God desires our Hearts
Have you ever had trouble communicating or figuring out exactly what it is that someone wants? I remember when our children were infants several times experiencing the frustration of trying to figure out what it was they were crying for and reaching for and nothing we offered them satisfied their desire. Many times we would say, “If you could only talk and tell me what you want.” Our hearts would be grieving over not being able to understand their desires.
When it comes to knowing and understanding what God wants, I’m fairly certain that it is not nearly as hard as some of our other experiences because we have the written Word of God that tells us exactly what it is that God wants and desires from us and for us. The next three weeks, God willing, I want to explore together what it is that God wants. Today, let’s talk about the fact that God desires our Hearts.
I make that statement with a fair amount of conviction, but I want to establish this in your minds as well, that God really does desire your heart. He desires a relationship with you because He created you for that! There is no better place to determine that than from His own words first recorded in Deuteronomy chapter 5 verse 28. Here Moses has been giving the people the Ten Commandments, and as God speaks you can hear the desire of His heart. “The Lord heard you when you spoke to me, said Moses, and the Lord said to me, ‘I have heard what this people said to you. Everything they said was good. Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me and keep all my commands always, so that it might go well with them and their children forever!’”
Can you see the desire of God’s heart for His people’s hearts? We know from Scriptures that God loves us. We know it so well that we take it for granted, it’s not that big of a deal to us anymore – but I tell you this morning that God’s love for us is a deep desire for our hearts to be redeemed, restored and renewed.
You see we have the verse from John 3:16 memorized – “For God so loved the world He gave His only Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but shall have eternal life.” So we know that He loves us, but did you ever realize that love causes Him to think about you? Psalms 40: 5,17; Psalms 138: 17; Jeremiah 29:11 all tell us that He thinks about us so often we cannot count, and that He is planning a great future for us. And not only does He love us and think about us, but He is currently, right now, today, praying and interceding for us. Hebrews 7:25; Romans 8:26, 34; I John 2:1.
Now as we examine this matter this morning, let us first understand that
1. Our Hearts Need to be Redeemed
a. Because, without God, our hearts are wicked. Ever since the Garden of Eden and Eve and Adam chose to exercise their free will to disobey, humanity has had the very same choice. God created us and desires a relationship with us, but we are born with a nature of sin that causes us to go our own way so our hearts are, as it says in Jeremiah 17:9, “desperately wicked and deceitful,” before we are redeemed. Now we don’t like to think about that very much, but we know it intimately. Parents see it very quickly in the hearts of their children from an early age. If you don’t have children and you want to see this for yourself, just spend some time in Wal-Mart and you’ll see some original sin. ;-)
2 Peter 2 :14 says, …”they have trained their hearts for greed..”
Heberew 3:12, “See to it that none of you has an evil and unbelieving heart.”
You say, Pastor, I know what it looks like in a little child, but what does it look like in my life? I tell you that if you are continually struggling with deception and dishonesty, showing hatred or unkindness to those around you, are greedy, jealous or prideful, then you are dealing with an unredeemed heart. Christ Himself tells us in three of the New Testament gospels, that “what comes out of men’s hearts are evil thoughts, immorality, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, slander, envy, theft, arrogance,” etc. It is more important to know Christ than to call yourself a Christian. The label alone will not save you. And you cannot know Christ unless you first have a redeemed heart.
b. And God seeks our redemption
In spite of our nature and our wrong choices, we read and understand that God still loves us. Jeremiah 31: 3 says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love…” Romans says, “while we were yet sinners, He died FOR US…”
He seeks the redemption of our heart. Over and over again, He declares that, “I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord.” Jer 24:7. In 2 Peter 3:9 we find that, “He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but that all should come to repentance.”
c. So we must invite him to redeem us
We cannot know Him and have a redeemed heart though, unless we invite Him in and seek His forgiveness. Even though he made us and has all power, yet we must initiate the relationship. He’s already done his part. Revelations 3:20, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if anyone hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in…”
“Even now, declares the Lord, return to me with all your heart…for the Lord is gracious and compassionate…”
Not only do our hearts need to be redeemed,
2. Our Hearts Need to be Restored
a. Because our hearts are hardened. God knows our hearts and our thoughts. Throughout scripture we find references like Jeremiah 20:12, where it states, “O Lord Almighty, You are the one who …probes the mind and heart.” But we also find illustrations and examples of men and women from the beginning of creation that had hearts that were hardened. Pharoah, the Israelites in the desert, Nebuchadnezzer, and on and on. Psalms 95:8 gives instruction to, “Harden not your hearts, as they did in the desert…” and again in Hebrews 3:15, “Harden not your hearts and they did in the rebellion…”
b. And God seeks our restoration
A very stirring example of God’s intent and motivation here is in the Old Testament - the passage in Ezekiel 36:25 where God says, “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you and move you to follow my decrees…”
Wow, what an inspiration! God seeks your restoration. He has been doing heart transplants for centuries. It must have been this passage that the hymn writer was reading when they wrote the second verse of the old hymn, Jesus Paid it all. It goes like this:
Lord, now indeed I find
Thy pow’r and thine alone,
Can change the leper’s spots,
And melt the heart of stone.
Jesus paid it all;
All to Him I owe.
Sin had left a crimson stain;
He washed it white as snow.
c. So we must invite Him to restore us.
Again, Christ is waiting for us to turn to Him, to seek Him before He restores our heart. In Jeremiah he says, “You shall seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” And again in Joel, “Turn to me…”
He desires an invitation into your heart. He wants to give you a new heart. He wants to make you new. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”
3. Our Hearts Need to be Renewed
a. Because our hearts are broken. We were created for an existence of dependence. And if we are not redeemed, and restored, our sin has literally broken us apart from God. It is our sin that desperately longs for independence, to exist on “our own”, but we don’t travel very far down that path until we feel the intense pain of our broken, fractured lives. Do we really understand the words of Jesus in John 15:5 when He said “Apart from me you can do nothing”?
b. And Jesus seeks our renewal through healing
In Matthew 13: 15, during Jesus’ explanation of the parable of the sower and the seed, we find this passage, quoted from Isaiah 6. “For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.”
As John Elderedge says in his book, Waking the Dead, that’s a different offer from: “And I would forgive them.”
Jesus offers healing to our hearts as he offered healing to physical bodies while He was here on earth. Though all of the illustrations and written examples of His ministry on earth, He says more important than healing bodies is the healing of our hearts. “Here, He says, I can heal your heart and restore your soul.”
Psalms 23:1-3 “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside quiet waters, and He restores my soul.”
Psalms 147:3 “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”
Luke 9:11, “He welcomed them and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who needed healing.”
c. So we must invite Him to renew us
Psalms 34:18 says, The Lord is close to those who are broken hearted, and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”
“Brokenness keeps so many people from walking the path the God has for them,” says Eldredge. And it was Leanne Payne who wrote in Healing Places, that “Healing prayer is not the ‘instant fix’, nor the bypassing of steady growth. It is that which clears the path makes such progress possible.”
It was in Isaiah 61 that the mission of Christ was foretold:
“The Spirit of the Soveriegn Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, To proclaim freedom for the captives, And release for the prisoners.”
Friends, what God really desires is your heart - redeemed, restored, and renewed. It is that for which he died. He is seeking it out, and He will continue to seek your heart until the day you harden your heart so hard against Him that He quietly goes away and turns you over to “the wrath stored up for you in the day of Judgement.”
Those of you who are Tolkien/Lord of the Rings fans will recognize a picture of Christ in the scene where Faramir is struck down and Gandalf says, “Let us not stay at the door, for the time is urgent. Let us enter! For it is only in the coming of Aragorn that any hope remains for the sick that lie in the house…‘For the hands of the king are the hands of a healer, and so shall the rightful king be known…” And then Aragorn comes and kneels by Faramir, and takes the leaves of the kingsfoil, and with his hands on Faramirs’ head, brings healing.
Christ wants to redeem you. Christ wants restore you. Christ wants to heal your brokenness.
