How God Deals With The Heart

Introduction:

Jeremiah 17:9 tells us that the human heart is mysterious and deceitful. We cannot know what lies at the heart of our own nature and personality; it is beyond our ability to penetrate and understand.

The planet on which we live provides an interesting illustration of the problem: Deep inside the Earth, spinning in a watery pool of iron, the Earth’s core is a giant iron crystal slightly smaller but more dense than the moon. Beyond that, the substance at the heart of our planet always has been a mystery. Scientists have learned that the Earth’s core is turning in an eastward direction and spinning faster than the Earth itself. Every 400 years, the core is a full turn ahead of the Earth.

The more that earth scientists learn about the heart of our planet, the greater the mystery becomes! But no matter how strange, it can’t rival the mystery and darkness of the human heart.

Transition:

The spiritual consequences for not knowing what you look at when you peer into the human heart can be even more disastrous! Though man looks at the outward appearances, God looks at our heart.

I. God Examines Our Heart

A. God looks within our heart.

B. God inspects our heart.

C. God observes our heart

D. God evaluates our heart.

II. God Touches Our Heart

A. We can say, “God, go ahead and do in my heart what needs to be done.”

B. We can say, “God, take what is wrong and make it right.”

C. We can say, “God, clean my heart out.”

D. We can say, “God, straighten me out.”

E. We can say, “God, touch my heart.”

III. God Changes Our Heart

A. When our hearts change, our attitudes change.

B. When our hearts change, our intentions change.

C. When our hearts change, our ambitions change.

Conclusion:

When God looks at the human heart, he knows what he’s looking at. 1 Samuel 16:7 suggests that we don’t and can’t, even when we look at our own hearts. The results of not seeing the heart for what it is can be disastrous.

An Illinois man died waiting for a donor kidney a month after his transplant operation was halted when doctors found a Chicago organ bank employee sent a heart to the downstate hospital by mistake.

The patient was in the operating room May 12 undergoing surgery when the mistake was discovered. Doctors closed the man’s incision and he died Sunday still awaiting a replacement kidney.

"They got him ready for surgery, took him in to the operating room, did the incision, got all his nerve endings prepared, and when they went to open the box, it was a heart. They had labeled in wrong," Daniel DeVore Jr., a friend of the deceased patient told Wednesday’s Chicago Sun-Times.

A spokesman for the Regional Organ Bank of Illinois said two organs were mislabeled by an organ-recovery coordinator. The kidney should have gone to Memorial Medical Center in Springfield, Ill., and a heart to a Chicago research laboratory.

The surgeon called the organ bank but the lab had already opened the package containing the kidney and it was no longer suitable for transplant.

John Sherman, 31, who had been waiting for a kidney for 13 years, went back on the organ waiting list. DeVore said Sherman was crushed and devastated by the mix-up. He died during the weekend.