The Banned said:
10andBOUNCE said:
The Banned said:
10andBOUNCE said:
I think the idea is that God is not interested in our behavior modifications to try and please him, but a true change of heart.
Psalm 51:16-17
For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;
you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
Can you do one without the other? Secular or religious, I'm not sure if I know of or have heard of anyone who makes significant behavioral changes without corresponding interior changes.
Yes you can absolutely change behaviors in your life without any real affection towards God.
People all over the world go to church because they feel like they have to, not because they have a desire to meet with God or his people.
But even feeling like they have to implies an interior disposition that they think there is a right thing that should be done. If they began to feel differently, they would act differently. People don't wake up and think "nothing about my thoughts, feelings or beliefs have changed today but I'm going to be a radically different person anyway". I don't see how that can really be possible.
Another Psalm in my reading this morning.
Psalm 40:6-8
In sacrifice and offering you have not delighted,
but you have given me an open ear.
Burnt offering and sin offering
you have not required.
Then I said, "Behold, I have come;
in the scroll of the book it is written of me:
I delight to do your will, O my God;
your law is within my heart."
The Lord is the one who opens our ears, and it all centers around our delight of doing God's will from a changed heart that is rooted in his law.