Monday

Related Verses
1 Thes. 3:13
13 So that He may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His saints.

Prov. 4:23
23 Keep your heart with all vigilance, For from it are the issues of life.

Psa. 78:8
8 That they might not be like their fathers, A stubborn and rebellious generation, A generation that did not set their heart right, And whose spirit was not faithful to God.

Eph. 3:16-17
16 That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit into the inner man,
17 That Christ may make His home in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love,

Heb. 2:10-11
10 For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and through whom are all things, in leading many sons into glory, to make the Author of their salvation perfect through sufferings.
11 For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of One, for which cause He is not ashamed to call them brothers,

John 4:24
24 God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truthfulness.

Rom. 1:9
9 For God is my witness, whom I serve in my spirit in the gospel of His Son, how unceasingly I make mention of you always in my prayers,

Phil. 2:1
1 If there is therefore any encouragement in Christ, if any consolation of love, if any fellowship of spirit, if any tenderheartedness and compassions,

Related Reading
The New Testament emphasizes the matter of a pure heart. The Lord Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matt. 5:8). Paul exhorted Timothy to be with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart (2 Tim. 2:22). Furthermore, in Psalm 51:10 David prayed that the Lord would create in him a clean heart. Why, then, [in 1 Thessalonians 3:13] does Paul not say “blameless in purity” or “in cleanness” but instead says “blameless in holiness”? The reason is that the book of 1 Thessalonians is on a holy life for the church life. The conclusion of the first section of this Epistle, composed of chapters 1, 2, and 3, is that the Lord will establish our heart blameless in holiness. (Life-study of 1 Thessalonians, pp. 173-174) 

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Psalm 78:8 says, “That they might not be like their fathers, ⁄ A stubborn and rebellious generation, ⁄ A generation that did not set their heart right, ⁄ And whose spirit was not faithful to God.”…The spirit is not faithful whenever the heart is not set right. This verse indicates how close the heart is to the spirit. 

The soul is the person himself, but the heart is the person in action. This means that whenever you act, you act by your heart. Therefore, we may say that our heart is our representative in action…When a brother says to his wife, “Dear, I love you,” this means that his heart loves her…Whenever we enjoy something or dislike something, it is our heart that enjoys or dislikes. Thus, our heart is our representative, the acting commissioner or ambassador, of our inner being. 

Because the heart is our representative, Solomon says in Proverbs 4:23, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, ⁄ For from it are the issues of life.” To keep our heart is actually to guard it. The Hebrew word rendered “keep” means “guard.” We should guard our heart above all because from it are the issues of life…The heart is related to the sources of life, the springs of life, and the issues of life. First, we have the source, then the spring, and then the issue. 

To be a living believer involves both our spirit and our heart…Many of us can testify that we have exercised our spirit, but still this did not always work to make us living. The reason the exercise of the spirit may not work is that the heart does not act. This means that there is something wrong in the heart. Perhaps the mind is not renewed, sanctified, transformed; it may not be saturated with the Lord and occupied by Him. Instead, it may be filled with worldly things. We may exercise our spirit and say, “Praise the Lord!” However, this exercise may not work to make us living. The exercise of the spirit works only when our heart is active. 

If our heart is dormant or asleep, exercising our spirit to call on the name of the Lord will not be effective…This is the reason we need to deal thoroughly with our heart. This dealing must include our mind, emotion, and will. Our mind must be the mind of Christ, our emotion must be saturated with the love of Christ, and our will must be one with His will. If this is the condition of our heart, our heart will be active and functioning. Then if we call on the Lord when our heart is active, this calling will be very effective. 

We need to pray, “Lord, have mercy on me. I want to have my mind renewed. I want to have my emotion filled with Your love. I want to have a will that is truly one with Your will.” If we have such a heart, then the heart as our acting agent will be established blameless in holiness, blameless in the state of being made holy. (Life-study of 1 Thessalonians, pp. 181-182, 194-195) 

Further Reading: Life-study of 1 Thessalonians, msgs. 18—24; CWWL, 1988, vol. 1, “Speaking Christ for the Building Up of the Body of Christ,” ch. 3