Your New Heart! - Kerry Shook

“And I will give you a new heart — I will give you new and right   desires — and put a new spirit within you. I will take out your stony hearts of sin and give you new hearts of love.”  Ezekiel 36:26 (LB)

As a Christ follower, you have been given a new heart!  He didn’t come to just patch up the old one.  Your natural heart is described as a “stony heart of sin.”  Another translation describes it as a heart that is “self-willed.”  Your new heart has “new and right desires…”  It is “God-willed.”  Have you noticed the changes He is making in you?  You have a new Spirit in you.  Your desires and attitudes have changed.  You have a “heart for God.”

You are no longer called a “sinner” in Scripture.  You are called a “saint.”  Satan can do nothing about your position in Christ.  But, if he can get you to believe you are no different from a non-Christian, then that’s the way you will live. If you still think of yourself as a sinner, you will continue to confess your sin and strive to do better, but you’ll continue to live a defeated life.  You will lack the assurance of the salvation Christ died to give you if you believe that you are only part saint and part sinner.

You are not trying to become a saint as a Christian – you are a saint!  Trying to become a saint is like trying to become a person.  You either are a person or you are not.  We are not trying to become children of God; we are children of God who are in the process of becoming like Christ.  Your inner change happened when God gave you a new heart and a new Spirit.  It happened the moment you trusted Christ as your Savior from sin.  Are you trying to become something you already are?  Being a saint doesn’t mean you won’t ever sin.  It means you don’t have to sin.  You have a new heart now and the power to really live.

Thank you, Father, for giving me a new heart and taking out my stony heart of sin.  Your Spirit has given me new desires and the power to live for Christ.  I am so grateful that I don’t have to try to become a Christian.  But, in Christ, I can now be the Christian I have become.