Wash Your Heart with Soap

Remember back when people used to talk about washing their mouths out with soap? Okay, how many mothers really made their kids do it? And how many people really did it? Whether or not they did, the point was obvious. Mouths were speaking stuff mouths shouldn’t have been speaking. Times haven’t changed, have they? But God doesn’t tell us to wash out our mouths with soap, does He? Not that God isn’t concerned with what comes flying out of our mouths. But His greater concern, it seems, is with washing out our hearts with soap.

photo courtesy of Dr. Bob via morguefile.com

Okay, maybe He doesn’t command us to wash our hearts out with Ivory soap. But He sure as heck tells us to purify our hearts. The original meaning of the word translated into heart many times in the Bible’s New Testament is this. Thoughts and feelings. So why is God so concerned with the cleaning up of our thoughts and feelings, and why doesn’t He just tell us to clean up our mouths and leave it at that? Because God goes to the root of it all. The heart.

So get out the soap and get started with your washing. Confess and seek forgiveness for any darkness in your heart. And when new impurities try to work their way into your thoughts and feelings, guard your heart from them. Cast them down. Replace them with the Truth of God’s Word. If you find you have fallen short again in guarding your heart from new impurities, you know what to do. Get out the soap!

“The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.” Luke 6:45 NASB

“And Jesus said, Are ye also yet without understanding? 17Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught? 18But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man.19For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies:20These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man.” Matthew 15:16-20 KJV

Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.” James 4:8 ESV

“Watch over your heart with all diligence, For from it flow the springs of life.” Proverbs 4:23 NASB

“Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;” 2 Corinthians 10:5 KJV

“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9 NASB

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