Journal Entry ~ 01/20/18

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. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. - Ezekiel 36:26-27

One of the primary reasons we need a new heart is because our own hearts deceive us into taking sin so lightly. We are not only masters at disguising sin from others, we are masters at disguising sin from ourselves. We just don’t see what we do. We can see other people’s sin just fine, but we cannot see our own as easily. When we do recognize our sin, we have a tendency to downplay it because our hearts are masters at comparison. We compare our hearts to others and come out on top. Our hearts will tell us that it’s not so bad or that God will overlook it because He is merciful. 

Make no mistake about it - God does not take sin lightly. Sin is what led His innocent Son to the cross to die a horribly painful death.  He does not just avert His eyes when we choose to sin. Sin is what separates us from God. Sin is what has caused all the pain and death that mankind has experienced since Adam and Eve first took a bite of the forbidden fruit. Our hearts need to be made new because our old hearts continue to deceive us about the very nature of sin. 

Our hearts may try to fool us. We can avoid responsibility for what we’ve done, we can become masters at pointing the finger of blame at others, but the reality is the Bible shows us that our hearts are our own worst problem. We need help. But our help cannot come from anything in this world - it comes only from Him. 

God is the one who gives us a new heart and a new spirit. He removes our old heart that cannot see our sin, and replaces it with one that can, one that sees sin as He sees sin.  When we see the sin as He sees it, we find ourselves in a place of repentance where we can turn from our sin. It is only then that we know He has replaced our hearts. 


Press on ~ you are loved 💗

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