Illustrations: The Heart

“You could compare the human heart to the boardroom of a corporation. From this room, all kinds of messages and orders proceed to various departments within the company. This boardroom is definitely not open and accessible to just anybody, but some things do leak out to others. Decisions made behind closed doors generally do not stay inside the room, so that eventually outsiders get a pretty good idea of what happened inside the room. The same thing happens with our evaluation of the human heart. That evaluation can never be complete or exhaustive. Often we miss the target. Man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart (1 Sam. 16:7), which means that we humans often judge superficially, sharply, or arrogantly, so that Jesus’ word is well deserved: “Judge not, that you be not judged” (Matt. 7:1). But the illustration we used above all suggests that many times we can also evaluate what lives in the human heart. For desire does not just burn on the inside; that fire spreads. What lives in the heart never stays hidden.” -J. Douma, The Ten Commandments