Serving . . . with All My Heart message #4 in the series Discovering my S.H.A.P.E. for Ministry

S piritual Gifts

 H

 A bilities

 P ersonality

 E xperiences

 Six Biblical Basics about our Heart

1. Before we come to faith in Christ, our heart is a reliable guide.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17:9, ESV)

2. God gives us a heart when we come to faith in Christ.

And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. ²⁷ And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. (Ezekiel 36:26-27, ESV)

3. The condition of my heart determines what I , what I do, and what I feel.

For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. (Matthew 12:34b, ESV)

 For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. (Matthew 15:19, ESV)

4. What I do with my reveals the condition and priorities of my heart.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matthew 6:21, ESV)

5. Because the condition of my heart is so important, I should my heart and choose carefully what I allow to influence it.

Above all else, guard your heart,
     for it is the wellspring of life.
     (Proverbs 4:23, NIV84)

6. When my heart is surrendered to Jesus, shaped by his Word, empowered by his Spirit, and committed to his glory, I can trust and pursue the of my heart.

Delight yourself in the Lord,
     and he will give you the desires of your heart.
     (Psalm 37:4, ESV)

Lessons from Nehemiah:
A Man Who Served with All His Heart

1. Like Nehemiah, we should cultivate a heart that is toward God, his people, his purposes, and his prompting.

In the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was before him, I took up the wine and gave it to the king. Now I had not been sad in his presence. ² And the king said to me, “Why is your face sad, seeing you are not sick? This is nothing but sadness of the heart.” (2:1-2, ESV)

2. As with Nehemiah, the desires of our heart are purified and clarified as we spend in God’s presence.

As soon as I heard these words I sat down and wept and mourned for days, and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven (1:4, ESV)

3. As with Nehemiah, God will often into our heart the way that he wants us to serve him.

So I went to Jerusalem and was there three days. ¹² Then I arose in the night, I and a few men with me. And I told no one what my God had put into my heart to do for Jerusalem. (2:11-12a, ESV)

4. As with Nehemiah, serving God with all my heart will often require . . .

• that is greater than

And I looked and arose and said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people, “Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, (4:14, ESV)

• Resolve that is greater than

When Sanballat heard that we were rebuilding the wall, he became angry and was greatly incensed. He ridiculed the Jews, ² and in the presence of his associates and the army of Samaria, he said, “What are those feeble Jews doing? Will they restore their wall? Will they offer sacrifices? Will they finish in a day? Can they bring the stones back to life from those heaps of rubble—burned as they are?” (4:1-2, NIV84)

5. Like Nehemiah, when I serve with all my heart it will often result in . . .

• Enthusiasm that is contagious

⁶ So we rebuilt the wall till all of it reached half its height, for the people worked with all their heart. (4:6, NIV84)

• Excellence born of devotion and sacrifice

So we labored at the work, and half of them held the spears from the break of dawn until the stars came out. ²² I also said to the people at that time, “Let every man and his servant pass the night within Jerusalem, that they may be a guard for us by night and may labor by day.” ²³ So neither I nor my brothers nor my servants nor the men of the guard who followed me, none of us took off our clothes; each kept his weapon at his right hand. (4:21-23, ESV)

• Effectiveness that reflects the of God

So the wall was finished on the twenty-fifth day of the month Elul, in fifty-two days. ¹⁶ And when all our enemies heard of it, all the nations around us were afraid and fell greatly in their own esteem, for they perceived that this work had been accomplished with the help of our God. (6:15-16, ESV)