Change of Heart

Heart transplants are increasingly more common today than several years ago.  I came across this account of one of the first heart transplants, which caught my attention.  Thirty-five years ago, surgeon Christiaan Barnard performed the first human heart transplant on Dr. Blaiberg at the Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa.  He transplanted a human heart into Dr. Philip Blaiberg.  After the surgery, it seems Dr. Barnard carried the old heart in a plastic box and showed it to his patient.  The two physicians sat in the hospital bed, examining the scars and thickening of the useless dead heart.  Dr. Barnard said, ‘Dr. Blaiberg, do you realize you are the first man in the history of humankind to sit and look at your own dead heart?’  Blaiberg survived for nineteen months!  When I read this account, it made me think about my own calloused heart.  God is willing to give us a new heart when we come to Him and are ready to be washed by the blood of Jesus!  

Jeremiah 4:4 says, "Circumcise yourselves to the LORD, and take away the foreskins of your hearts, you men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, lest My fury come forth like fire, and burn so that no one can quench it, because of the evil of your doings." Following empty religiosity is not what God expects from us.  To circumcise the heart means to remove the cold, dead, calloused, stiff-necked hearts and turn entirely to the Lord in total submission and dedication.  True repentance, as outlined in Jeremiah, involves far more than changing a few practices or rituals.  True repentance involves a change of heart.  True repentance is an inward change that leads to outward change.  Reversing this is deadly and places us in the same position as those in Jeremiah's day whose hearts remained confused with the sins of their ancestors.  It is only in Christ that we can receive this new heart.  The Bible says in Ezekiel 36:26, "And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you.  And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.”

My friend,  this call to have circumcised hearts is a call to turn to Jesus Christ in complete devotion.  It is clear, says Paul, that all have sinned and fallen short of God's glory.  In this season of Lent, the Lord has given us one more chance to repent and return to Him wholeheartedly.  May the Lord guide us!

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