We need a good heart examination from time to time - 10 June 2024

In the Bible, the human heart is so much more than just an organ pumping blood through our veins. In biblical times, it was seen as the place where our human emotions resided. We still send little heart emojis to the one we love, with the message: my heart belongs to you! King Solomon said it so beautifully in Song of Songs 4:9: “You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride; you have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes …”

The heart is also where our moral compass is found. It is where Jesus symbolically lives in every believer. We read in the Bible that there are many attacks on the integrity of the heart. By nature, we have a heart of stone, a heart that desperately needs to change. The heart that does not belong to God is in a bad state. Jesus said: “For out of the heart come evil thoughts – murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander” (Matthew 15:19). Even the prophets in the Old Testament warned against acute heart failure: “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).

We need a spiritual heart transplant along our journey of life. Only God can do this for us. Ezekiel 36:26 says, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”

Yes, we need to meet Jesus Christ, he is the heart specialist that can bring around this much needed change in our lives – from having a cold stone heart, just beating for itself, to a heart of flesh, beating warmly for God and my fellow man.

When Jesus takes control of my life, my heart changes. My thoughts change and with it, my deeds are transformed. Jesus described this change of heart in Matthew 12:35: “A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.” The Greek in the original text mentions “from the treasures of his heart” as the place where the deeds of man originate.

May our hearts contain the good things that will honour God and build up my fellow man who is crossing my path.

Prayer: Lord, I want to pray as David did: “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139: 23-24). Amen