The Mixed Heart: Why Joy and Anger Live in the Same Person
Drawn from the teaching of Professor Gary S. Maxey · 2 min read
A woman prays at dawn and snaps at her child by eight. A man leads worship on Sunday and holds a grudge on Monday. Most believers know this mixture from the inside. Professor Gary Maxey takes it seriously and quotes Colonel Samuel Brengle of the Salvation Army to describe it.
Brengle's list
Brengle wrote that a converted person will find patience mixed with impatience, kindness with wrath, meekness with anger, humility with pride, and loyalty to Jesus with something that is not loyal. In fact, he said, the fruit of the Spirit and the works of the flesh are all mixed up together.
Professor Maxey uses the passage to show that the inner mixture is not a sign of a false conversion. It is a sign that the heart still needs the deeper work of God.
Paul's names for it
Brengle listed what Scripture calls the problem. Paul calls it the carnal mind in Romans 8:7 and says it is enmity against God. In Galatians 5:17 he calls it the flesh. James refers to it as the remainder of iniquity. Ezekiel calls it a stony heart.
Brengle added a hard sentence that Professor Maxey repeats. You cannot fix this by whitewashing it, and you cannot make it better by growth. The old teaching said it would stay until death. Brengle and Wesley held that God cleanses it.
What not to do
Two reactions are common and both are wrong. One is to deny the problem and appear holy. The other is to accept it permanently and call it normal. Professor Maxey describes people who treat this nature like something to be clubbed down for life.
His alternative is surrender and faith. He says purification must be received by faith. He tells of a moment when he saw the hopelessness of his own condition. He pictured it as a many-armed creature of sin closing on his heart. He understood that only God could slay it.
Keep this in mind
Do not be shocked by your mixture. Name the part that troubles you most. Bring it to God as a problem for him to solve, and not only as a habit for you to break.
Drawn from the teaching of Professor Gary S. Maxey.
