“Give me your heart my child.” (Pr.23:26)
“Guard your heart tenaciously for everything flows from it.” (Pr.4:23)
“Your heart’s fullness will be revealed in your words.” (pp Lk.6:45)
“Don’t harden your heart—like Israel did in the wilderness.” (Heb.2:8)
“It’s hard down here but take heart for I have overcome world.” (pp Jn.16:33)
“Don’t lose heart for your inner life is being renewed day by day.” (2Cor.4:16)
“Give me an undivided heart to adore and revere you, Abba.” (pp Ps.86:11)
Heavenly Father, I woke up today thinking about my heart—since, as these 7 verses affirm, you have so much to say about our hearts. At times I feel more “prone to wander” than prone to worship and trust you. So I am profoundly grateful for two “heart-promises” you have made that claim us more than we claim them:
1. “I will take away their stony, stubborn heart and give them a new, tender, undivided, responsive heart” (Ezek.11:19; 36:26). Hallelujah with shouts, cartwheels, and extreme relief—you began this great, grace-work inside us, and you will complete it (Phil.1:6). This doesn’t make us 100% passive but 100% yours and 100% dependent on you. The Gospel puts an end to all earning, but not all effort. We do good heart-work now from your love, not for your love.
2. “I will heal the brokenhearted and bind up their wounds.” (Ps.147:3). Hallelujah, healing and health define our forever! Father, we’ll either bring our heartaches and heart-messes to you; or we’ll weaponize them and demonize others for being the source of all our pain in life. You are the “Father of compassion and God of all comfort” (2Cor.1:3), so here we come.
Thank you for welcoming us with our heavy hearts, crushed hearts, fearful hearts, divided hearts, pity-party hearts, angry hearts—thank you for welcoming us as we are but not leaving us as we are. Grace gets the first, middle, and last word. So Very Amen.
