Truth really can be stranger than fiction.
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La verdad puede ser más extraña que la ficción.
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The Beauty of Staying Together (Former Title: DETOUR
Calvina, the young battered wife of Duane, is in desperate need of a new start in life. Will her jealous husband, the mad man with whom she had been unequally yoked, prove too much to ever hope for a chance of staying together--a chance to fix her troubled marriage?
We encourage you to read the two main character profiles before reading the first chapter. We can be so wrong in the strong initial opinions we form of people, which we see in The Beauty Of Staying Together (originally published under the title: Detour), a story based on true events.
¿Qué tiene que ver conmigo? por Teófila Gottfried
Lo que leemos en la Biblia tiene que ver con todos los seres humanos, sean cristianos o judíos, ateos o agnósticos, budistas, musulmanes o adherentes a alguna de las filosofías o nuevas religiones que surgen en el mundo. ¿Por qué? Ver mayor información sobre este interesante libro.
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God's Unmasking of the Heart that Plots Evil
For various reasons, people attempt to deceive others and often succeed. They sometimes take great strides to alter their speech and behavior until they've achieved the desired result or until their deceitful intentions are unveiled. Unfortunately, by this time it is usually too late for their victim to escape their snare.
The Unveiled Heart of Evil
It's also quite common for those who claim to be Christians and yet seek to deceive, to attempt to cover themselves when their behavior has given them away. They are swift to remind others that regardless of what anyone thinks, only God knows their heart, but unfortunately, Scripture is often misused to defend ill intentions and wrong actions.
It is correct to say that only God knows the heart in the context that He knows and understands every single thought. It's sometimes hard to accept that no one can have any privacy from the all-knowing Lord, but it's also comforting to realize that He understands us when no one else does and like no one else can. At the same time, Scripture does show clearly and repeatedly that God will, if He so desires, reveal the heart that plots evil in order to warn and protect. Christians may miss this warning if they allow themselves to be strategically humbled by someone reminding them that only God knows the heart.
The scripture of I Corinthians 2:11 says, "For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him...?" The living Bible paraphrased reads, "No one can really know what anyone else is thinking, or what he is really like, except that person himself...." If God revealed the total content of a man's heart, there would be some people who knew the innermost being of others. However, this is one of the scriptures that says that no man, not even a servant of God, has such knowledge. The only way for him to get it would be for it to be revealed. Since he doesn't know, it hasn't been revealed.
Again, although God may and does reveal, at His will, secrets of the heart of one to another, this isn't the same as making that person an open book to another individual.
The heart is the seat of one's intentions and those intentions may be and often are revealed by God to another person. God permitted the wise men to know the heart of evil of King Herod who spoke pleasant words and who said that he desired to know where the infant Jesus was so he could worship him also. According to the words of Herod's mouth, he was a just man wanting to worship the Lord. However, the wise men knew Herod's heart through God's revelation (Mat. 2:7-12, KJV). In other words, they were divinely made aware of his heart of evil toward the Son of God. When Ananias and his wife lied to Peter, they thought they were merely concealing to a man what was really in their hearts. However, God allowed Peter to know their hearts, to know that they were lying, and then the Lord killed Ananias and his wife for their deception (Acts 5:1-10). When the hypocritical, religious Jewish leaders called the Pharisees and Sadducees came to the place where John the Baptist was baptizing people, what was in their hearts was revealed to John, who did not refrain from telling them the truth (Mat. 3:6-9). The list of those who have attempted to deceive and thought they could get away with it could go on and on with biblical and modern, real-life examples. One never knows what God has revealed to someone about another man's heart. God is not deceived and neither are His servants to be deceived by the heart that plots evil(Mat. 10:16).
© 2007
Edited by Ruth Zetek
Recommended reading:
Can A Christian's Good Intentions Come From Evil Influence?
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