Give Me A New Heart

Ezekiel 11:19
I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them. I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.

The heart is one of the most vital organs in the body. It keeps the blood flowing through our veins pumping nonstop 24 hours a day. What an amazing miracle the heart is. Without the functioning of the heart we have no life in us.

The heart is also symbolic of the conscious center for human beings. Jesus said, “out of the mouth the heart speaks.” Jesus also said, “You honor me with your lips but your heart is far from me.” If we want our lives to mean something we have to ask God to help our hearts.

God told the prophet, Ezekiel, that the Israelites had turned away from him to worship idol gods. As a result, there was division in the land. God’s promise is that if the people would turn away from false gods he would return to his people and:

1. Give them unified hearts. A house divided against itself cannot stand. A heart divided can’t love. Jesus said, “You cannot love God and money.” For you will end up loving one and hating the other. In his healing, God restores unity to our hearts. The way God does this is by giving us a new spirit. God’s Holy Spirit is the force that bridges the gap between those dividing forces that threaten to keep us separated. Sometimes the division is internal and we are against our better selves. Paul said it when he asked, “how is it that I do what I do not want to do?” God helps us by giving us a heart that is not divided.

2. God will replace hearts of stone with hearts of flesh. Life can cause us to have a stony indifference and become hard in places where God wanted us to remain soft. Only God can remove the hardness from our hearts that have become hard from disobedience, disappointment, and disrespect. When we are hurt over and over there is a danger our hearts can become calcified from exposure to evil internalized.
God protects us and regenerates our hearts through unity and refreshing our hearts. God is able to give us heart transplants without invasive surgery. His Holy Spirit regenerates us from the inside out.

Father, today, I ask that you touch my heart and make my heart new again. Teach me how to love like you love. I’ll be strong, I’ll be gentle and even sentimental if I only have your heart. Thank you for my new heart.

In Jesus Name,

Amen