This morning I woke up grumpy. I had no reason to be grumpy (although I would have produced several). I simply felt grumpy. Perhaps you have had a similar heart attitude when you opened your eyes on any given morning. I’d like to help you (and me) change your thinking regarding the effect this heart attitude can have on your affections (desires, emotions) and your volition (conscious choice, will, action).
In the Gospel of Mark chapter seven, Jesus is discussing the traditions of the current Jewish regime (a.k.a. Pharisees, scribes, etc). They engage in a discussion of the tradition of washing which which they believe keeps them from defilement. Jesus, being God, takes the conversation and turns it to the heart.
“And he said, ‘What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.’” Mark 7:20-23 (emphasis mine)
While this sounds like bad news it is good news. In God’s sovereignty he provided a way for us to overcome what defiles us. Even though all mankind is born with a sin nature because of the fall of Adam that can drive us to grumpiness, we can be redeemed by the shed blood of Christ. God accepts his death as full payment for the sin for which we should have died. As we confess our sin to him, agreeing with him that he is holy and our sinful actions are against his holiness, he forgives us and cleanses us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). This is the gospel. The beauty of the gospel is that it is for all of us: those apart from Christ that they might receive Christ and those who belong to Christ that we might live fully for him.
Accordingly, if we have submitted our lives to Christ, we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. He provides for us the ability to take right thinking and turn it into right acting that will glorify God. Without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit we have no hope to produce godly thinking that ultimately glorifies God. We will remain grumpy unless it suits our own spirit to change. This produces glory for ourselves, not God.
Jesus tells us in Mark 7 that in the heart of man is the potential for every sin. It is our sin nature. Our hearts can be equated with our thinking. We can think of our hearts as having three ‘mechanisms,’ if you will, namely: the mind, the affections, and volition (see underlined above). The mind takes in information. The response of that information is seen in our affections and our volition. (See diagram below)
The Jewish ruling party put into their minds the traditions of men: “I must wash my hands in a certain way.” They believed that anyone who did not abide by these traditions was now defiled and unclean and no longer able to commune with God or the Jews.
This produced certain responses toward those who did not do as they believed correct. Their desire (affections) was to stay away from ‘those’ people and look down on them, separating themselves (volition), similar to the Sneetches of Dr. Seuss who were designated ‘starred’ or ‘starless.’
So here is what happened: they thought something and then they felt and acted on those thoughts.
Here is what I am saying:
We can think truth which will then rightly change how we feel and how we act. Truth comes from the Scriptures. David does this repeatedly in the Psalms (3, 4, 7, 46, 51, so many others!). Let’s look at one instance:
Psalm 3 is called a ‘lament’ psalm. It is a psalm that teaches us how to grieve and suffer. David pours out his heart when he is fleeing from his son Absalom who is rebelling and trying to take the kingdom from David. (*Note parenthetical numbers are verses)
1) David acknowledges what is happening. It was true that he is in dire straits. David cries out, “how many are my foes!” (1).
2) He then acknowledges the truth about God: “You are a shield about me, the glory, and the lifter of my head.”(3)
3) Truth has an effect on his affections and his volition: “I lay down and slept;..”(5) and “I will not be afraid…”(6).
4) Truth provides the opportunity for a right heart attitude: David makes a conscious choice to think rightly about God and who God has called him to be: God has anointed Solomon as successor to David, not Absalom. God’s plan will prevail (7) and David trusts that God is a truth teller (8).
Please don’t hear me say that this is an immediate response. We do not know how long David struggled with his son’s betrayal (See 2 Samuel 14-18, Psalm 63) but we do know that he used the truth of God to inform his mind which gave him right affections and right volition.
If you have the grumpies don’t dwell there! Dwell in the land of the Living God. Do not let your flesh (sin nature) drive how you respond to a poor heart attitude. Rather, engage your mind with biblical Truth that you might understand that you are a new creation, created in Christ Jesus to do the works that he prepared in advance for you to do (2 Corinthians 5:5:14-21; Ephesians 2:4-10). We are no longer slaves to earthly thinking (Romans 6:15-19; James 3:13-18) but we can think and then act rightly (Colossians 3:1-4).
Be overcoming the grumpies or they will be overcoming you.