Spiritual Heart Transplant

When a heart is wounded, lies swarm to the

injury, just like flies swarm to a physical wound.

Some lies that swarm to a wounded heart could be

to deny we are loved, or that we are fearfully and

wonderfully made, or that God is our Provider or

Healer or Righteousness or Savior.

The lies that swarm to the heart-wound

accomplish the first step in hardening the heart,

unbelief. Mark 16:14 Afterward he appeared to

the eleven themselves as they were reclining at

table, and he rebuked them for their unbelief and

hardness of heart, because they had not believed

those who saw him after he had risen.

The second step flows naturally from unbelief,

sin. If God isn’t who He says He is, then I have to

take care of myself, defend myself, provide for

myself, and lean to my own understanding.

The Bibles warns, "Take heed, brethren, lest there

be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in

departing from the living God. But exhort one

another daily, while it is called Today; lest any of

you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin".

The third step in the hardening of the heart is a

refusal to repent of sin. In our rebellion, we

become a stiff-necked stubborn person. Believing

ourselves rather than God, it becomes very hard

for anyone to change our minds. Our beliefs have

become a stronghold to fortify us against repeated

injury, but instead they are really a prison that

keeps us fearful, proud, and greedy.

The Bible warns, Zechariah 7:11-12: But did your

ancestors listen? No, they set their jaws in

defiance. They shut their ears. They were adamant

against God's revelation and the Spirit-filled

sermons preached by the earlier prophets by order

of God-of-the-Angel-Armies.

Adamant means impenetrable and an extremely

hard substance. A heart described as adamant is

hard like stone.

The final step in the hardening of the heart is

pride. Impenitence generates a deceitfully prideful

attitude of invincibility in the heart of a sinner: "I

have need of nothing." This attitude leads

ultimately to the sinner’s own destruction. A

person thinks they have made themselves safe

against more injury, but instead, they have

barricaded themselves from other people,

working their own plan of independent survival.

Proverbs 16:18 Pride goes before destruction, a

haughty spirit before a fall.

Many of us are in this condition when Christ

seeks us out. Perhaps our system of defense has

been shaken, perhaps we discover our extreme

loneliness. Perhaps in spite of our strongholds, in-

coming arrows continue to wound us. Perhaps,

Jesus is being faithful to draw us to Himself. We

may not be ready to display a white flag of

surrender, but the door is cracked.

Just as the human heart hardens in steps, so too it

softens in steps. The first step in curing

hardheartedness is letting the word of God break

the heart. "Is not my word like as a fire? says the

LORD; and like a hammer that breaks the rock in

pieces?" (Jeremiah 23:29).

The human heart is like clay. When soft, it’s

easily molded and shaped by God. But once it

hardens, it can no longer be molded—it can only

be broken.

Because sin hardens the heart, the second step in

the cure of a hardened heart is repentance of the

sin that caused the hardening. When we were

fortified behind our defenses, admitting we were

wrong would make us vulnerable, creating a crack

where more wounding could happen.

When we challenge what we believe, we discover

the enemy is not “out there” but is our thinking, or

strongholds, that have resisted the Word of God.

The word of God begins to break our heart beliefs

and moves us to repentance. God compares

breaking up hard fallow ground to circumcision.

Romans 2:29 circumcision is of the heart by the

Spirit.

Ezekiel 11:And I will give them one heart, and a

new spirit I will put within them. I will remove

the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a

heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes

and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall

be my people, and I will be their God.

Because pride is the final step in hardening the

heart, humbleness is the final cure of the hardened

heart. Pride prevents a person from turning to God

for help.

Psalm 10:4The wicked are too proud to seek God.

They seem to think that God is dead. 15 For thus

says the One who is high and lifted up, who

inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in

the high and holy place, and also with him who is

of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit

of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the

contrite.

God can now take over. God resists the proud but

gives grace to the humble. The Spirit enables and

creates the desire in the heart of the person to do

what is humanly impossible. What Moses’ law

could not do, God does through His "Spirit within

you." The heart of stone has been removed and

replaced with a "new heart" and "a new spirit."

The holy life is an exchanged life replacing

stinginess with generosity, harshness with

kindness, anger with serenity, rudeness with

manners, discontentment with thankfulness, and

impatience with patience. Not only do attitudes

change but thinking changes, too, from timidly to

boldness, vindictive to forgiving, stubbornness to

repentance, and fear to faith.

Through this process, we become 2Corinthians 3:

Clearly, you are a letter from Christ showing the

result of our ministry among you. This “letter” is

written not with pen and ink, but with the Spirit of

the living God. It is carved not on tablets of stone,

but on human hearts.