Answer to heart trouble

Heart trouble, or at least the kind you face emotionally, is designed to tell you there's something not matching up with the norms and standards you've placed in your inner man.

"People talk about how the world is losing morality but, no, you always have morality," says Jordan. "Couples come to me and say, 'We're having trouble in our marriage because we're not communicating.' No, you're always communicating. The problem is what you're communicating isn't good.

"If the standards in your conscience aren't out of the Word of God . . . we're watching that out in the culture. It's not that people have become immoral in the sense of they have no morality. They're system of norms and standards is no longer the norms and standards of the Bible. It comes from somewhere else. Humanism, materialism, whatever. But they have a system of norms and standards they go by because that's the way we're made to work. When Paul talks about having a defiled conscience that's what he's talking about.

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"Jesus Christ says in John 16:33, 'These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.'

" 'That in me ye might have peace.' That's the opposite of heart trouble. I can have peace inside.

"Ephesians 3 says, [16] That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man;
[17] That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love.

"The key is your will making the choice of faith to trust what God's Word says is true; 'to obey from the heart that form of sound doctrine.'

"Romans 5 starts, 'Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:
[2] By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

"The default position for a Believer is faith. The default position for unbelief is flesh. If you don't exercise the positive volition of your faith to make choices based on God's Word . . . if you don't 'set your affections on things above' . . . If you don't seek those things, if you don't make a conscious choice of faith, you wind up with the flesh running you.

"It's called 'the obedience of faith' to make your faith say, 'I'm trusting God's Word and I'm going to make that choice on what God says, not what my emotions say.'

"When Paul says God's going to 'strengthen with might by his Spirit in the inner man,' why does He want that?

"Verses 18-20 answer: [18] May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height;
[19] And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.
[20] Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us.

"The reason is so that you can use your mind the way He intends your mind (your thinking process) to be used.

"It takes the Spirit of God for you to take the thinking of truth and make it the foundation of your life. The satanic program--the world, the flesh and the devil--can become so programmed into a person. It takes God's power, not simply to give you His life, but for that life to live in you daily.

"You won't default to godliness. You only come to it by faith in an intelligent understanding of God's Word rightly divided. If you don't become oriented to the grace of God to us in Christ through the rightly divided Scripture, your will has no basis of absolute truth to rest on. That's why this is all so important."

(new article tomorrow)