Verse: 1 John 3:19-22
19 This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: 20 If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. 21 Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God 22 and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him.
Devotion
We have a warning light in one of our cars that I consistently ignore. It’s the “low air pressure” light. So basically it is telling me that one or more of my tires could use some air. I find this warning light to be annoying and useless. All my life of driving, I’ve put air in my tires when I could tell visually that they needed it. I don’t need a warning light to tell me that. The result? I ignore it. It’s right there in my face every day, and I just don’t care.
The truth is, when we don’t want to hear the truth, we get really good at ignoring it. John is talking here of our hearts condemning us. How often do we get that nudge from the Holy Spirit, or that spike in our conscience, and we choose to ignore it? How often do we know one thing to be wrong, but we do it anyway because, well, we want to.
It’s so easy to ignore the warning lights of our soul. We know our soul longs to hear God and spend time with him, but we so easily ignore that warning light, and trade in God’s presence for our busyness. We know that gossip doesn’t bring life to our hearts, but we ignore that warning light for the simple pleasure of joining with someone else in speaking badly of another. We know that low level lust can slowly eat away at our souls, and damage our relationships (and often grow into larger problems), but we ignore that warning light for the passing allure of immediate pleasure and gratification.
The more we know Jesus and his Word, the more our inner life will become drawn to Jesus and his way—and the brighter that warning light will become. Instead of ignoring the warning lights, let’s learn to ask God, “Why am I feeling this way? Is there something you are trying to tell me? Is doing this a problem that will damage my relationship with you and others?” You see the thing about ignoring warning lights is, eventually, it will come at a price. Eventually my tire will get so low that I’ll have a bigger problem. Eventually I won’t have a choice to ignore the warning light, because the bigger problem it was warning me about, will be already upon me. Don’t wait till then in your life. Listen to those warnings now, and lean into the grace of Jesus to lead you on a better path.
Prayer
Show me your ways, Lord, teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long. (Psalm 25:4-5)
Author: Christian Dunn
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