Lesley Wilson May 17th 2015 ~ God as a heart surgeon

Have you ever thought of God as a heart surgeon? Consider this: Ezek. 36:26 I will give you a new heart . . . remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. That’s what happens to us when we respond to God’s voice calling us on the breath of His Spirit, as He hovers over the darkness and chaos of our lives before we hand ourselves over to His rule. He never stops calling us to new life, new opportunities and possibilities; our names are always in the wind. (Remember that the words in Hebrew and Greek that mean ‘spirit” also mean ‘breath’ and ‘wind’?)It begins with the heart-transplant but there’s more: Jer. 31:33 I will put My law in your minds and write it on your hearts. Having given us a heart-transplant, God engraves His law into this new sensitive, sensitised heart of flesh. That law is the new covenant Law of Love – love God and love your neighbour/everyone else as yourself – the distillation of all the law and the prophets as fulfilled by Messiah Jesus. Paul tells us this was “written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts” (2 Cor. 3:3).So it’s not only our hearts but also our minds, our ‘inward parts’ (KJV). Inward parts . . ? All those incomprehensible aspects of our soul that enable us to know right from wrong and cause us to experience anything on the spectrum from being at peace with ourselves to out-and-out shame and guilt. Paul exhorts us “not to be conformed to the pattern of this world but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds . . .” (Rom. 12:2), which basically means repenting of self-determination and being led by the Holy Spirit and the Royal Law. Can you see how the law of love engraved on our hearts and minds, with the Holy Spirit breathing on us and in us (like an artificial lung), is the dynamic that transforms us?The following quote from a novel I’ve been reading really captured this for me. The young woman, the central character, overwhelmed by the response within herself to her new husband, asks, “Is this what love is? A force that makes you learn to breathe again, breathe in a new way, because your heart is taking up more space in your body than it ever did, and nothing fits any more, nor feels like it is human?”Isn’t this what the Holy Spirit is doing for us – teaching us to breathe in a new way, expanding our hearts as we yield to the law of love so that the selfish flesh/body is increasingly less dominant and the old human nature is transformed, doesn’t fit any more? That’s how it seems to me, anyway."Our heart is the core of our being and we are to guard it above all things for it is the wellspring of life" (Prov. 4:23). Although we have this new heart it is not immune from attacks from the world, the flesh and the devil. Providentially, the Holy Spirit is there to administer CPR – spiritual cardio-pulmonary resuscitation by the life-giving power of the Spirit to breathe afresh into us and recharge our hearts to pursue the way and the truth and the life. Where would we be without Him?Selah (pause and ponder that),Lesley