Man’s heart gets a pretty rough evaluation in the book of Jeremiah. There the heart is said to be deceitful and desperately wicked. Man’s response to such a negative appraisal is to doubt and even outright reject it. After all, think of the many times we have good thoughts, even to occasionally being truly concerned over the needs of others. True, we might have a few ‘down’ times where we are not as gracious as we should be, or times when we find ourselves enjoying our bitter feelings towards another; but that certainly doesn’t mean that our hearts are really ‘that’ bad.

Deep down, I think most of us recognize the accuracy of Jeremiah’s assessment. Our heart’s default condition includes selfishness, pride, and an unhealthy dose of greed. True, we have moments of light, where we reflect the light of Christ’s goodness, but that is not a consistent response.

Because of the unreliability of man’s hearts, God determines special times when he allows testing to occur, that the real deep-down condition might be revealed. His testings come in many forms, but most include seasons of worry, pain, deprivation, or loss. Our love for the world and its attractions makes his testings even more painful and challenging.

Paul mentioned God’s ingenious method of exposing the spiritual health of our hearts in…

1 Thessalonians 2:4 But as we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, even so we speak; not as pleasing men, but God, which trieth our hearts.

God tries our hearts. The word for ‘trieth,’ here literally means test or examine. Just like the teacher who told us to clear our desks and take out a pencil, as she passed out another opportunity for our knowledge to be revealed, she also called the experience a ‘test.’ She would collect our attempts at answering the questions, grade them, and return them with red marks and a grade circled at the top. Some in the class would smile in satisfaction, while the rest simply moaned.

The heart of man is very important to God. He knows that all the issues of life originate there. He longs to hold the dearest spot in the heart, the one typically ruled by its owner. On the rare occasions when some believer gives to Him all that was previously denied, God is glorified, and man finds his greatest fulfillment in life.

When trials and testings reveal that our hearts are not fully controlled by our Lord, we need to spend time confessing our selfishness and self-centeredness as sin, and yield ourselves to Him afresh. A poor response to a test does not mean that God is finished with us; it only means that we now can more clearly see the problem, and with His help we can fix it.

When time a trial comes into your life, what comes out of your heart? What iss your reaction to the trial? Has your faith deepened or dampened as a result?

Let’s make sure our hearts stay in tune with our Lord.