In my previous blog, I made mention of the fact that one of the greatest miracles that takes place at the new birth is the acquisition of a new heart.
For the true, genuine believer, the heart of stone that was calloused and hardened by sin has been removed and replaced by a heart of flesh.
It’s alive now.
It has the capacity to care about the things of God; namely, about pleasing Him, living holy, and doing right.
This is why James can boldly declare, “…to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.” (James 4:17).
This is what it means to have an awakened heart — it cares.
It has new desires.
It knows when it misses the mark and it feels it when it does.
The reason for this is contained in a mystery that Paul unveils in his second letter to the Corinthian church.
In this letter, Paul makes mention of the fact that these Corinthians are a letter of Christ.
Letters are a method of correspondence between two parties.
They are usually written with ink, signed, placed in an envelope, sealed, addressed, stamped, and delivered.
This imagery carries the connotation that their lives have a story to tell; however, this story isn’t written with ink, nor is it written on tablets of stone.
It’s written on tablets of human hearts.
I LOVE THIS!
My heart is a tablet that God writes on.
This is where He inscribes His law.
This is where He engraves His heart and desire.
Whereas people once read the law etched in stone, your heart now reads it to you.
This is why you care.
This is why your heart feels violated when it misses the mark.
This is why you can be motivated from a place of love.
This is why, if you’re like me, you crave things like His humility, His attitude, a pure heart, and to love Him with all that you are.
He has written these things on my heart.
He’s jotted these things down for a reason.
The greatest and most important thing He’s written on this fleshly tablet is this: “Love Me.”
To love Him is the first and greatest command.
This is what it means to have His law written on my heart.
This is why I want to please Him.
This is why I find myself thinking about Him and wanting to be obedient.
Everything that He writes on your heart by way of desire is an invitation to delight in Him.
It’s a beckoning to intimacy.
It’s when you delight in Him that He gives you the desire of your heart (Psalm 37:4).
You can’t bring about what you long for in your own strength, but your delight and enjoyment in Him can.
This is what He is after.
He wants you to love Him.
And as you do, people will see.
They’ll take notice.
This is what it means to be a letter of Christ.
People are bearing witness to the Christ in you, the hope of glory, through what God has written on your heart.
They are reading it by observing you.
They are taking note of a transformed life.
They observe your relationship with and love for God through your choices, by how you love others, and the way you react to the circumstances of life.
Someone somewhere once said, “Your life may be the only bible someone reads.”
There is truth in that statement.
You’re a letter… sent by God to reveal what’s been written within you — to disclose the glory of the One who resides inside of you.
And everything He writes on your heart by His Spirit is a love letter that woos you to come a little closer.
It’s in the beholding, in the drawing near, that we are changed (2 Corinthians 3:18).
And the more we are changed, the bolder the font of what’s written within us becomes and the easier it is for others to read this letter.
- Brian Connolly, Faith Like Birds Ministries