God - Creator, Alpha & Omega, Eternal Father….. gave us His whole heart. We should stop right here and realize the significance of this amazing truth. It dawns on me that giving Him our hearts wholly, is something we as the church and followers of Christ fail to constantly do. Why is that? Why do we not give everything as He constantly gives us everything?
Promised to another
If we really take the time to think, myself included, we often promise our hearts to something or someone else. To our jobs, careers, families, significant others and everything under the sun that makes us feel fulfilled. Now don’t get me wrong - most of the things we promise our hearts to are important, but at what point do we stop and give it back to God?
I am constantly realising that we are also giving our hearts over to other things; fear, doubt, things we believe with every fibre of our beings that will make us feel complete. Next thing we know we are completely consumed by these things, and by the time we come to give what's left of our hearts to God there's barely anything left. And really our whole heart is the biggest thing He asks for, is it not?
We constantly insist, most of the time without realisation promising our hearts to anyone but their rightful owner. And after everything He has done, our hearts rightfully belong and should be promised to Him.
Heart of flesh
Ezekiel chapter 36 verse 26 (English Standard Version) says this “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put in you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.”
After a lot of deep thought, I came to a realisation. When giving our hearts to everything else but God, we are implying that the new heart of flesh He has placed within us is solely for our purposes and desires. In truth He had given it to us to devote wholly to Him.
We took and daily take the heart of flesh, fill it and expose it to everything but who and what it was meant for. Our hearts are so easily influenced and corrupted, which is again why they were designed to be solely given to Him.
Flesh can be infected, it can get sick and it can deteriorate, it fails and collapses. But when given to its rightful owner, the one who designed it and placed it within us, all of those things, everything that seeks to cause harm to it, loses all effect.
One of the most mind blowing things is that God is the great physician, so when our Heart of Flesh is infected, consumed and corrupted by this world and everything we give it to, He takes it and restores it to what it should be.
Now if only we left it with Him in the first place…. How different would things be? Not just in our own lives but everything and everyone we come into contact with.
Here is my heart
Every now and then, regularly too, we are faced with that choice. Do we give our precious Heart of Flesh over to everything but who it was meant for, and face the consequences and risk of doing so? Or do we say “here’s my heart Lord, take what is Yours”? In all honesty, I think to myself this should be the easiest thing to do. But I get caught up and think ‘no next time, for now I will promise it to this and this’.
One of the most effective things we can do is surrender our hearts to Him daily, and say no to everyone and everything else. We must insist on giving them to Him first and leaving them with Him. I am just constantly blown away by how patient He is. Despite how messy our hearts can get, He still wants them more than anything.
I think just realising that I want to say “here is my heart, Lord” daily. It also makes me want to surround myself with those of the same mindset, whose highest and utmost priority is having their hearts owned and ruled by the one who knit them together in the first place.