Search Your Heart -Ally Sweeney

“Such is the confidence we have through Christ before God. It is not that we are competent in ourselves, but our adequacy is from God. He has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives.”
2 Corinthians 3:4-6

As the Lord takes us through the valleys of this life, we are constantly reminded of how helpless we are in ourselves. God has been gracious to show me how much He desires to work through these hardships so that He is glorified and others to hear of His goodness. I am reminded of his sufficiency and it’s there in the pit of despair, I cry out for God to help me.

A few weeks ago the Lord woke me up to see the sin I had against Him by carrying bitterness against a loved one. He showed me that the strength I was working with was my own and useless! Although I had confessed to this person and to God to forgive me for being bitter and judgmental, I went back to my sin and tried to cover up my bitterness by being nice and carnally loving. If you haven’t already figured it out, we cannot love in our own capacity, that type of love fades away. The capacity of God’s love however, can set the prisoner free, break any bondage and minister to hearts of stone. Once I knelt down and asked Him to free me of this ugly, destructive fruit; He brought me to 2 Corinthians 12:9 which says, “But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness.”

The Lord desires to do much with your life. There is no room for sins of the heart. The fruit of the Spirit can’t live in a place full of hate. If you try to serve two masters, you will hate one and love the other. Since then, the Lord has been showing more and more of the impurities in my heart and how He desires to purge them. I’ve been wrestling with yelling at my children for as long as I can remember and I have to pray every day for His Spirit of consuming fire to overtake my fits of anger-to yield to the Spirit, so when I’m impatient and lacking He will rise up! I must BELIEVE that He can do the work.

Recently, when Pastor Lee preached, he said it’s your struggles that press you into Jesus. “Oh God I need you! There’s Bitterness in my heart, Anger in my Spirit. I need you to get this out of my heart.” That’s when the work of God is happening in your Spirit. Ask the Lord to enlarge your heart in this. How else can we have room for his great love! The bondage we allow ourselves to live in is SO NOT WORTH IT. Bring it to the only one who can deliver you, who HAS delivered you and gives life and speaks truth because if you belong to Him your identity is in Christ! Not the old man that you used to be. The way to receive your birthright is to go get it; it doesn’t come with your conversion. Claim it.