As I reflect on the promise of Good Friday and Easter, I am excited to write about another of God’s gifts that were secured by Christ’s death and resurrection. The gift of a new heart.
Promise in the unseen world: You have been given a new heart (Ez 36:26). Your old deceptively wicked heart has been removed. Application to the seen world: You can trust your heart. The heart, as used in the Bible, is the center of your will, thoughts, motives, understanding, and actions. It represents the essence of who you are. And suffice it to say, your old deceptively wicked heart was too far gone to clean up. So God removed it and gave you a new heart to go along with your new birth.
Your new heart has a natural bent toward God. You may not feel it all the time. In fact, you may think there are some pretty close similarities to your old crummy heart. But as we have seen all along, we believe by faith in the gifts of God that we cannot see with our eyes or feel with our skin. And one of these gifts is a new heart.
So now you can trust your heart. You don’t always have to be second guessing your choices and motives. We are so often taught that basically if we think it up it must be wrong since our heart is “deceitful and desperately wicked”. But you do not have that heart anymore. It has been sent to the trash heap. Your new heart is in tune with your new master, Jesus Christ.
Do we always feel like it is in tune? Do we always act like it is in tune? No, as with all things on this faith journey, it is a process; a practice in walking by faith. But Christ is the Master Tuner. And your conscience – the seat in your heart of your right and wrong choices – is being trained by the Master. You can trust your conscience. It no longer has an ounce of depravity in it.
God’s ways, God’s laws, God’s mind is standard equipment in the new heart (Heb 8:10). It is not a option that only the super saints possess. Thank the Lord today that your old heart and your old nature were crucified on the cross with Christ this very day so many years ago. And show your thanks by living into all the new you now possess. Happy death, burial and resurrection weekend!