W2D2 A New Heart

READ THE BIBLE

Ezekiel 36:26

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 11:

I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. 20 Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. They will be my people, and I will be their God.

Psalm 51:

Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

REFLECT ON WHAT IT MEANS

Have you ever had this happen to you? You bite into a nice, good looking, juicy apple and to your dismay you see a worm or maggot inside the apple? What do you do? Most people would gasp in horror and throw the apple away. Most people would never normally pick an apple like that to eat, one with a horrible worm inside. But how can you tell? Have you ever noticed that there is no tell-tale hole on the outside to warn you about the worm? Also, have you ever wondered how the worm gets into the apple without making a hole or making a tunnel inside? The answer is, it was always there, right from the start!

This is how it happens: a bit earlier in the year, before the apple forms into a fruit, it starts out as a small flower on the tree. At that moment along comes a fly and lays its tiny, almost invisible egg on the fruit, and there it sits and waits. When the flower finishes it drops its petals and the small part of the flower left behind then grows into the much bigger fruit we know as an apple. But the egg is still there, right from the start and gets taken into the apple as it forms and grows. Once the apple is big enough to provide food for the egg, it hatches out inside and starts eating away at the fruit - from the inside!

This is a great picture of what the human heart is like and how God sees it. Right from the start of our lives there is something else inside of us, eating away at us, trying to spoil us. The Bible says we all have a seed in our hearts, just like the worm in the apple. That seed always wins in us in the end. It wants to take us away from God, and it wants to make us live our lives only ever really listening to ourselves. We call that our “fallen nature” since we have fallen away from God - and we just keep on falling!

How can we deal with that? If the apple is bad, we have a simple solution, change the bad apple for a good one. In the same way, God has the same answer for our hearts, he says he will change our hearts for a brand new one. This new heart will be different though, because it will no longer have the 'seed-of-falling-away' or the 'seed-of-doing-wrong' in it.

In our Bible verses today we read about an incredible promise from God, “I will give you a new heart,” (verse 26). In the Bible the heart represents the real us, the person we really are, including our most private thoughts, our true wants and strongest desires at the deepest level. This is where the “egg” of something bad invades us and seeks to take over. What an amazing promise to change us from the inside out. God says he will replace the old heart and he will give us a new, better heart. This new heart will be soft and will respond differently to God, and to others too. It will be like soft skin and flesh, and not like hard stone. This new heart won’t have the worm in there eating away at us. Instead, it will be totally free and whole. It will naturally want to do the right things in the right way, God’s way.

In our 3rd Bible verse today we read a prayer from a famous Bible person, King David. He had made some big mistakes in his life and when he faced up to them, he asked God not just to forgive him but to give him the power to be different in future. He realised there was this “worm” in his heart and that he needed a new, clean and pure heart on the inside. So he asked God to do this for him, to give him that new heart, and God did. And he will do the same for us as well, if we simply ask him, like David did.

RELATE IT TO YOUR LIFE

What things in my life I have tried and tried to change but just don’t seem to be able to?

Do I recognise that there is a “worm” in me and that I need a new heart, a new inner person, from God?

RESPOND WITH A DECLARATION

(Today’s declaration is the words of a simple song:)

“Jesus, my saviour, the Lord of heaven and Earth is changing me,

Jesus, Creator, O my God, create a clean heart in me.”