My Heart in His Hand
"I will give them a heart to know me."
Jeremiah 24:7 (NIV)
One afternoon this week I walked into my daughter’s house just as my 3-year old granddaughter ran to proudly show me her latest “pat-pat.” Mary Clayton’s Valentine artwork featured her little handprint and a small heart along with the words, “I hand you my heart.” Of course, I “oohed and aahed” over Mary Clayton’s Mother’s Day Out masterpiece as I scooped her up tightly to kiss her. The truth is Mary Clayton has had my heart in her hand since the day she was born!
In 1991, James Carville, a Democrat political advisor to then presidential candidate Bill Clinton, single handedly turned around the 1992 Presidential election, when he developed Bill Clinton's campaign strategy with just four words: "It's the economy, stupid!"
With just a slight variation, those words could be theme for the Christian life: "It's the heart, stupid!"
The Christian life is ultimately about our hearts. Are we willing to hand our sin-hardened, dead hearts over to God and exchange them for His heart living in us? No matter how hard we try to produce good fruit or rearrange our old fruit, without a God-given heart transplant, we'll still have an old heart. A nasty root always means nasty fruit. God’s desires for each of us to have a new heart, one that knows Him, loves Him, and desires to serve Him.
Several years ago, a good friend of ours received a heart transplant. For years, our friend suffered with a heart that was physically failing. After months of waiting, he finally got his new heart. I went to visit him in the heart transplant unit several days after his surgery. Still wearing tubes, wires, and devices to monitor his new heart, my friend was sitting in a chair and smiling. His color was a healthy pink, instead of grayish blue. He spoke without any breathlessness and with more energy than I could remember. When I asked him how he felt, he quickly responded that he felt like he was 15 years old again. Then suddenly, his eyes filled with tears as he quietly said, "But, you know, someone had to die so that I can live!"
And with those words, I've never heard a better description of the gospel. Somebody had to die so that I can live. And that Somebody is Jesus. It's the great exchange: With Jesus' sacrificial death and resurrection, I can get a new heart. And not just any new heart, but His heart. He then, by the power of the Holy Spirit, begins shaping my life around His heart.
What does a heart for God look like? A healthy heart for God is one that is:
Desperate for God
Dependent on God
Delivered by God
Delighted in God
Author Paige Benton Brown says, "Desperate situations do not lead people to seek God, but desperate hearts will always seek Him." And in God's economy a desperate heart leads to a dependent heart. A dependent heart is a growing heart. Only in the spiritual realm does growth and maturity lead to more dependence. In other areas, such as my granddaughter’s potty-training or a teenager learning to drive, an individual’s growth and maturity leads to more independence. The reverse is true in God's Upside Down Kingdom. Spiritual growth should always lead to more dependence on God. Our dependence on God increases as more and more as we realize that we can't do life apart from God. Jesus rightly said, “Apart from Me you can do nothing.” (John 15:6)
So, how's your heart? Are you desperate for God, dependent on Him, delivered by Him and delighted in Him? If not, why not ask Him for a heart to know Him? That dependence will lead to deliverance and a desire to know Him and be known by Him.
May the cry of each of our hearts be, “ O God, I hand you my heart!”