Power Through a Cleansed Heart
"Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God." — Matthew 5:8
The Closing Word on Fire
The chapter ends with a single sentence that summarizes everything in it:
Power from the Lord comes through a cleansed heart.
Not through technique. Not through position. Not through gifting, training, or intensity. Through a cleansed heart.
If that is true — and it is — then the entire strategy of a serious believer changes. You stop pursuing power and start pursuing cleanness, and the power follows or it does not, according to His purposes rather than yours.
The Warning Attached
There is a hard clause that goes with it:
The baptism of fire should be just as evident in our lives as the baptism with the Holy Spirit. Otherwise, any supposed manifestations of God's power through our ministry are a deception.
That is a sharp test, and it cuts through an enormous amount of confusion in our generation.
We have watched people with extraordinary apparent power collapse in disgrace, and we have been bewildered by it. This explains it. Where fire has not preceded power, whatever is producing the manifestations is not the Holy Spirit — and eventually the fruit shows what the root was.
"Ye shall know them by their fruits." (Matthew 7:16)
The Promise Attached
Do not read this section only as warning. It contains one of the most attractive promises in Scripture.
"Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God." (Matthew 5:8)
They shall see God. Not merely be useful. Not merely be powerful. See Him.
That is what is on the other side of the fire, and it is the thing every believer in this study has been circling from the beginning — the personal knowledge of God that is the treasure in heaven, the reason for every covenant, the reward offered in exchange for a life.
The fire is not the obstacle to that. The fire is the door.
And If You Allow Sin to Remain
One final, sober note.
If we allow sin to remain in our lives, we may be quite sure that sooner or later the enemy will have a great victory over us.
Not might. Will. It is only a question of timing.
That is not fear-mongering. It is the same principle of legal ground that runs through every lesson in this study, applied to your own future.
Point to Ponder
Stop pursuing power and start pursuing cleanness. The fire is not the obstacle to seeing God. It is the door.
Verse to Remember
"Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God." — Matthew 5:8
Question to Consider
Am I asking God to make me powerful, when I should be asking Him to make me clean?
Today's Practice
Change what you are asking for.
Look back over the last year of your prayers, as best you can recall them. Sort them into two rough categories:
Asking for capacity — power, effectiveness, opportunity, open doors, anointing, influence, provision for the work.
Asking for cleanness — searching, conviction, purification, humility, the removal of specific sin.
Most of us will find the first column vastly longer.
Then, for the next thirty days, deliberately reverse the emphasis. Every day, before you ask God for anything else, pray:
"Lord, cleanse my heart today. Show me what is in me that should not be there, and give me the will to remove it. I want to be clean more than I want to be useful."
Write down what He shows you and act on each item within twenty-four hours.
At the end of thirty days, look back and see what has changed — in you first, and then in what He has entrusted to you.
Prayer
Lord Jesus, You baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire, and I have spent my life asking for one and avoiding the other.
I have wanted to be useful. I have wanted power, and effectiveness, and open doors. I have asked for those things a hundred times for every once I have asked You to make me clean.
Change what I ask for.
Cleanse my heart. Consume whatever is in me that would eventually give my enemy a great victory — and I know he is waiting for exactly that, and that he is patient.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. That is what I want, more than power and more than any work.
Take me through the fire and bring me out able to see You. In Your name. Amen.
"Power from the Lord comes through a cleansed heart." Everything else is technique.