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Soul Song February 8 Devotional

by David Joynt on February 08, 2024


PROVERBS 3:5 | 5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight.

 

PROVERBS 4:23 | 23 Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.

 

“Thou and Thou only, first in my heart.”

 

Although we like to think of ourselves as rational decision makers, most of our life choices follow our desires. Reasons are used generally, to justify things we want to pursue because of our passions and wants. This means, we must learn to examine our hearts to discover unholy desires that are not worthy of our status as God’s children. The hardest moments come from conflicts between the good and the best. Legitimate desires for pleasure or success or friendship can become over-riding obsessions that dictate our desires. Self-sacrifice recedes, service is pushed aside, and self-gratification takes over.

 

Where is God in your heart’s hierarchy?

 

 

Gracious God,

Guard my heart from obsessive desires that cripple and distract. May You be first in my heart.

Amen.

 

About the Author
David Joynt

Dave Joynt began his service as a pastor at Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona in September 2014. This meant a move away from the Northeast, where he has a long history, growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and then serving congregations in Delaware and New Jersey for a total of 23 years.

Dave was nurtured in a great church in Bethlehem where his parents, Anne and Carey, served as elders. He graduated in classics from Lehigh University where his Father taught, and then from Oxford, where he met his wife Julia. Ordained in 1988, he completed a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1993.

He and Julia have a son, Tristan, and a daughter, Madeleine.

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