As we continue our "Put Me In, Coach" theme, I want to look at the issue of our heart this week, not the one that beats and keeps our blood circulating, but our inner one where our emotions, desires, and our unseen parts exist. If you are looking for an exact description of what our heart is or does, you will be disappointed, for I will not attempt to explain the heart in detail, but will show why you can trust what's in your heart far more often than you have up to this point in your life. At the end, you can tell me how well I did in trying to accomplish my objective.
THE HEART IS WICKED
I regularly hear a comment or read something that warns me and the other listeners and readers to be careful when it comes to our heart. We are warned that the heart is wicked and evil and not to be trusted. The basis for this warning is found in Jeremiah 17:9, where the Lord said to the prophet, "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" We have been repeatedly warned that to trust one's heart is an invitation to sin and disaster. And who can argue with that? We have enough life experience to know that doing what's in our heart has brought and can bring long-term negative consequences. We heed the warning and thus don't trust what's in us, requesting and demanding confirmation after confirmation before we will even begin to trust the listen to what our heart may be telling us.
The problem with all this is that we heed the warning in Jeremiah 17:9 without moving on to the next verse, where the Lord answered His own question: "“I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve" (Jeremiah 17:10). It would seem from the context that God evaluates our heart matters and they are not all evil, otherwise there would be nothing to reward. God would have said, "I am here to punish all your deeds if they emanate from your heart, which is evil and beyond hope." That is not what He said.
If there may be some remnant of hope for our heart, how can we learn to trust it, for we will need our heart if we are going to live out the put-me-in-coach philosophy? The key is not to acknowledge the truth in Jeremiah 17:9 but to read what else the Lord said that pertains to the heart.
A NEW HEART
The Lord promised He would do a new thing in our hearts when He introduced a new covenant:
“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. “This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people" (Jeremiah 31:31-33).
It seems that God promised to override the operating system of our old heart with a new script, new code if you think in computer tterminology. Therefore, some things in our hearts may be good, recorded there in God's own handwriting, but that still may mean that we have an old wineskin of a heart and Jesus said new wine cannot go into an old wineskin or the skin will burst.
God took care of that problem as He explained to the prophet Ezekiel:
“‘For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land.I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols.I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws" (Ezekiel 36:24-26).
So God promised a new covenant, the terms of which He would write on our hearts, and promised a new heart that would not be made of stone but of flesh. I argue that this new heart was not given to Israel in the context of a new land and temple when they returned from exile, but was done in the power of the Spirit made possible by Jesus' sacrifice on the cross.
If all this is true and has happened, then we certainly cannot trust our old heart but we can trust our new one because we can trust its creator, shepherd, and surgeon. The Lord is the one who works in our hearts and I have learned to trust the God of my heart. If it's on my heart to write, I write. If it's on my heart to go, I go. If it's on my heart to help, I help. God isn't trying to trick me and the old heart that still shows up every now, is being gradually filled and overwritten with love messages and directives from the Lord.
This is important if we are going to live out the "Put Me In, Coach" philosophy, for there are times when your heart moves you and you should act--should I say must act? May the God of your heart give you confidence not in your old heart but in the new one He has shaped and fashioned and my you learn not to trust your heart, but the God of your heart, who will never lead you astray. Have a blessed week!
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