Renewing Our Heart

 

    With the arrival of each new year come numerous opportunities to examine our past performance and start again with renewed purpose. We often make New Year's resolutions involving our finances, time management, or diet. But what about our heart?

 

    If you want to reach your full potential, it is absolutely crucial that you have a clean heart. Only when we receive Jesus Christ as our personal Savior do we have the possibility of acting on that potential, because it is God's Holy Spirit who gives us power over our natural self. It is His indwelling Spirit who enables us in every single aspect of our life and who can make our potential a reality.

 

    We must understand that the Holy Spirit works only in a believer whose heart is clean. So the question becomes, "How can I have a clean heart?" First, let's think about how we keep our hands clean: we wash them. We don't necessarily wait until we see dirt all over them; sometimes we feel or simply know that our hands are not clean.

 

    Spiritually, the Bible is God's cleansing agent! That is what cleans our hearts. (Ephesians 5:26) As we interact with people and ideas from the world, we naturally get dirty saying things we shouldn't, developing attitudes not befitting a child of God, and thinking thoughts that are not right or pure. First Peter 2:8 says, ". . . They stumble because they are disobedient to the word." That is, dirt gets into our life when we disobey God's Word, so we frequently have to "wash." Being a Christian does not mean we have achieved sinless perfection once and for all we are clean only as long as we are making godly decisions. The living Word of God exposes to us our wrongdoing or wrong thinking, and then "washing" can take place. As Scripture speaks to our heart, the result is our confession and repentance toward the Lord.

 

    So many people never reach their potential because they allow "dirt" to accumulate: wrong thinking, wrong attitudes, wrong motivations, and wrong ideas about God. Proverbs 4:23 teaches, "Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life." As Matthew 5:8 says, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." We don't have to wait until heavenif our heart is clean, we will see God at work in our life every single day.