Walking out a righteous and pure life keeps the enemy from meddling in our hearts. When we compromise our morals, we put out a welcome mat for the enemy to enter our hearts, causing shame, accusation, and self-protection, among other demonic things. These demonic strategies keep us insulated from intimacy with Jesus and cause us to look for satisfaction in other places that cannot truly satisfy. As Paul says, it creates varying degrees of alienation and hostility in our minds. 

We can be reborn and our heavenly destination secure, but yet not allow Jesus to renew our minds in our area of struggle. This hinders the expression of heaven we are called to walk in while still on earth.

Because of the Lord’s majesty and grandeur, our guilty hearts will shy away from Him, though that is never His intention for us. Imagine a child who has just stolen a cookie from the cookie jar. His father is the last person he wants to see while he still has crumbs on his face. Yet, Jesus paid for our hearts to be wiped clean so that we can come boldly before the throne of grace. Sometimes we need to also drag our faults and mistakes with us when we come before Him, for He is faithful to relieve us of them. Our spirits are made clean by His blood, but our hearts need to recognize it in order to experience our freedom.

Paul calls us to come before Him right now, full of faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the gospel. He is calling disciples, then and now, to unhindered intimacy with the Big Brother, the Bridegroom, the Father from who all families get their name. Let your mind be set against compromise and your eyes set on the One who holds our everlasting life that begins now…right now.

And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister. —Colossians 1:21-23