In 1Samuel 13:14 (Amplified) Samuel said to King Saul, "But now your Kingdom shall not continue; The Lord has sought out (David) a man after His Own heart, and the Lord has commanded him to be prince and rule over His people, because you have not kept what the Lord commanded you."
In 1Samuel 16:7 (Amplified) we read, "But the Lord said to Samuel, look not on his appearance or on his height of his stature, for I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees; for man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart."
The Lord judged him by looking into the heart of Saul and seeing the motives of his heart and not by Saul's words or deeds. Even when he had received command from Samuel by the Word of the Lord, he transgressed and did what the people demanded and desired instead of what God wanted. 1Samuel 15:3 (Amplified) says, "Now go and smite Amalek and utterly destroy all they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and sackling, ox and sheep, camel and donkey."
In 1Samuel 15:13-15 (Amplified) we read, "And Samuel came to Saul, and Saul said to him, Blessed are you of the Lord. I have performed what the Lord ordered. Verse 14 "And Samuel said, What then means this bleating of the sheep in my ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?" Verse 15 Saul answers, "They have brought them from the Amalekites; for the people spared the best of the sheep and oxen to sacrifice to the Lord your God, but the rest we have utterly destroyed."
1Samuel 13:22 (Amplified) gives Samuel's reply to Saul, "Has the Lord as great a delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams."
Even in this new covenant, God looks on the heart of His people. We can make sacrifice according to religion, but it doesn't change the heart. Continued sacrifice doesn't change our hearts and bring about what God desires. After we continue to do the same thing repeatedly without repentance, we have a heart condition.
As humans with pious outlooks on life, we see the mistakes of others to judge the mistakes in our own lives. We've all heard that old saying, "At lest I'm not like so and so." We never know how hard someone is trying to get their life in order by looking at the outward man. We never know how hard someone is trying to forget the things that plagued their lives in the past. As far as God is concerned..."Old things are passed away." But, these things still haunt the believer's heart at times. We try hard to go on with our lives as though nothing is wrong, but the heart still condemns us.
Man's heart condition can only be dealt with by the Word and the Holy Spirit. Proverbs 20:27 (Amplified) says that, "The spirit of man (heart and soul combined) (that factor in human personality which proceeds immediately from God) is the lamp of the Lord, searching all his inner most parts." The Holy Spirit won't reveal your past to you, but He will show you your new life by the Word and the sacrifice of Jesus. Somehow we've had a difficult time bringing God's forgiveness into this "natural" life. We understand the Word when it says that "our sin and iniquity I [God] will remember no more." We understand, through the Word, that we're forgiven, but it's difficult for us to forgive ourselves.
Proverbs 18:14 (Amplified) says that, "The strong spirit of a man sustains him in bodily pain or trouble, but a weak and broken spirit who can raise up or bear?" The way we must set about to build a strong spirit within ourselves is through God's Word. We already have the Holy Spirit living inside us, but we need to feed on God's Word to provide food for Him to disperse throughout our spirit.
Proverbs 17:22 (Amplified) says that, "A happy heart is good medicine and a cheerful mind works healing, but a broken spirit dries up the bones."
Proverbs 15:13 (Amplified) says that, "A glad heart makes a cheerful countenance, but by sorrow of heart the spirit is broken."
The enemy's strategy is to keep you in a place where your spirit is broken by not allowing you to believe and forget your past. He will continually show you your old sinful nature before you knew Jesus. Through constantly bringing up and having you concentrate on your past, he can hold you back from enjoying your new life in Christ. If satan can succeed in locking you up in your past, he will break your spirit or "condemn you from your heart."
We read in 1John 3:20 (Amplified) that, "Whenever our hearts in (tormenting) self-accusation makes us feel guilty and condemn us. (For we are in God's hands) for He is above and greater than our consciences (our hearts) and He knows (perceives and understands) everything (nothing is hidden from Him)."
Remember in 1Samuel 16:7 where God revealed that He doesn't man as man sees, but He looks on the heart. He knows the accusations of the heart and knows who we are now in Him by Jesus. God knows all about us and that's why He sent Jesus. He sees us now through the Blood of His Son and not the weakness of the flesh. The only thing perfect about you or me is Jesus. God sees the perfection of Jesus in us and not our old lives.
Some of us in the Body of Christ come from places filled with horror and shame. Some of us came from good homes and had good parents. Some came from foster homes with good parents. Some came from places where they needed to engage in unthinkable acts to survive. These things from our past are stamped into the thoughts that governed our lives from the past, even though we're saved now. Some of these things scarred our lives in various ways. This is a heart condition that God wants to heal. The only way this healing can occur is to feed on His Word and make it more real in our lives and hearts than our old lives.
Human nature tells us that we're too dirty, because of what we were in the past, to approach a Holy God. We feel inferior and dirty in His presence. This heart condition holds us back from allowing our Father to lavish us with what His heart has prepared for us. We actually do God an injustice when we allow our past to keep us from the presence of One Who loves us so very much. It hurts the Father's heart when our hearts cause us to shy away from His presence and stand outside the throne room of His grace.
This heart condition is on that all of us need to work on. We keep forgiving, but fail to forget. The old old things or things remembered, hold us and others in bondage. We don't forget and we won't let them forget either. This is a condition of the heart that must be dealt with in the believer's life.
We still need to learn from Matthew 7:3-5 (Amplified) which says, "Don't judge others before we judge ourselves." All of us have failed in our walks in some place or another. The things is, that we must continue and finish the race. If we allow our hearts to condemn us, then we've failed in our own eyes. But, in God's eyes, we're already a victor in Jesus. We need to begin seeing ourselves the way He sees us and not the we see ourselves.
The condition of the heart depends on your revelation of Jesus. The more you see of Him, the less you see of you. If we see Him long enough through the Holy Spirit and the Word, then we can actually come to the place John spoke of in 1John 4:17 (Amplified) which says, "In this (union and communion with Him) love is brought to completion and attains perfection with us, that we may have confidence for the day of judgment (with assurance and boldness to face Him) because as He is, so are we in this world." Only revelation of Him as He is, will ever fix the heart condition we struggle under. His love is the medicine for our heart condition. And, when the love He has for us is revealed to us in the fullness, then we'll have no fear, no guilt, no condemnation. We'll have only the peace in our hearts that God promised.
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