin, we confess it as sin that this is a sin against you, God, and I've broken your law, and I've offended you, and so forth.

And some of our sin, maybe a good amount of it is easy to see. Isn't it? And we know just right off, you know, we just sin, right?

Pretty easy to see. You know, sometimes it's difficult to see all of what God says is sin in our hearts and in our lives. I mean, after all, Jeremiah 17, 9 says, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperate and wicked.

And what does it end with? Who can know it? So, we have to assume, not assume, we have to know clearly that though some of our sin is easy to see, and there is some sin in our heart and lives, in fact, a large body of our sin and the pollution of sin in our lives that we don't see.

And we need it to be revealed so that we can agree with God about it. And God is gracious to do that and gracious to reveal our sin to us. In fact, I've got a little illustration.

I've got a glass here and there's water so John don't get uptight when you see me do what I'm going to do. Suppose I shake this glass. Uh-oh.

Now, why did that happen? Why did the water go all over the carpet? Nobody tell me. Shook the glass, huh?

Wrong. Water went all over the carpet because there's water in the glass. Now, my hand's all wet. Let me make a point.

See, that is a good illustration of us and what happens when we sin. That is, it is what is in us that is the problem.

And God is gracious to allow things to shake us so that we can discover what's in us. have you ever thought of it? That is to make God the author of sin, by the way.

The sin's already there. And I might say to the guys, there is no young lady on this earth that can make you lust in your heart.

She can only shake out the lust that's already there. And no one can make you angry. Nobody can make you angry. All they can do is push the right button to bring out of you what's already there.

And that is the problem. And God allows folks to shake us. And He allows things to happen to us. And, you know, some tough things.

And so God uses people to do it, He uses circumstances to do it, and He does it to reveal to us what is in our hearts. And when God says something is wrong, then we agree with Him.

We agree with Him. And I would say that a large percentage of the sin of our lives is revealed to us in just this way.

And instead of us seeing it the right way, we rather blame those who shook us. Or the circumstance that agitated us.

We blame that and we divorce it completely from what God is showing us in our lives. Whether it's anger or lying or stealing or lust or getting angry with someone, whatever it may be.

No one can make you sin but things shake us to reveal the sin that's already in us. And then when that happens, we confess it as it is and we ask God to forgive us.

And God is what? He's faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us. And that leads us to the second thing, cleansing, the cleansing of our soul.

And I use the word soul in the sense of our whole life. Life as a whole. Life, mind, hands, feet. Now, confession and cleansing are not the same thing.

Confession is getting the sin forgiven. Cleansing, if you might think of it in these terms, cleansing is getting rid of the cause of the sin in the first place.

that, I think, is the idea, or both things come together in 1 John 1 9 that I quoted a moment ago. If we confess our sin, he that is God is faithful and just to forgive us our sin, and what?

To cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And so, the way to a pure heart is this, when God finds some dirt, you might think of it in these terms, when God finds the dirt, there's plenty there, and reveals it to us, we confess it, and then we ask God to get out a scrub brush and start cleaning us.

Whatever it was that's a part of me, that I've harbored in my heart, or some fleshly craving of my flesh, or some point of ignorance of God's word, all kinds of things that are there, rebellion, and we could go on with the list, we're asking God to scrub us, to cleanse that out of us.

So, there's confessing of sin, there's the cleansing of the soul, and then last, there's the circumcision of the heart. Circumcision.

If you're thinking I'm going to define circumcision here tonight, I'm not going to. You know what it is. But what is it in a spiritual sense?

Well, you and I need to circumcise our hearts. So, we confess our sins, cleanse the soul, hands, our mind, our lips, our mouths, all these things, and then we're to circumcise the heart.

Now, what does that mean? Well, Deuteronomy 10.16 says, circumcise therefore your heart and be no more stiff-necked. So, there it is in Scripture. What does that mean? Well, I believe it means to remove out of your life those things that keep your heart from being totally his.

sin. And I'm not necessarily talking about sin. In fact, I'm really not talking about sin per se. We've already covered that. We confess our sins and ask God to cleanse us of sin.

But circumcision of the heart primarily deals with those things that aren't necessarily sin, but they are things that crowd God out or things that leave us susceptible vulnerable to sin.

For example, you know, let's just take some very innocent, very amoral kind of activity, and that is reading the newspaper.

How many of you read a newspaper? Quite a few. Anything wrong with reading a newspaper? Why not? Or, reading mystery novels or books, not biblical scriptural books, but just books.

You know, a good story. Maybe it's Moby Dick. Maybe you like to read books like that. Anything wrong with doing that? Or no. Or, watching television.

Now, that one's not such a good one to pick because, you know, I could ask, is there anything wrong with watching TV? Actually, there's a lot wrong with watching certain TV programming and so forth.

But, on the whole, generally, I mean, if you watch, you know, there are things you can watch fewer these days than ever before, but there are things you can watch that aren't sinful in and of themselves.

watching TV, reading the newspaper, reading books, and, you know, going to, going to the lake, getting out on your boat and fishing.

Anything wrong with that? No. Not per se. But, if reading the newspaper keeps you from reading the Bible, reading books keeps you from reading, feeding your soul with God's Word, Word, if you have a greater desire to read some fiction than reading the truth, then maybe you need to circumcise out of your life a little bit of that reading of the books and, yes, even newspaper.

This is just an illustration. TV, of course, you can see how that could apply there. You know, and these are not bad things, but they become bad things when they keep you from good things or the best things, really.

And so we need to circumcise these things in our lives. And we could take this into the realm of, you know, the potentiality of sin. We could put ourselves, we may enjoy a certain kind of activity or a certain kind of recreation or a certain kind of movie viewing or whatever that causes us to be tempted or to be vulnerable to sin and to be lured away from a commitment to Christ and to His Word.

And so these things have to be circumcised. We could use another word and the Bible uses this and that would be mortified. We mortify the flesh. sometimes we, so that we can know God and experience God and have sweet communion with Him, we have to put to death things that aren't necessarily bad in and of themselves, but they're just things that crowd out our devotion to God.

And it might be different for everyone in this room. We might all have a different list. Alright? So, there you have it.

Here's the third principle and we'll end there. Get to the fourth one. We seek God with a heart that is pure.