Imagine in heaven God lovingly shows you His plan for your earthly life. You see footprints walking through each day. On many of the days, two sets of footprints appear. You inquire, “Father, are those my footprints every day, and is the second set of prints when You joined me?”
He answers, “No, My precious child. The consistent footprints are Mine.
The second set of footprints is when you joined Me.”
“Where were You going, Father?”
“To the destiny I planned for you, hoping you’d follow.”
“But, Father, where are my footprints all those times?”
“Sometimes you went back to look at old resentments and habits. Sometimes, you departed from My path and chose your own instead. Other times, your footprints can even be seen on another person’s path because you liked their plan better. At other times, you simply stopped because you would not let go of something you could not take with you.”
“But even if I didn’t walk with You every day, we ended up okay, didn’t we?”
He holds you close and smiles, “Yes, child, we ended up okay. But, you see, okay was never what I had in mind for you.”
“Father, what are those golden treasure boxes on certain days?”
“Blessings, My child, I had for you along the way. Those that are open are those you received. Those still closed were days you did not walk with Me.”
This story was from the Beth Moore: Breaking Free Bible study, and it really touched me.
Have you ever gotten right with God – accepting Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross for your sins, and receiving His forgiveness and salvation? If so, you have been justified – a legal transaction in which God looks at you just as if you’d never sinned, because Jesus took your punishment. Praise the Lord!
If that has happened in your life, God has given you a new heart. You used to a have a sin-stained, hardened, cold heart. God has replaced that heart with a heart of “flesh” – that is, one that can love, be loved, and be molded and shaped into the image of Jesus Christ!
This is a very important point about the heart. People often sin and then beat themselves up, saying, “Oh, I am just HORRIBLE. How could God love me? How could God have a plan for me? How could I even be saved?” And they don’t realize that when they sin, they are letting their old selves, and the sin principle living in them, live through them. Their true self is saved, and brand new, and wants to do right. However, their zombie-man, the sin principle living in their flesh, wants to get the best of them.
This provides a whole new outlook on sin. When I learned this, when I was tempted to sin, instead of thinking “ugh, I’m so horrible and disgusting, how could I want to do that?” I would think, “Huh. I don’t really want to do this. The sin principle in me wants to do this, but I – Stephanie, who is a saved child of God – do not want to do this.”
Obviously we need to take sin seriously, and try to overcome it with the help of the Holy Spirit. But we do not need to feel condemned. We have a new heart! We WANT, deep, deep inside, to do the right thing! We are now dead to sin, and alive unto Christ, because of what Jesus has done for us. We are no longer enslaved to sin. Romans 6: 11-14 says, “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have NO DOMINION over you, since you are not under law but under grace.”
Verses 17-18 say, “But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient FROM THE HEART to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.”
Check out Romans 6-8 to understand this concept more fully. It really is a freeing, revolutionary concept!
Check out some verses about the new heart God has given us! Note: I got a lot of these verses from this website. Just want to give credit where it is due!
Ezekiel 36:26-27
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.
And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be
careful to keep my laws.
Ezekiel 11:19-20
I will give them an undivided heart and will put a new spirit in them;
I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.
Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. They will be
my people, and I will be their God.
The website says: “Jesus fulfilled these prophecies; He made it possible for the Father to
re-create the heart of man. Our Spirits are made new when we are born again
in Christ Jesus. He literally re-creates our innermost being for us. And our
old hearts which were hard towards God and un-moldable by His Word become
soft, fleshy hearts which He can easily touch and move. He is then able to
move us to follow His decrees, and to be faithful to His laws.”
Ephesians 2:4,10
Because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us
alive with Christ even when we were dead in our sins - it is by grace
that you have been saved... For we are God's workmanship, created
in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
God has made us a new creation; given us a new heart.
2 Corinthians 5:17
If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has
come! All this is from God.
Romans 6:2-4
We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don't you know that
all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that,
just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father,
we too may live a new life.
The Holy Spirit is in our new heart, and He helps us live a life of obedience, out of love.
Romans 5:5
God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom He has
given us.
Hebrews 10:16
…I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.
Now here’s the thing. We have free will. We chose to accept Jesus’ gift of salvation, and now we have the Holy Spirit in us and a desire to do good and serve God. God will not force you to serve Him. He wants you to say, “God, I love You, so I am going to serve You with my whole heart.”
We can’t do it on our own – but we need to take initiative. If we want to, we can totally let the sin nature in us take over, and live in the flesh. We can be lazy, not read the Bible, and simply sit there. But that is NOT how God desires us to live!
We have a new heart. We need to cooperate with God and grow in Him! Let’s read His Word, follow His Spirit, and move onto the life He has in mind for us!
