"For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him" (2 Chron. 16:9).
A "heart perfect toward God" is a person who has devoted himself without reservation to God's ways; one who has the integrity to forsake his own ways when they conflict with God's; one who is pure in motive, dedicated and sincere.
God is ready to supply power and sufficient strength to anyone who will open his heart with unqualified devotion to Him.
When the Holy Spirit is allowed only limited influence in your life, He is limited also in the results He can bring you. Many times people have attempted to sow seed from God's Word into their own life, but have seen very little fruit.
Listen to the words God gave the prophet Haggai: "Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes. Thus saith the Lord of hosts; consider your ways" (Hag. 1:6-7 AMP).
When your ways are not corresponding to God's ways you will not experience His power. The Holy Spirit will help you take hold of the principles that produce increase. God wants to reveal His ways to you. He is reaching out to guide your ways and to bring stability into your life.
Some people want His presence and power, but not His demand for increasing perfection. It is this "half-dead" desire for God's activity that has increased the Church's ineffectiveness.
Carnal compromises have corrupted God's ways on the earth. Do you really want God's presence to rule in your life, or have you replaced the challenges of God-inspired progress with the false security of inaction?
In Genesis 6:12 we find it stated that, "…all flesh had corrupted his (God's) way upon the earth." On a personal level, yielding to the flesh corrupts God's ways in your life. Through our fellowship with the world we have been accustomed to allowing the flesh to dominate our lives.
The world feeds the flesh with immorality, intellectualism, homosexuality, dishonesty, and adultery. Your flesh will follow after what it is surrounded with the most. Now, through fellowship with the Holy Spirit, we can discover how to yield to our inner man. We can begin to see more clearly the course God is taking and the mode of action He follows.
His ways are filled with compassion, peace, righteousness, and power. Jesus was a revelation of the Father God. He was tender, yet He was unbending. He was filled with compassion, yet intolerant of sin. He ate with the outcasts and was ruthless toward religious snobs.
Our fellowship with Him affects our perception of things. We can begin to view things from God's viewpoint. When we start to surround ourselves with His influence, our fleshly desires start to lose their grip.
The only answer for the one who lives in a continual battle with his flesh and feels destined to non-productivity is this: Take a long, sober look at what is controlling your life. Then submit it to God and lay it aside. Let the Holy Spirit rise up in you and aid you. He is ready and willing to bring you support as you begin to overcome the compromise in your life. But He cannot do your standing for you.
There are some things that only God can do. There are other things that only you can do. And to expect God to do them is to leave them undone. When you finally turn against weakness and compromise and put an end to justifying and protecting those things in your life, the Holy Spirit will become your strong support.
Excerpt permission granted by Dennis Burke Ministries