“⁷ Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is.

⁸ For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreads out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat comes, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.

⁹ The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

¹⁰ I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.” Jeremiah 17:7-10

We have all heard well-meaning Christians say “The Lord knows my heart…”.  Please understand, the Scripture says our hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked and indeed, the Lord does know this sad fact.  It is us, professing Christians, who do not realize how evil and deceitful our heart is truly.

Satan’s weapon is deceit and his playground the church.

“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walks about, seeking whom he may devour:”  1 Peter 5:8

The Holy Spirit through Peter warned us of the wiles of the devil.  He does not come dressed in a red cape with horns but as an angel of light.

“¹³ For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ.

¹⁴ And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.

¹⁵ Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.” 2 Corinthians 11:13-15

Beware of rebellion that manifests in the prideful heart and don’t ever believe sincere ignorance is accepted by the Lord as repentance.

“²⁶ For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the Truth, there remains no more Sacrifice for sins,

²⁷ But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries.” Hebrews 10:26-27

The willful sin of the Believer is when our hearts turn away from God and HIS plan for victory, namely Jesus Christ and HIS redeeming work on Calvary’s Cross that broke the power of sin for the Saint.   This is the “why” of the “what” that we do.  For example, religion will begin lifting up humanistic psychology to the congregation.  Just for the record, this is rampant in the modern church but it is wrapped in another gospel and another Jesus and sadly most Christians don’t recognize the difference.  We, as sincere Christians who love the Lord, incline our ear to these “ministers of righteousness” and our faith is deceitfully transferred from Jesus and His finished work for victory in our daily living to another means or another method…man’s method.  Our hope is no longer in the Lord but in our part of victory.

Again, this is the “what” of the “why” we do what we do; the willful sin of the Believer after we received the knowledge of the Truth.  This is the deceitfulness of the heart; the wickedness of the heart.  The “what” we do, that we so often repent of, or at least we should be repenting of, is the result of the “why”.  Our sin nature begins to have dominion over us once again and those curse words start slipping out again, that anger starts rising up, covetous begins to abound, so on and so forth…you get the picture.  These are the things we see and know as sin and hopefully repent.  However, until we understand why sin has reappeared in our life, because of the deceitfulness of our heart, we will continually repent but will never be delivered.  Our struggle will continue and our victory declined.  Mind you, the Holy Spirit is not commissioned to free us from the law of sin and death when our faith is in these other methods (Romans 8:2).

“¹⁶ The face of the Lord is against them that do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.

¹⁷ The righteous cry, and the Lord hears, and deliveres them out of all their troubles.

¹⁸ The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saves such as be of a contrite spirit.” Psalms 34:16-18

We must beware of our own heart, it is deceitful and consider the fruit of our doings.

-Donna Clark Warren