New Hearts for Old
Wednesday 30th July
”If my heart had windows you would see a heart full of love just for you.” Recently we happened to hear these words being sung in a ballad over the radio. If our heart had windows, what could one see’? The very first command is to ”Love the Lord with all our heart” so obviously the love we have for God should be easily visible from the windows of our heart. Not very many hearts are filled with love for God as they should be. This is the problem, for as Solomon observed ”the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.”
What this world needs is a heart transplant operation. Suddenly these are now in vogue, with medical science actually taking the heart from a dead person and cutting out the diseased heart and transplanting it with the healthy one. It is wonderful what medical science can do, yet this operation is not new, for God in speaking of Israel says, ”A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take awny the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.”
God, long before man ever thought of it, promised to cut out a stony heart and transplant it with one capable of loving Him. What kind of heart do we have? Do we need a change of heart? This is one operation which we can each perform for ourselves. God admonishes us saying, ”Repent, and turn yourselves from all your transgressions; so iniquity shall not be your ruin. Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby ye have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit: for why will ye die? For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord God: wherefore turn yourselves and live ye.”
The world around us is dying of heart disease. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked and therefore it dies. The only hope for any of us is in getting a new heart, one filled with love for God. Paul tells us that if we believe in our heart that God raised Christ from the dead, we shall be saved, for with the heart man believeth unto righteousness. As a result, we are to ”draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience.”
Peter was no doctor, but he quickly diagnosed the problem of the world around us, for he saw that they have an heart which has been exercised with covetous practices, and Jesus, the great physician, discerned that ”out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.” No wonder an operation is imperative to prevent death. These are killing diseases.
Our only hope is a new heart. God, speaking through Jeremiah says of His people, ”I will give them an heart to know me, that I am the Lord. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God: for they shall return unto me with their whole heart.”
If we will but turn to God then He will give us a new heart, the operation is guaranteed to be successful, not only will the patient survive the operation but we will live forever. As the love of God wells up in our hearts, we can all sing out to our Heavenly Father, ”If my heart had windows you would see a heart full of love just for you,” and God who does not need windows to see into our hearts replies, ”I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to the fruit of his doings.” As happy patients we praise Gcd saying, ”Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved: for thou art my praise.”