Not Just Turning from Evil

If we’re not careful, we can learn how to live with things that aren’t good for us. Maybe it’s even a pattern of sin that we’ve gone along with for 10 or 15 years. We tell ourselves, “This is just the way it is.” 

We might be caught in a lack of zealous hunger for God’s Word, lack of passion for the things of God, a deadness in our hearts. We can turn from those things.

Turning like that is very good. It takes away things in our hearts that don’t belong there. If we stop there, though, it leaves an emptiness in those spaces. Jesus told a parable about this, saying, “When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person…it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first” (Matthew 12:43-45, ESV).   

It’s not enough to turn away from dead things in our lives. When we turn, God wants us to turn away from evil, but he also wants us to turn toward him. The Holy Spirit is not just about taking bad things away from us then leaving us empty. He wants us to turn away from idols, but he also wants us to turn toward something better. 

If we’re willing to stop and listen, we can hear God saying, “I want to change something in you. It’ll turn your soul from lukewarmness that comes from wandering away from your first love. It’ll put fresh fire and wind in your spirit.” 

We can respond, “God, do a work in my heart. Revive and awaken my soul within me. Don’t let me continue to be stuck in the same patterns of sin, drifting through life, missing your gifts and plans for me.” He will make a new hunger and passion stir in our heart so we don’t miss out on his presence in our marriage, our family, our work. This is how a move of God begins. He will transform our churches and communities, but he starts first with turning individual hearts.