Here is the link for Matthew Chapter 12, a portion of verse 34, and verse 35.
“For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.”
In other words, you are what you are.
You may, for a time, put up false fronts and attempt to disguise the true nature of your heart. But in the end, contrivances can not keep up with the truth. In human terms, your mouth will ultimately reveal what is in your heart. In spiritual terms, not even that is necessary. God sees your heart clearly at every moment. Their is no hiding from Him.
If you truly wish to be a moral person, the question then becomes, how do I go about “storing up” good things in my heart?
In a welcome instance of synergy, I have already been speaking to just that question in the last couple posts, The Aroused Heart, and The Cure.
The answer is transformation through the person of Jesus.
Sr. Agnes Marie, my spiritual adviser, has a succinct yet profound way of putting this. “You become what you gaze upon.”
If you spend lots of time watching TV, your heart is formed by desperate housewives, manipulative reality TV attention seekers, commercials designed to foster obsessive consumerism, or spoiled superstars who think they are beyond the normal rules of society. (Sorry Tiger.)
If you spend lots of time gazing on Christ (in prayer, in scripture, on the cross, with The Jesus Prayer, in adoration, or in any of another myriad ways), then you will begin to be conformed to His image.
Unfortunately, the negative transformations seem to take place instantaneously while the positive ones are the work of a lifetime.
But that is the choice Jesus places in front of us with this particular passage.
You can store up evil, and act out of that reservoir.
Or you can make the continual effort to do as He wishes, to dwell upon Him with an ever more persistent mindfulness, and learn to store up good in your heart, so that you can at least in some small way become a reflection of Him to the world.
Hopefully, its an easy choice.