The Request:
Psalm 51:10
Create in me a clean heart, O God.
Renew a loyal spirit within me.
God’s Response
Ezekiel 36:26
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
This is, in essence, the conversion experience. Sin separates man from God and we have all sinned and fallen short. There is nothing we can do about it. We come to a point where we realize our utter helplessness and ask God to do for us what is impossible to do for ourself.
Our old sin-stained heart is the heart we inherited from the first Adam. To make a new heart possible God sent into the world a 2nd Adam, His only begotten Son, born of a virgin, Jesus. Jesus took all our sins upon himself on the Cross.
But that wasn’t the end of the story. Otherwise Jesus would today still be bound by the grave and Satan. Jesus conquered death and sin and rose again.
An angel rolled away the stone to expose an empty tomb. Jesus was again alive on earth, in His yet unglorified body, to prove to his disciples and over 500 witnesses that death had been defeated.
Then after 40 days, Jesus ascended to Heaven to sit at the right hand of His Father. Next the Holy Spirit, the same Holy Spirit that raised Jesus from the grave, was sent to earth.
This is why Jesus had to die and take our sins. The Holy Spirit could not reside in a sin stained heart - but only in a pure heart; the new one God puts in us when we are saved
This was God’s plan from the onset of creation. He wanted children who were free to worship Him. Not by controlling their minds, but by given them a new heart filled with the Holy Spirit - a Spirit of Love, Peace, and Hope.
They will know we are His people by our love.
Colossians 3:17
New Living Translation
17 And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father.
The next day a great multitude that had come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, took branches of palm trees and went out to meet Him, and cried out
“Hosanna!
‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’
The King of Israel!”
Hosanna literally means “save us.”
Just as Jesus was recognized as Lord and Savior entering the gates of Jerusalem, I must ask Him to enter my heart as Savior and give him lordship over my life.
Hosanna, save me!
1 John 4. 9-12
God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.
Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.
Philippians 1:21
For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.
rist and to be like Him forever. It is to serve Him with unsinning heart and with feet that will never stray. We do not ordinarily think of death as one of our gains. Sad to say, the outlook today seems to be that “to live is earthly gain, and to die would be the end of gain.” But, says Jowett: “To the Apostle Paul, death was not a darksome passageway, where all our treasures rot away in a swift corruption; it was a place of gracious transition, ‘a covered way that leadeth into light.’ ”8
Psalm 78:40-41
New Living Translation
40 Oh, how often they rebelled against him in the wilderness
and grieved his heart in that dry wasteland.
41 Again and again they tested God’s patience
and provoked the Holy One of Israel.
Ephesians 1.18-19
I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.
Hope v. Fear
My physical eyes see the problems around me which leads to anxiety, fear, and worry.
My spiritual eyes see Jesus, holding my hand, leading me. Even in the valley of death I shall not fear. For God is with me.
Riches v. Poverty
I am God’s child. All He has is mine. All this and heaven too. I shalt not want. Poverty is thinking I own anything; building a house on the sand. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?
Power v. Weakness
My physical eyes see the giant and I run for shelter. My spiritual eyes see the Rock that can slay the giant. The Rock of my salvation, Jesus. And Jesus who lives inside of me, the Holy Spirit, is God’s seal and guarantee of life eternal.
