Decorations Of The Heart

Here is a beautiful ornament and one that should be apparent in the life of every Born Again Child of God. It’s called Grace!

What are these verses trying to tell us? I think the first think that King Solomon is trying to tell us by the Holy Spirit is that we should be willing to learn; or be teachable. Solomon says, “hear the instruction”. There are a lot of people who are not teachable. No matter how many times a sermon is preached, or a specific subject is covered, they simply never hear it or learn it. Most of us have learned to develop a special kind of hearing called “Selective Hearing”, meaning we hear what we want to and ignore the rest. I’ve noticed this happens a lot in a marriage. The husband can’t hear when the wife says, “Please take out the garbage, or sweep the driveway, or wash the car; but he never misses the call to dinner.”

I’ve seen people sit in church and use selective hearing as well. They hear the words of the message from God’s Word but somehow it means something different to them than it does to everyone else, or maybe they just don’t get it. Sometimes as I preach, I look out into the congregation and I see eyes watching me, but when I look into those eyes, I wonder if anyone is home? It’s as though they are seeing into another dimension, looking right through me because their eyes are fixed and unresponsive. Sometimes, when I see this happening, I suddenly realize that they aren’t hearing because they are asleep with their eyes open!

The ornament we need to place on our heart here is one of learning to listen and gain instruction. Once we have gained the ability to be teachable, then we must also add two other ornaments, one is Respect and the other is Obedience.

Respect is something that is disappearing from our society today. Young people in the world, and even many in the House of the Lord, have no respect; no respect for elders, no respect for teachers, no respect for the sacred things of God, no respect for anything. I know that respect is something that must be earned, and that in so many of our homes of today, the children are left to fend for themselves and the parents are doing their own thing. This kind of home atmosphere fosters disrespect. I can understand that to some degree in the wordly crowd, but when that same kind of disrespect comes into the Lord’s House, then we really have a problem.

That’s where being teachable must come into play. We have to teach the youth how to have respect, and then show respect ourselves as an example for them to follow. Do we teach our kids respect for the things of God when all we do is complain about how something at the church isn’t to our liking? Do we teach them to respect God’s House by leaving trash and cups and even finger nail and toe nail clippings on the carpets. Do we teach our children respect for the presence of God and the message of God by thinking that its more important to answer a cell phone in the service than to listen to what God is trying to say? Do we teach respect for God by ignoring the call of God on our lives? If we don’t show respect, how can we expect our kids to respect us enough to learn from us?