Tuesday’s Column: Dale Mail

Dale Pollard

In many cases the battles that wage inside of us are never seen by others. The Bible, however, gives us a few clues as to what might be going on inside our hearts. 

A cheerful disposition can be the sign of a healthy heart according to Proverbs 15:13. Sometimes our appearance can show the darkness that has crept in. 

Consider the following verses, 

“And the LORD had regard for Abel and his offering,  but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell.  The LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen?” (Gen. 4.5-6). 

God already knew what was in Cain’s heart, but notice how He tells Cain the outward signs of his inward struggles. 

He’s angry and his countenance had fallen. In the following verses Cain ends up killing his own brother because that darkness had taken over. 

God knows the heart. He knows every aspect of the heart. 

In 1 Kings 12, Jeroboam has just become king over the Northern tribe of Israel. In the Southern kingdom they had the capital of Jerusalem where all the Israelites in that region would gather to sacrifice to the Lord. The Bible indicates to us the very plans that Jeroboam said in the “privacy” of his heart. He built his own place of worship and foolishly stood those golden calves up for his new kingdom to worship.

Jesus proves once again that He’s the son of God by reading the hearts of many individuals in the New Testament (Luke 16:15). 

May we never forget that we serve a God who can read our hearts. There are things we can hide from every human on earth, but certainly not God. Let’s also never forget that we don’t have the ability to read hearts and attempting to do so is to pretend to be something other than human.