A. Craig Troxel - With All Your Heart: Orienting Your Mind, Desires, and Will Toward Christ

Craig Troxels With All Your Heart represents the mature fruit of a gifted intellect combined with tested and tried spiritual wisdom, both of which have been well honed by decades of pastoral experience. Every reader will benefit from its comprehensively biblical foundations, its spiritual insights, and its challenging as well as mind-clarifying expositionsall packaged in a way that is eminently readable. Asking the question How many books have I read on the heart? (and probably answering it with Very few or None at all) underlines both the importance of these pages and the extent to which we may have marginalized something the Bible sees as central. Here is a book to be welcomed enthusiastically, to be read carefully, and to be returned to frequently as a significant resource for Christian thinking and living.

Sinclair B. Ferguson, Chancellors Professor of Systematic Theology, Reformed Theological Seminary; Teaching Fellow, Ligonier Ministries

Who am I? What is wrong with me? How can I overcome it? These questions all draw our attention to the heart. Craig Troxel carefully studies what Gods word teaches about the heart and discovers surprising answers that lead us to real solutions. He shows us how to become self-aware without being self-absorbed, authentic yet dependent on the Lord Jesus Christ, who reigns over our hearts.

Joel R. Beeke, President and Professor of Systematic Theology and Homiletics, Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary; Pastor, Heritage Reformed Congregation, Grand Rapids, Michigan; author, Reformed Preaching

So much depends on a clear, scriptural understanding of ourselves, and Troxela pastor and instructor of pastorshas given us just that.

Ed Welch, Counselor and Faculty Member, Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation

Protestant theology often falls into one of two categoriesan emphasis on doctrine that tends to overlook the concomitant experience, which thereby risks being vulnerable to the oxymoronic accusation of dead orthodoxy, or an emphasis on experience, which downplays doctrine and risks being vulnerable to the accusation of being nothing more than subjective enthusiasm. And if many of us are honest, we struggle to know how to balance our teaching and thinking to avoid these pitfalls. That is why this book is so welcome: drawing on many years of pastoral experience and demonstrating both the passion for truth and the passion for the Christian life that has always characterized the best Christian teachers, Craig Troxel presents a delightful account of the Christian faith from the perspective of the Christian heart. This is a book that teaches both by precept and example.

Carl R. Trueman, Professor of Biblical and Religious Studies, Grove City College

Craig Troxel has done the church a great service by writing a detailed account of a topic that is tragically unfamiliar to most contemporary Christians: our own heart. In a time of shallow diagnosis and superficial prescriptions, this work provides a desperately needed course on the most practical Christian doctrines: the anatomy of the inner man, the nature of his disease, and the cure found only in Christ. Saturated with Scripture references and Puritan wisdom, this book will help you better understand yourself, your sin, and your Savior. It should be required reading for every pastor who wishes to be a wise physician of the human soul.

Dale Van Dyke, Senior Pastor, Harvest Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Wyoming, Michigan

Skillfully sewing back together the tragically separated head and heart, Troxel points us toward a more fully robust biblical theology of the person. He takes us on a journey across the breadth and into the depth of the Scriptures with the intention to think, desire, and choose more faithfully, and in the process he challenges many of the modern mythologies of human identity. Troxel brings into view both the unity of the person and the complexity of the person, reflective of the God who made us and redeems us. The wisdom of many years of pastoral ministry dealing with human dysfunctions and the intrusions of Gods grace are manifest on every page of this book.

Richard Lints, Andrew Mutch Distinguished Professor of Theology, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary

Here is a devotional study of the heart that reflects the pulse of the whole Bible. Craig Troxel offers an anatomy of the thinking, yearning, and acting of the heart. He employs the surgical tool of Scripture to address the sins of the heart, and brings the reader to the Great Physician and Keeper of the heart. Would you like to meet a strong and sufficient Savior anew and afresh? Read With All Your Heart !

Chad Van Dixhoorn, Professor of Church History, Westminster Theological Seminary; author, Confessing the Faith and Gods Ambassadors

Purified Love

Except youenthrall mee, [I] never shall be free.

John Donne, Holy Sonnet 14

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2223).

A Clean Heart: Consecrated Desire

Christ enables his people to grow progressively in holiness by consecrating the desires of our hearts. Just as nothing in our nature has escaped the wreckage of sin, so also nothing in our nature escapes the touch of his reforming grace. 36:2526 ).

The process of 4:8). But there is another side to what our priest is doing.

A Pure Heart: Undivided Desire

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. (Matt. 5:8)

A pure heart probably sounds identical to a clean heart. Pure can refer to something that is clean. But it can also refer to something else. That is the case in Jesus s phrase Blessed are the pure in heart. Here pure refers to something that is without mixture or unwanted elements. It is undivided. For example, the boast of pure spring water is that it is free from contaminants. A coat made from 100 percent pure virgin wool is not mixed with other fabrics. A hamburger made from 100 percent pure grade A beef is not mingled with foreign protein. The same point is illustrated in Peters words in 1 Peter 1:67:

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faithmore precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by firemay be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Peter says our faith is purified by trials in the same way that metal is purified by smelting. Metal is heated higher and higher so that the emerging dross and scum can be scraped from the surface of the molten material. The process is repeated again and again to purify the metal, either making it more durable or more valuable. The prophets loved this imagery and spoke often of God refining his people by removing their dross and alloy (Isa. 1:25; Mal. 3:3; cf. Job 28:1; Jer. 9:7; Dan. 11:35; 12:10; Zech. 13:9).

The pure heart is intent on serving the Lord alone, while the divided heart seeks to serve the Lord plus something else. Joshua exhorted Israel to choose this day to serve either the true and living God or the gods beyond the River or in Canaan (Josh. 24:1415). Elijah told Israel to stop limping between two different opinions and either follow the Lord or follow Baal (1 Kings 18:21). Jesus exposed the fallacy of having two conflicting loyalties: No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money (Matt. 6:24). Martha and Mary once illustrated this principle. Jesus said, Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her (Luke 10:4142). Marthas heart was divided and distracted. Marys heart was undivided and pure. The psalmist exclaims,

Whom have I in heaven but you?