A Heart Transplant

Ezekiel 11:19–20: “Then I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within them, and take the stony heart out of their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in My statutes and keep My judgments and do them; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God.”

God promises to give a whole or undivided heart to believers in this, His new-covenant time. A very similar description of the new covenant is found in both Jeremiah 31:31 and Ezekiel 36:26. This idea of removing a hard or stony heart was the cry of King David in Psalm 51:10: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, / And renew a right spirit within me.” Notice that when we surrender and repent, it is God who does the work of cleansing our hearts and minds.

In the United States, in 2010, it cost almost a million dollars for a new heart. What? According to the May 16, 2010, issue of The New York Times Magazine it costs a minimum of $864,700 to “procure, transplant and maintain [a new heart] with immunosuppressant drugs.” However the most reliable and lasting heart transplant a person can ever receive is the one God performs on us when we humble ourselves before Him, confessing and repenting, surrendering our lives to Him. He responds by performing cardiac surgery on us. We receive a fresh, new, whole, undivided heart that will never fail and will never need replacing again. And He fills us with the Holy Spirit to help keep our new heart beating for Him.

During the Civil War, American evangelist D. L. Moody said:

I believe firmly that the moment our hearts are emptied of pride and selfishness and ambition and everything that is contrary to God’s law, the Holy Spirit will fill every corner of our hearts. But if we are full of pride and conceit and ambition and the world, there is no room for the Spirit of God. We must be emptied before we can be filled.

“LORD, create in us a new heart this day as we surrender to You again and seek Your will for our path.”