The Heart. What a conundrum. We have really gone weird with this word. Everybody has their classic two-handed heart sign on their social media (am I the only one super tired of this thing?) and a heart emoji signifying some shallow degree of “love” which is more akin to “that’s kinda cool.”
But biblically speaking The Heart is the core of our whole person; the root of our intellect, emotions, behavior and faith; our personal operating system made in the image of God and broken in the image of man, filled with more malware than we could ever detect, much less remove. This is why scripture constantly comes back to The Heart about 1000 times (literally).
God’s people are “after his own heart”, yet it is also “deceitful above all things” (Jeremiah 17:9-). Our hearts are the roots of our being, producing every other fruit. So to learn about your heart, look at what it is producing. Look at your roller coaster emotions, and divided intellect. Look at your actions, where you give selflessly while simultaneously speaking murderous gossip. Look at your faith that is a strong cornerstone, until the storm hits and you ask “Where are you God?”
You see, we perpetually get blinded by the fruit. We try to adjust our behavior; work at our emotional connection with Jesus; study more so we can be better theologians; pray harder so that our faith will be built. All of these are excellent, but they are fruit. Doing these things will certainly go backwards and grow the heart, but, taken by themselves, they are whitewashing tombs. Isaiah reminded us 29:13) And the Lord said: “…this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men…” We can easly fall into the religion of fruit-management rather than the Gospel of Heart-Transformation. But this Transformation is exactly the point and promise, and will end up leading to Spirit-Fruit. This Transformation is what Jesus purchased for us on the cross. Remember our heart-state before Christ: (Proverbs 19:3) “When a man’s folly brings his way to ruin, his heart rages against the LORD.” The hope and healing found in the Gospel is that God decided to not rage back against us as we raged toward him but instead focused his rage onto Jesus on the cross so that Ezekiel 36:26 could become true: “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.”
So today, where is your heart? Ask the Holy Spirit to remind you of Who and Whose you are. Ask the Father to reveal how valued and accepted you are because of His Son. Tell Jesus thank you for exchanging his heart of flesh with our heart of stone so that now we can have the adoption as children of God.