“And I will give them singleness of heart and put a new spirit within them. I will take away their hearts of stone and give them tender hearts instead.” - Ezekiel 11:19
Have you ever heard of a person needing a heart transplant and someone still alive saying, “Take mine”? It happened. At the cross, God the Father accepted the heart of his only Son, Jesus Christ, and offered it to a dying world.
The Bible says that we each need a new heart because our human heart is stubborn and rebellious (Jeremiah 5:23), deceitful and wicked (Jeremiah 17:9), and able to turn us away from God (Hebrews 3:12). But God promises “a new heart.” God made a promise about this divine transplant. To the believers in Corinth Paul wrote that they were “a letter from Christ . . . written not with pen and ink, but with the Spirit of the living God. It is carved not on stone, but on human hearts” (2 Corinthians 3:3).
If you desire this heart transplant, God promises to give you his heart as your own. Only then can you begin to develop God-honoring character. As we come to him for forgiveness, he has promised to help us live in “moral excellence” (2 Peter 1:5). Such character is impossible apart from the Holy Spirit’s work in our new heart. By accepting this new heart, we can “share in his divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). The heart trans-plant is only the beginning, but you do need to begin. Do you want godly character? Let God give you a new heart.
For Further Study: Ezekiel 11:14-21
Excerpted from The One Year Devotions for Women, Copyright ©2000 by Jill Briscoe. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved.
For more from Jill Briscoe, please visit TellingtheTruth.org.
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