Heart Healthy - Pt 3

And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. (Hebrews 10:11-14 ESV).

Yesterday we talked about “eating grace” as our strength for our inner heart. Well, we need to go a bit earlier in the Hebrew letter to get an answer to the “how?” Our reading today helps us with that principle. Since you don't eat food to strengthen your heart, ingesting (eating) becomes the focus. If you wake up in the morning and feel guilty and defiled because of something ugly you did yesterday, or you feel like a failure because of how poorly something went yesterday, what do you do? The "strange teaching" might say, "Eat a good breakfast. Get the right nutrition pumping through your blood. Do some exercise and get out into the sunlight." But God says, "Get your heart strengthened by grace. On a morning like that, eat grace for breakfast." The writer continues with this theme of being strengthened by grace and not foods, he says, "We have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat" (Hebrews 13:10). He's referring to the priests in Jerusalem who have rejected Jesus as their Messiah, but who go on "serving the tabernacle" which was meant to point to Jesus as the final sacrifice and the cross of Jesus as the final altar of sacrifice. So the altar he has in mind is the cross where our final sacrifice was offered once for all for our sins. There is where our food is found. There is the table where grace was prepared. If you want to know where your “breakfast of grace” was prepared, the answer is on the altar of the cross where Jesus died for our sins Hebrews 10:11-14). If you want to be strong in your heart, when your heart is groaning with a sense of sin and failure, before you go to the kitchen to eat food, go to the altar to eat the blood-bought grace of forgiveness and hope. Guilt is one of the most destructive, debilitating emotions we experience. It is absolutely useless to anguish over something which has been done that we cannot change. The only good that can come from guilt is instructive. When we do something wrong, our conscience is touched by the Holy Spirit to prompt us to realize our mistake and make the necessary changes. This is the means of guiding us back on course. We can learn from our error, make amends, and modify our behavior for the future. All of this is only possible because of the grace extended to us through Jesus. Turn to Him. Have a strong heart through grace!