Think You Need a New Heart?

by Cheri Strange

Imagine feeling that regardless of your actions or how hard you tried, when it comes to matters of the heart, nothing permanent ever arises. Hurt and blame and resentment seem to be your closest companions. Suppose these negative patterns and emotions stick with you like a loyal hound dog, moving on to the next situation or relationship, keeping you distant, superficial, and unattached relationship after failed relationship. At some point, the fog becomes clear that patterns have emerged with the common denominator staring back at you in the mirror. This leads you to one assumption: “I think I need a new heart.”

There is a quirky little song by The Magnetic Fields making this very case. And if the lyrical epiphany tells your own story, there is hope.

The truth-laden mantra of that quirky tune extends beyond our horizontal relationships into that which we share vertically with God. It matters not what you and I do or how hard we try. We cannot achieve a lasting permanent peace with a perfect God on our own. We, indeed, need new hearts. Not improved hearts. Brand spanking new ones.

Getting a New Heart

And that’s exactly what you get in Christ.

Ezekiel 36:26

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. 

What if you are already a Christian and you still feel like your heart is a bedrock of granite? What if you still think you need a new heart?

PRAY.

Pray for a new heart

Take this prayer from Charles Spurgeon and make it your own.

O God, we pray again, fulfill that covenant promise, “I will take away the heart of stone out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.” May we be very tender towards Thee. May we feel Thy faintest monition. May even the gentlest breath of Thy Spirit suffice to move us. And may we not be “as the horse or as the mule which have no understanding; whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest they come near unto us,” but may we be as children obedient to a father. May we yield our members cheerfully to the instruments of righteousness. May we have a natural desire wrought in the new nature towards everything that is pure and honest, unselfish and Christly.

We ask God to do precisely what He promises. By doing so, it’s not as if we must give Him permission but to awaken desire within us that may have settled like boulders in our soul.

THINK.

Think about how to experience a new heart

Consider what it looks like to walk in obedience in your own life. What does it look like to be pure and honest, and unselfish, and more like Jesus than you were yesterday?

Act.

Take action where your new heart leads

Here is where you and I begin to sing a totally different tune. When we have received the new heart, prayed for a desire to live and breathe out of it, along with the power to live differently because of this transformation, our horizontal relational minefields become less homicidal.

So, today, if The Magnetic Fields are making a lot of sense, shedding light on your relational weariness, you might be right. I think you do, indeed, need a new heart.

It’s one prayer away.

For His Glory,

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