Episode 1. Change My Heart Oh God
This week on Christianityworks, Berni Dymet is starting a new Series called “New Heart – New Life”. We tend to focus on outward appearances – but what about what’s going on, on the inside? …
We can delude ourselves and say, “well, I’m fine. I’m fine, Buddy, there’s no problem with me.” Or, we can be honest and say, “there’s a part of my life, there is a part of my heart that I have not yet given over to Jesus.”
One of the things that we tend to do as people, is that we focus on the outside. We focus on the things that we can see. We focus on what people do, how they look, how they behave, what they say; rather than what’s happening on the inside. But we know from God’s word, and we’re going to have a look at it a little bit later on today; we know that God looks at the heart and not at the outer person.
So, the subject of today, and we’re beginning a new series called, “New Heart, New Life.” It’s an exciting series; it’s a series of teaching about God’s desire to transform our lives, to change us from the inside out. So, this is the new series. It’s called, “New Heart, New Life,” and the subject for today is, “Heart Disease.”
Now, let me share with you some facts about heart disease. In the country where I live, in Australia, heart disease is the leading cause of death. Forty percent of all deaths, in my country, are from heart disease. Over 50,000 people every year, and there are 450,000 hospitalizations every year, due to heart disease. Now remember, this is in a population of just 20 million people.
Cardiovascular disease accounts for 12 percent of all recurrent health funding, about four billion dollars out of the Australian Government’s budget. And for a 40-year-old, the risk of contracting heart disease in the future is one in two, for men, and one in three for women.
The crazy thing about heart disease is that it’s mostly preventable. The key causes of heart disease are smoking, a lack of exercise, high blood pressure, and obesity.
Now, the heart is the most incredible machine. It’s about the size of our fist, so if you clench your fist and look at it and think, well, that’s about the size of my heart. It’s all muscle and it’s made up of four chambers. It has valves between the chambers. And the job of the heart is to pump blood around the body, to literally pump life into the body. If you and I live for 75 years, and have an average pulse rate of just 70 beats a minute, which is about average, our heart will beat, how many times do you think? Well, actually, our heart will beat 2.8 billion times. Isn’t that amazing?
To bring lifeblood to every cell in our bodies. Yet, we ignore the risk factors of heart disease, in breath-taking proportions. Almost half of the Australian population, and this is true right across Western Society, I’m not sure in Eastern Society, but about half of our population don’t exercise regularly. Seven million out of 20 million are overweight. Three million smoke, and three million have high blood pressure, in fact over half of the Australian population has at least one of those risk factors, and many of them have two. Isn’t that mind-blowing?
This little pump that is so vital to us, that brings life. And here are these obvious risks, these things that we ignore at our peril, and yet, somehow, in breath-taking proportions, we manage to ignore them. I believe heart disease isn’t just a problem in our society, it’s not just a physical problem: there’s also a spiritual problem; there’s a spiritual dimension. There is a, there is a spiritual-emotional heart disease that we can have, it’s a different kind of disease and yet it’s still a major concern to God.
The word heart or hearts appears 776 times throughout the Bible. God talks about an evil heart, a heart filled with pain, fearful hearts, a glad heart, a hard heart, an unyielding heart, vengeful hearts, hatred in our hearts, troubled hearts, foolish hearts, unrepentant hearts, hearts set on evil things. He talks about praying in our hearts, taking things to heart, a heart that promises to give, a heart that moves a person. A glad heart, a humble heart. Peace reigning in our hearts. Hearts set on heavenly things, making music in our hearts, refreshed and sincere hearts.
In fact, Paul writes in his second letter to the Corinthians. And if you have a Bible, please grab it because we’ll be going to a few places in the Old Testament and the New Testament today. To really look at what God has to say about our hearts. But Paul writes in his second letter to the Corinthians, chapter one and verse 22. He says that the heart is where God places His Holy Spirit as a deposit, a down payment on our eternal future.
The heart, Paul also writes in Romans chapter 10 verses nine and ten, is the place where we believe. He says this, “if you confess with your mouth and believe in your hearts that Jesus Christ is Lord, then you will be saved; for it is with your heart that you believe, and are justified.”
Now, what sort of heart is God talking about? He has a lot to say about hearts, but it’s not the muscular pump in my chest that He’s talking about; He uses this term heart as a metaphor, as a picture. It’s used right through the Old Testament, in the Hebrew, and it’s used right through the New Testament, in the Greek. And when you bring all of that together, when you see God talking in His word about our hearts. Well, He’s talking about the inner person, the seat of our appetites, the seat of our emotion and passion, the seat of our courage, the absolute central, innermost part of a person.
It’s where our motives live. It’s where our desires and our dreams live. And when you think about it, it’s a good metaphor. Because it speaks about that place that pumps life into who we are. And whatever it is that’s in our heart, is ultimately what comes out on the outside of us. If it’s goodness, then goodness will come out. If it’s rottenness, if I can use that word, then it’s rottenness that’ll come out. It’s that part where we make the profoundest decisions in life. It’s that part where faith and courage combine to believe in God, over and above the most dire of our circumstances.
Or, it’s the place where we crown ourselves king or queen of our lives. It’s the place where selfishness lives. And it’s the place where we suffer the consequence. So, it’s a powerful metaphor, this metaphor of the heart. And it’s possible for us, with our physical heart to make some dire mistakes, to do some things terribly wrong in our, our diet and our exercise and our lifestyle, and smoking. We can do some terrible things wrong, and yet somehow, in our society, we ignore those obvious things en mass, and so heart disease is the biggest killer in society.
The same is true in our hearts. We can ignore some obvious things in our spiritual and emotional hearts. What are they? What are the things that we can ignore? And what our their consequences? We’re going to look at that question, when we come back after this break.
Well, what are the great mistakes that we can make with our hearts? With our physical heart, it’s what we eat, it’s what we drink, it’s the lack of exercise, it’s the nicotine and the drugs that people put into their bodies. Somehow physically, we want to gratify our senses immediately, and yet, we ignore the heart. And we ignore the heart at our peril, because we know that the greatest killer of people, is heart disease.
It’s an amazing thing to me, that we can so much focus on the here and now, on, on physical gratification. And look, I enjoy a nice, a nice dinner, I enjoy a nice glass of wine. I enjoy the good things of life. But if all we ever do is eat oils and fats and sugars and don’t exercise, then ultimately, that amazing little fist-sized bit of muscle, deep in our chests, is going to give up the ghost.
And the same is true of the heart that God talks about in His word, of our emotional, our spiritual heart. If we focus on the outside, if we do what we do, and we chase after pleasure and gratification. And even, just improving our external behavior, and ignore that deep place, somehow, things just don’t come together anymore. Try as I will to live a good Christian life, whatever that means, try as you will to live a good Christian life, somehow, it doesn’t work. Because just like with our physical hearts, we focus on the outside, and we forget about what’s going on the inside.
It’s kind of like washing your car, but never servicing the engine. Ultimately, the little sucker’s going to break down. Ultimately, it’s just not going to go anywhere. It might look good, but it’s not going anywhere. But God has a different view. See, we can have this view of Christianity which says, “I’ve got a be a good person. And so I have to change my external behavior and so I have to focus on this and focus on that, and not say this and not do that.” The Bible has a name for that; it’s called legalism. In fact, it’s called in the New Testament, the doctrine of demons, because it ignores grace.
God has a different plan. God has a plan that’s based on grace. When we see young David, who ultimately became the greatest king that Israel ever had. When we see him being chosen from amongst his brothers, by the prophet Samuel, David, well, David was the runt of the litter. And when people were looking at all the older brothers, they were thinking, “wow, he’s big and tall and good looking, maybe he’s the king; or maybe it’s the next one, maybe it’s the next one.” And God said this. He said, “look, you people, you see what’s on the outside; you look on the outer appearance of a man, but God, God looks on the inside, God looks on the heart.”
And ultimately of David, He said, “here’s a man after my own heart.” I think it’s exciting that God isn’t so concerned about what happens on the outside as much as He is about what happens on the inside. We can try and change the outside; try, but really, it’s the inside that matters, and God is focused on your heart. God is focused on my heart. If you have a Bible, I’d ask you to turn to the Old Testament, to the book of Jeremiah. It’s about 2/3rds of the way through the Old Testament. We’re going to chapter 31 of the book of Jeremiah, beginning at verse 31.
This is what God says; God is promising something new here to the people. It says, “the days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant,” or a new promise, ” with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It won’t be like the old covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. A covenant that they broke, even though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will put my law within them, I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they’ll be my people. No longer will they teach one another, saying, “Know the Lord,” because they’ll all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I forgive their iniquity, and I remember their sins no more.”
This is a beautiful passage. What’s a covenant? A covenant is a promise; it’s a, it’s a legal word – if you go to the law of land titles, you will see that there is a thing called a covenant, sometimes over a title. A covenant, the legal term means, it is a promise that can’t be broken. And when God makes a promise, it’s called a covenant; and it’s absolutely unbreakable. God will not break a promise. But it’s interesting, he says, “look, everything that’s happened up until this point, in the history of Israel.” Which, to tell you the truth is an amazing history.
From the time where Israel was in bondage in Egypt, where He brought them out through the Red Sea. They wandered through the desert under His leadership for 40 years. He brought them into the Promised Land, they had the most amazing prosperity and then they turned against God. And so they were punished when the Babylonians came and destroyed Jerusalem and took Israel into slavery. And then, then God restored them and brought them back. And right at this point, God is saying to them, “I am going to make you a promise. And it’s not like the old one, because the old one that I made to you when I brought you out of Egypt, you people broke.”
And the whole thing about the old covenant, the old testament, the relationship between God and Israel in the Old Testament, was based on a covenant. And there were two sorts of covenants: a bilateral covenant and a unilateral covenant. A bilateral covenant is where two parties make promises to one another. Party A says, “I’ll do A, B, and C, if you do D, E, and F. And if you don’t do D, E, and F, I’m actually going to punish you with X, Y, and Z.” That’s basically the shape of a bilateral covenant. And that was the covenant with God and His people, Israel, in the Old Testament.
God said, “I will bring you into the Promised Land, I will bless you. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, who helped you into your Promised Land, I will bless you. It’s a land of milk and honey. All you need to do is stick with me, worship me and me alone. Don’t worship anyone else; worship me. And if you don’t do that, I’ll punish you because I love you, and I want to bring you back to me.” And that’s exactly what happened. Israel worshiped other gods, Judah worshiped other gods, these two parts of the 12 tribes of Israel. And so, God punished them.
And He says here, “this new promise I’m making with you is not going to be like the old promise.” So, what’s the difference? Well, this is what God says. “But this is the covenant that I will make in the house of Israel after those days,” the new covenant, “says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” That’s the difference.
See, the key difference between the new covenant, which is the promise we have in Jesus Christ, is a promise where God says, “it’s no longer going to be about the law outside of you. And you having to do things, and when you do well, I’ll bless you, and when you do badly, I’ll curse you. It’s no longer like that one. This is different. This is not from the outside in, this one will be written on your hearts. This one will be from the inside out. I will write my law, my love, my words on your heart.
I’ll change you on the inside. People won’t say, “get to know God anymore, because I’ll already be there. I’ll be on the inside of you. And I’ll change you from the outside in.” And this change is like the fulcrum that God’s grace swings on between the Old Testament and the New Testament. It’s a profound change because God says, I’m going to inhabit you and I’m going to change your heart.
A good example for me and my life, where ultimately something had to happen in my heart for there to be change, is this. I used to smoke between three and four packets of cigarettes a day. Now, I haven’t smoked for over 20 years. But when I did smoke, when I was a young man, I was an extremely heavy smoker. I tried to give up smoking, quite a number of times, but it just never worked for me. Until one day, I watched someone die of lung cancer, and I haven’t had a cigarette since.
It was a profound impact on my heart. And when my heart was moved, giving up smoking was actually easy. Cold turkey from three packets a day is not easy, but when God does a work in your heart, all of a sudden the change in the behavior flows so easily from that work in the heart. And the result of all that, God says here, and if you look at verse 33. He says, “I will put my law within them, I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people… they’ll know me, from the least to the greatest of them.” See, the big change here is that God wants to have a relationship.
And that’s why Paul writes that God pours His Holy Spirit into our hearts. We see this right through the New Testament. Ephesians chapter three verse 17, “Christ dwells in our hearts by faith.” Philippians chapter four verse seven, “the peace of God guards our hearts.” Colossians three verse 15, “the peace of God reigns in our hearts.” 1 Peter three verse 15, “in our hearts we set apart Christ as our Lord.”
See, there are two parts of the good news. The first part is the forgiveness that we have of our sins on the cross because of what Jesus did. If we place our faith in Him, we are forgiven, we have peace. There is no more war; there is no more stretch between God and us. We can walk in and sit down and talk with God because Jesus lets us do that, ’cause we’re clean. But the second part, the second part is the power, the enabling through the presence of the Holy Spirit, in our hearts to live a life which is godly.
And the wonderful plan of this promise is that it happens from the inside out; that we know God, that we have a relationship with God, and that changes us. Jesus said, “I am the vine, you are the branches, you can do nothing apart from me.” God means us to be grafted into Him so deeply that it fundamentally changes our lives, that our behavior changes. Now, some people will be listening to this, and they’ll say, “well, Berni, I think I’ve tried that but it doesn’t seem to work. Why doesn’t it work? Why can’t I get rid of these bad behaviors?”
That’s a really good question. Let’s come back to it after a short break.
Here we are again talking about heart disease. And so often, we struggle to change our outer behavior because we haven’t changed in our hearts. Flick with me now to Mark’s gospel, chapter 10 beginning at verse 13. Just a very short passage, it’s a beautiful passage.
“People were bringing little children to Jesus in order that He might touch them, and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this He was indignant, and He said to them, “Let the children come to me, don’t stop them; because it’s to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly, I tell you, whoever doesn’t receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands upon them, and blessed them.”
So, if we don’t accept the kingdom of God the way a little child does, we don’t enter it. Well, how does a little child receive anything from his parents, or her parents? The answer is in simple faith. With a really simple faith that doesn’t try and complicate things. And they’re able to do that because they haven’t had as much time as you and me, to cultivate sin.
Our minds are hardened. Our hearts are hardened with a wrapping of selfishness around our hearts. And what was meant to be soft and tender, becomes hard and firm and self-sufficient. “But I’ve done that, I think. I think I’ve welcomed Jesus into my heart like a little child.”
But just as the physical heart has more than one chamber, so the heart of our soul, the seat of our personality has many chambers. It has the money chamber. It has the emotional chamber. It has the self-esteem chamber. It has that I-hate-that-person chamber. It has the gossip chamber. It has the sexuality chamber. You name it, and you and I have a chamber for it in our hearts.
And the truth is, come on, the truth is, that sometimes we give Jesus access to some of the chambers, but not to all of them. We say, “Lord, you can have my go to church on Sunday chamber, you can have my emotional chamber, but I’m not letting you have access to my money chamber. I’m not letting you have access to my gossip chamber, I’m not letting you have access to this chamber or that chamber.” We close the door to that chamber for Jesus, and so, what happens is; a part of our heart, that part that we hold back from Him, that part is closed to Him.
And that part remains diseased because we won’t let Jesus in. We can let Jesus in to all of the chambers of our heart, except just one. We can keep him out of just one small part of our lives and the result of that, is heart disease. The result of that is that our behaviors can’t change because we haven’t opened that part of our lives, to Jesus.
I believe we need to be stirred, deep inside. Jesus said, “repent. Turn away from what you know is wrong. Come to me. Make me the Lord of your life.” If you and I lived in a kingdom where there’s a king who’s a totalitarian ruler, and we gave him part of our allegiance and not all of our allegiance, you know what would happen? We’d be shot for treason. A king expects our whole allegiance. God wants our whole allegiance. And sometimes we delude ourselves by giving God a part, and not the whole.
John writes about this in the book of Revelation, chapter three. He’s writing to the church in La-odice’a, and he talks about this delusion. He says,
“17 You people say, I’m rich, I’ve prospered, I need nothing; you don’t realize that you’re wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. 18 Therefore I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white robes to clothe you and keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, to make you see. 19 I reprove and discipline those whom I love, be earnest therefore and repent. 20 Listen, I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.”
Who’s he talking to? He’s talking to a church. This is Jesus; this is a picture of Jesus standing at the door of our hearts, knocking. And we have a choice. We can delude ourselves and say, “well, I’m fine, I’m fine, buddy, there’s no problem with me.” We can do that. Or we can be honest and say, “there is a part of my life, there is a part of my heart that I have not yet given over to Jesus.”
Now, if you have heart disease, hardening of the arteries, or the blood’s not flowing, and it’s debilitating, what do you do? Let me give you a multiple choice: A. you ignore it and hope it goes away, B. you adopt a positive mental attitude, you join a gymnasium, and believe that the symptoms will disappear, C. you buy a scalpel, cut open your chest and try and fix the problem yourself, or D. you sign the consent form and you let a skilled heart surgeon operate on you and fix the problem. DUHHH!
It’s not going to go away by ignoring it. It’s not going to go away with a positive mental attitude. It’s not going to go away with a self-help program. The deep decisions of the heart are difficult to make, and almost impossible to keep. People try and change their behavior and fail, and fail, and fail, and fail, and suffer condemnation. What are some of those decisions? Dealing with addiction, having a regular devotional life, putting Jesus first, loving someone who’s difficult to love, buttoning our lips when we have to button our lips. They’re symptoms of a disease of the heart, and their problems are deep within.
Listen to me. Jesus is standing at the door, knocking. And if you hear his voice and open the door, and He will come in. He won’t condemn you, He will fellowship with you. He’ll have a relationship with you. And when you and I sit down with Jesus and have a relationship with Him, all of a sudden, we turn around, and, and just being with Him solves the problem in our hearts.
Come on, multiple choice: ignore it, self-help, focus on the external symptoms, or let Jesus in. We need Jesus to pour His love and His grace into our hearts, to be changed from the inside. And once, once our heart is changed, everything else follows. That’s His plan.
Comments
Sujata
Chris, when God comes into your heart, He comes to stay. Nothing can separate us. But to find that peace, joy and mental health we seek, we must renew our minds. To renew our minds we must be obedient. It is not enough to read ‘love thy neighbor’ or ‘put away perversity’, we must start doing it. It takes time but Gods timing is always perfect. Just when you think you will never progress, grace will take you to the next level. I fought depression and anxiety and it went away when I learned to obey Gods spiritual and health laws. The rest God does supernaturally. Just trust Him.
Thank you for this inspiring message, indeed if we think about it, the spiritual and physical heart is connected. Take care of one and it is reflected in the other.
Berni Dymet
Chris, God works in some strange ways sometimes. The Apostle Paul found that out. Three times he asked God to remove the thorn from his flesh (2 Cor 12:7-10) and God said “No, my grace is sufficient for you”. I don’t know why God works the way He does. But my suggestion to you is to press into His grace and experience him to the fullest. In Christ, Berni.
Chris Jones
I am a biology and health teacher, so I understand the heart muscle. What I can’t understand is how God can change my spiritual heart. I have a mental illness, and every day I ask God to heal me or change me. I remain the same.
I believe that I have opened the door when God knocks at it. I have asked God to rule over every part of my life. I desire for him to come in and take full control, but ultimately I am left alone and without hope.
I know that he doesn’t always answer why he does things, but I feel my life slipping away, and I can’t do anything for God without his power. I need some God answers to help my heart and mind to heal so that I can be an effective witness and follower.