Staying with the message of the new heart
Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 11:30AM Quite frankly, it's difficult to believe I have a good heart sometimes. The evidence against it seems too strong.
Lately, there's been almost an unseen pull downwards, a drain-circling suck towards hopeless futility. That dark undertow almost got me to draw some fatal conclusions about my own heart. That pull is towards shame:
I've blown it with my kids a lot lately; not given myself to my wife as she needs. I'm actually craving the goodness of Jesus and his choices, begging him to give me his own maturity. (If you think holiness is hard, try out your favorite addiction or uncontrolled craving for a while. That's harder to live with.)
In these moments, we have two choices: fatalism or freedom:
- Fatalism says: I am the sum of my failures. My heart cannot be good -- just look at the evidence against it.
- Freedom says: My heart is my hope. I am a new creation (my heart is now supernaturally restored by Christ.) Despite the external evidence, there is a new internal reality. My failures are no longer the truest me. (Even the apostle Paul says this - Romans 7:20)
- You can't go by your failures.
- You can't go by what others think of you.
- You may not even be able to go by what you've been told by church leaders in the past.
Stay with the truth: your heart is good now. Jesus made it so.
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To understand your new heart more, Recover Your Good Heart -- Living free from religious guilt and the shame of not good-enough unpacks what Scripture says about your new heart.
Or you can start with the FREE e-book I wrote: click here.