What’s the Condition of your Heart?

Last week I had the privilege of taking a week-long intensive course on the Old Testament.  I know some of you just yawned reading that sentence, but truthfully, the course was great, and the professor was from Australia, so she had a great accent that kept me awake! In the course we explored sin and what it does to the condition of the human heart. 

In Ezekiel we can read the prophecy where God promises to give us the Spirit and to remove our hearts of stone and replace them with hearts of flesh.  This is significant because a soft heart is one that can be manipulated and changed, and that is exactly what we want God to do.  We want Him to change our hearts for His desires, to match His will, not our own. 

A friend of mine is a blogger and one day she posted a story about her son.  She had been saying a prayer over him before bed and she prayed for God to give him a heart of flesh and not of stone.  He turned over and asked his mom to explain what that meant.  When she told him a heart of stone is one full of sin and a heart of flesh is one that wants to please God, he quickly responded with, “I have both of those hearts in me mommy.”  And unfortunately that is the truth; we do have sin in our hearts. This will be the truth of our hearts every day while we are on this side of heaven.  But does that mean we give up?  Does that mean we quit trying to live like Christ commands us to just because it’s hard?  No, of course not, because it’s in the trying to love God and love people that we can show others a glimpse of what His love looks like. 

This past Sunday Drew talked about how our actions are an outpouring of what is in our hearts.  If the condition of our heart isn’t good, then our actions will not be good.  The reality is that we will never escape the effects of sin, but we can continually seek God’s forgiveness and search the scriptures for wisdom and understanding.  “Ask, and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock, and it will be opened to you.” Matt. 7:7. If you ask God to change your heart, and if you seek Him in prayer and in the word, when you knock on the door, He will open it.  God’s desire is to see His children walking in His plans for them, obeying His commands and enjoying His love so much that we can’t keep it to ourselves.  So, what is the condition of your heart?  Are your actions reflecting a heart that is filled with the love of Christ?

Katrina Bue