Grapevine Ministries
Messages from the bible to uplift and encourage those that need a word from the Lord, to strengthen their faith. Ps Phillip Barker is an itinerant pastor in Perth, Western Australia.
Grapevine Ministries
Aligning Heart, Words, and Actions with Eternal Values Part II
The episode explores the significance of the heart in shaping our words and actions, urging listeners to evaluate their priorities in light of eternal values. Through personal anecdotes and Biblical teachings, the conversation reveals how our hearts reflect our intentions and the importance of renewing them through God's word and prayer.
• The scripture underscores the importance of building with eternal materials
• Examining priorities in spiritual versus material pursuits
• The profound impact of words as reflections of our hearts
• Personal stories highlight the consequences of speech rooted in an unclean heart
• The necessity of ongoing heart renewal through scripture and prayer
• Emphasis on living as a Christ-like representative in everyday interactions
Good morning, good afternoon, wherever you are in the world - Welcome to Grapevine Ministries.
Welcome to part two. Out of the Heart, and we're going to be starting with a scripture and I want everybody to let me know whether they prefer me reading the scripture myself or whether they actually are happy for it to be done the way that I'm doing it now, so that way there's no errors and everybody knows that it is true and correct. So, starting off now with 1 Corinthians, 3, 12 to 15.
Speaker 2:Now, if anyone builds on this foundation, with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one's work will become clear, for the day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test each one's work, of what sort it is. If anyone's work, which he has built on it, endures, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned, he will suffer loss, but he himself will be saved. Yet so as through fire, Now.
Speaker 1:So we're following on from last week's base, where we're talking about the heart. Now this is, whether we like it or not, this controls our words and our actions. So my question remains, as we were discussing last week are we doing things with our time that are based upon Jesus and are we enduring, or are we spending our time working on things that have no eternal value and will perish when God examines them? This reason, I pose this as a question, and I say we because I'm also just like everybody that's listening to this. I'm actually talking about myself and the priorities that we have, and are we messing these up? So let's look at it the week ahead, the week ahead. So, if you can actually think about the things that you have planned for, even just for today, and consider their eternal value, do they glorify God or is some other materialistic thing our focus? And this is not saying that we can't have and possess good things, because God wants us to do that as well. I'm just saying that these natural things are not to be sought ahead of the spiritual things that the Lord has, for himself, given to us now. I know it's a long weekend at the moment and a lot of people may not listen to this today, and a lot of people will actually neglect to go to church this Sunday because it is a long weekend and they want to get away with family and they want to do things Now. There's nothing wrong with that, all right. What I'm just saying is that is your priority okay, about building your foundation on gold, silver and precious stones, or is your priority building a foundation which is spiritual and will last for eternity? Because what we want to do is we want to save up treasures that are in heaven and not worry about the treasures that we have here, because the treasures that we have here are fleeting. They are things that only are temporal and subject to change. They are things that only are temporal and subject to change and, like I've found in my ministry that I've had many people that have been financially very, very stable and all of a sudden, there's a fluctuation in oil prices or gold prices or whatever happens on Wall Street, or whatever happens on Wall Street, all of a sudden, all that money that they were saving up and being prepared to use is gone. So Jesus tells us that the things of eternal value are stored in the treasure rooms of our heart. He desires that our treasure rooms be filled and overflowing with his kingdom, love and goodness.
Speaker 1:So throughout my time in ministry, like I was just saying before, I've seen time and time again where not intentionally, but people have put materialistic things ahead of eternal things. Whenever I said something bad or naughty as a child, my mother washed my mouth out with soap. We did the same thing with our kids, but it was not my mouth that was needing cleansing. I didn't know that then as a child, but I do now. It's my heart.
Speaker 1:You see, your tongue speaks only what is in your heart. Those are the very words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and he says that loose lips sink ships. Loose, careless, evil talk can come only from an unclean heart. So as believers, we have not taken seriously what the Lord has said about the taming of our tongue. He has made it a hard issue. Not only does my careless tongue discount all my spirituality, but it also makes me face the fact that my heart is unclean.
Speaker 1:So things like and look, I mean not intentionally, but we all have a tendency to do this at some point or some time in our life. If we gossip, tell dirty jokes, run down other people, raise our voice and scream at our children or our spouse. You must ask yourself what unclean, filthy stuff is still stored up in our heart that we can speak out. Because it says out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. We must examine our heart and ask where does this come from? There must be something I have not dealt with or I wouldn't be saying such things. Why would you go on gossiping? Why do you utter such mean things, use careless words and they're unsanctified. They are strangleholds that still hold your heart.
Speaker 1:You read in the scripture about having a hardened heart and we've got to have a soft heart. Jesus gives this matter serious weight. So if Jesus is given this serious weight, that means that it must be important. How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. A good man, out of a good treasure of his heart, brings forth good things, and an evil man, out of an evil heart, brings out things that are not of God, treasures being brought forth from evil things.
Speaker 1:It says in Matthew 12, 34 through to 35, here Jesus is saying if you are careless with your tongue, quarrelling, complaining, murmuring, tattling, you have a serious heart problem. Your heart is not right with God and it goes very deep. There is an evil treasure stored up in you, just as a snake has bags of poison stored behind his jaw. Yeah, if deadly poison is coming out of you, it is because the bag has not been drained. Now I know that sounds a bit melodramatic, but basically what I'm saying is that if there is stuff stored in you that hasn't been cleansed, hasn't been purified by you, spending time in the word, this is the thing that happens. Whenever I allow something unclean to come out of my lips, I must stop and say to the Lord Master, there must be a root of jealousy, envy or lust in my heart, a root of jealousy, envy or lust in my heart. So you have to dig deep into your heart and pluck out the roots of bitterness, pride or whatever it is. God wants to get that evil out of your heart, and when I'm saying evil, I'm just meaning it's another word for saying bad things. All right, and we all do it. We all do it. We all have issues of the heart that aren't as right with God as what they should be. So the best way to do this is spending time in the word of God.
Speaker 1:I'll give you an example. Alright, this reminds me of time when I was actually walking around at church. This was a Pentecostal church here in Perth, west Australia. Dr Reverend Margaret Court was our senior pastor. I was senior pastor, I was associate pastor. We're having a look at a new display that was set up in the tunnel, and if you've ever been there you'll know that the tunnel is just another way of explaining. It's a passage that runs between two buildings and normally there's a lot of displays in there for upcoming conferences, stuff about pastor margaret and all this sort of stuff. So that gives you an idea.
Speaker 1:But back to the story. As we were walking through the tunnel, pastor margaret slipped and and there was something on the floor and she fell and landed on her bottom quite hard. The first words that come out of her mouth was sugar. There was no room for profanities because her heart was full of the word of God. Now, as a senior pastor, obviously this is what you expect. But if you look at this from your perspective and maybe this will explain things a little bit better have you ever stubbed your toe in the middle of the night where you're getting up and you're thinking I'm going to be pretty smart about this. I don't need the light on, I know where I'm going, I know where everything is in the house, and bang, you stub your toe, and this word wants to fly up out of your body, so out of your inner core, which is basically saying out of your heart, and the first thing that comes to your way is profanity. The same thing is if you're doing some DYI out the back and you hit your thumb with a hammer. What is the first thought of that word? What is it that you are thinking about? Or what is it that has come to your thought pattern? Now, there's nothing wrong with that. You could think of profanity, and you know.
Speaker 1:Just a little side note here, just so I let you understand. What I'm trying to say here is that for me, in my past I've worked for the military, I've worked in the Department of Corrections, I've been in private security, I've done bodyguard work, I've been a bouncer at nightclubs and you have a tendency to use the language that your patronage uses. It's no good me getting there and saying to someone oh excuse me, sir, you're being a bit noisy at the moment. Be a good boy and sit down and have your beer and have a good time, but just keep it down a little bit. If I was to do that sort of thing with that sort of mannerism, I'm pretty certain that person would tell me to take a walk, a long walk, off of a short plank, but he would be very colorful in his vocabulary. So you have a tendency to use the mannerism and the terminology that they relate to, and so that was me in my old days.
Speaker 1:Actually, the best thing to do is say pre-JC, all right, before I was born again. Now, once I become born again, I found that I still had that language within me because I was still working in that area. And so what actually happened is I had to spend more and more time in the word of God, knowing that they would dissipate and eventually I could actually use proper language to deal with a certain situation. Yes, it would still be quite forceful and quite demanding, but it wouldn't have all of the colourful adjectives in there that people have a tendency to use these days. Now, and, trust me, I'm not saying I'm perfect in any way, shape or form, but I can tell you that it is very difficult for me to use a swear word, because it's uncommon to me now because I've got the word of God in me and I've been able to stop myself from using that language. And the reason I say this is because it's still in me, right, because that was part of my DNA.
Speaker 1:It's the same as they say when you become born again, old things are passed away. Behold, everything has become new. So you're a new creature in Christ. Okay, the old you has died and the Holy Spirit comes to live within you. The old you has died and the Holy Spirit comes to live within you. But you must constantly keep renewing your mind with the Word of God. So you get to a stage where the only thing that's going to come out of your mouth is godly things. And like when Pastor Margaret fell down, she said sugar. She hit the ground pretty hard and she could have said anything. It's the same when you hit your thumb or slam your hand in the door, it may come up to your brain level and you may have that word sitting there. But as long as you can stop it from coming out of the mouth, you can actually cleanse that part of your brain and your palate from using that profanity.
Speaker 1:Now, I'm not saying it happens overnight, because it doesn't, and there are many, many things that we can have, causing us to get to a stage where we may or may not use these type of words as we go through our life, through our life. I think it's important, though, to remember that a house divided against itself is a house that cannot stand. Another way of looking at this is that you can't have your foot in two camps. You can't be partly in the world and partly in the kingdom of God. You've got to be centralised and make sure that you look at things from a worldly perspective. You know, they say that there's only two types of Christians. You know they say that there's only two types of Christians those that have met a Christian and those that haven't, and the reason I say that is because you know I'll give you another example when I was in the military and I was on standby for deployment right, in other words, I was a combat-ready unit and we would get holidays we had to stay in our uniform.
Speaker 1:We couldn't wear civilian clothes, so if we got called back and we were going to be deployed, we were already ready to go, and it's just a matter of getting back to the base, picking up all of our gear and heading off. Now, wherever I go, I am representing the Australian Defence Force and so I need to have my behaviour and the way that I speak and the way that I talk to people as a good representative of the Australian Defence Force, because I am an advertisement for the defence and that means everything I say and everything I do is going to be judged by people in society. Now we know that every man and his dog has got a smartphone these days and they just love capturing things on video and then uploading them to social media. I can just imagine when I'd finished my holidays, I'd get back to the barracks and I've got the CO coming to see me and goes hey look, can I have a word with you? This is what we saw you doing on social media, and I can actually be charged under military law for conduct unbecoming of a service member. It was an unusual thing, but we can actually get charged under civil law or military law. It's the same.
Speaker 1:When I worked for the Department of Correctional Services, I was wearing a uniform that was a representative of the government, you know policing department, so I was a police officer. So we have to be aware of how we're behaving and what we're saying and what we're doing because we represent that. We're doing because we represent that. Now, if you take away the uniform and you just have a born-again Christian who is trying to be more Christ-like every day, you've got to be walking, talking and acting like a member of the body of Christ, and what you do and how you behave will have an impact on others. Now do you want others to turn around and say, oh yeah, well, you're a walker-talker Bible and that's really nice and that's fine and dandy and all that sort of stuff, but do something wrong or start using profanities or, you know, getting into arguments or things like that. They're going to go and say, wow, and you call yourself a Christian, right, you see what happens straight away.
Speaker 1:There's another saying that if you do something good, nobody sees it, nobody comments on it, it's expected you do something wrong and, before you'll know it, a hundred people know about it and it's all over social media. It's the same as if you go to a restaurant. If you go to a restaurant, when you're at that restaurant and you get the meal brought before you, you are going to do one of three things Now. The first thing that happens is. Everybody likes taking photos of their food and putting it on social media and telling everybody where they are. But if there's something wrong with your meal, you will make sure that you give that restaurant a really bad review and you'll tell 10 or 20 people about how bad it was and not to go there. Social media disaster for that restaurant. But if you have a really good meal, you may tell only one or two people about it, because good news is the good news. Bad news makes headlines, so to speak, and that's why I avoid watching any of the news. I normally go on later so I can watch the sport and the weather, but I don't want the news because it's not good news, it's always bad.
Speaker 1:How often do you see a good, heartfelt story on the news channel saying something nice about somebody or something? That's going on Very, very rarely. But we have the good news. We have the word of God. We have the written word of God that we can meditate on it by day and by night. We do not let it depart from our lips. But everything we say and everything we do is supposed to be a representation of Jesus Christ. The more word that you have in you, the more. This softens your heart and the word gets deep down into your heart. Don't you want people talking about you and just saying, wow, this person is a really good representative for someone who is a fellow of jesus christ, or I want to be more like that person because of their heart. Have you ever heard of? Uh, when you get there and and what's it called? Again It'll come to me Random acts of kindness.
Speaker 1:Now, I've mentioned this once before about a particular thing that I've done, but I've actually seen this and it gets put on social media too. Like this guy actually walked past this elderly person who's hand-picking a few items that they want to buy and he accidentally, on purpose, drops his wallet on the ground and just keeps walking. Elderly person goes and picks up his wallet and goes and gives it back to him and um says hey, look, you dropped this. Wow, okay, no worries, thank you very much. Oh, could I give you some money as a thank you? No, no, no, no, I'm all good. And then he walks off and then later on you see that she's at the checkout and she's very cautiously putting through things. It's obvious she's making sure she's got enough money to pay for it. Out of the side. This guy comes out, swipes his card and says the bill's all paid for.
Speaker 1:It's a random act of kindness. And it's a random act of kindness. I'm not telling you to go around paying people's grocery bills and paying for their fuel, but I'm just saying that is the attitude that we have. Jesus came to serve, not to be served. We are to be reflections of him. Because he says you know greater things we will do than he has done. And if you look at all the things that Jesus did while he was only in ministry three and a half years, then look at the opportunity that you have to do greater things than he has done Healing signs, wonders, miracles, random acts of kindness, it says.
Speaker 1:Given it should be given unto you. Pressed down, shaken together and running over man gives into your bosom. Shaking together and running over man gives into your bosom. So a merry heart does good like a medicine. Right Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. You see where I'm going with all of this. It's your heart attitude.
Speaker 1:And the thing is you don't need to be like the woman in the synagogue with the tax collector and he's going hey, look at me, look what I'm doing. I'm putting all this money into the coffers. See what I'm doing. I'm doing all of this. He was given out of his abundance and yet the widow with two mites, sort of like just got there and she put everything that she had in there and was still apologizing to her heavenly father for not being able to give more. And jesus turns around to his disciples who is going to be greater in the kingdom of god? Is it the tax collector, because he gave a lot, or is it the woman who gave literally everything? We need to be a cheerful giver. We need to be more Christ-like each and every day.
Speaker 1:And the longer you spend in the word and when I'm talking about spending time in the Word, I'm talking about time that you want to spend in the Word Don't make it religious and don't make it a forced thing where, oh, I have to do my Bible reading or I have to do my devotionals in the morning and I have to do this over nighttime. You do it because you want to, and I said this. I haven't said this for a while, but I have actually said this before. If you're not sure of how to go about this and giving your time to the Lord, just spend 10 minutes in the morning, the first 10 minutes of your day and the last 10 minutes of your day spending time with him. And in the morning you ask him to be with you, to watch over you, to give you protection, wisdom, knowledge and understanding for the day and of an evening time, you'll thank him for the day that you had, irrespective whether it was good, bad or ugly. You thank him that you got through that day and you can go on to be another day.
Speaker 1:There was this old prayer that I learned as a young child. It's not really biblically correct, but the way that it was said resonated in me and I've always remembered it, and so I've changed it slightly to teach my granddaughter this, and it sort of goes like this it goes now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. If I live another day, I pray the Lord to guide my way. Now the dying bit a young child doesn't understand, so I just changed it and I said Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord, my soul to keep. When I awake, for another day, I pray the Lord to guide my way. And because, well, we want positive reinforcement, we don't want to be praying doom and gloom, but just try that If you're struggling, 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes at the night, this is the way to renew your heart, to soften your heart and to be more Christ-like.
Speaker 1:Just do those 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes at night. Now, it's a simple prayer. Now there's five points. As long as you cover those five points in your prayer, it is a good prayer. Now, there's five points. As long as you cover those five points in your prayer, it is a good prayer. But any prayer is good enough. It could be just Lord help me. He knows your heart. So if you pray to the Father through the Son, you make sure that it lines up with scripture, you ask him for something and then you thank him for what you are going to get, because you haven't got it yet, because you've just prayed.
Speaker 1:If you have those five key points, every prayer is, you know, basically the right prayer to have, and no prayer falls by the wayside. Everything goes up to the Kingdom of God and does what it's meant to do, and that's Psalm 5511,. I think my words will not return. Void to me. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not on your own understanding, but everything in prayer and supplication. Make your requests known to him. Let's look at our heart this week. Let's look at what we're doing and what treasures are we trying to acquire. And just remember god wants you to be wealthy, healthy and wise. He's not depriving you of that. But let's not make that a priority. And number one priority is the Lord, first and foremost, in everything we say and everything we do. You know, because the lover of money is the root of all evil Not having money. But if you love that more than you love your Lord. I think that's enough for today and we'll talk to you next week. Okay, god bless. For now, bye.
