We are happiest when we are loving or being loved.
Love is what we were made for, love is what we are meant for, and Love is what God is all about. And we need a heart in order to love and receive love. That is why we desperately needed Jesus to change our hearts, make them new. Before he did, the news about our heart was bad:
The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? Jeremiah 17:9
After seven chapters in Jeremiah, God had very good news indeed concerning our heart:
I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord. They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart. Jeremiah. 24:7
Have you ever seen “Before and After” pictures? With either weight loss or surgeries or hair or makeup. Before: bad news, After: good news. Before Christ, after Christ…
Before:
Son of man, these men have set up idols in their hearts and put wicked stumbling blocks before their faces. Ezekiel. 14:3
After:
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. Ezekiel. 36:26
Knowing just how wonderful this news about our new heart, how thorough the transformation is through Christ, the apostle Paul prayed this prayer:
I pray that out of his glorious riches [the Father] may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. Ephesians 3:16–18
God actually takes up residence in the holy of holies deep within us…our heart. He makes it new and is committed to doing a work with us and for us from the inside out. The really beautiful thing is, at this inner being, we are transformed and therefore CAN live a Christ life. We’re not wicked or evil… that is before. We live in the after and we are no longer sinners. Sin is not the truest thing about us (that was before) we are now beloved sons and daughters of the most high God and learning how to live that way.
This is a really, really good after.
What does it mean to know that at your core, you have the equipment (a new heart) to live “newly”?
How does being transformed by Christ and invited to live that way overshadow the lie that you are still a sinner?
If you are still just a sinner, then what is the big deal about sinning? You’re just being what you are. But if you are something else entirely, a Beloved Son, then the invitation is to live like one. What is in the way of living newly?
