Heart surgery

I have heard several ministers talk about having a head change or having a heart change. When I think about my life I have probably had a few million head changes but very few heart changes. Sometimes I even wonder if I ever have had a genuine heart change. Often I've come to the place where I realize a change is necessary and decide to do something to make the change stick. Usually I'll get through a couple of weeks, after that I lapse right back into whatever I was doing, feeling, or experiencing previously. A perfect definition of a head change if there ever was one. Head changes are easy. They can be brought on by a fiery sermon, contemplative music, or solid advice from a trusted friend. Heart changes are much more difficult to live out. The difference is head changes can be affected by us and by external stimuli, heart changes can be brought on only by God through the Holy Spirit working in us.

Well then what can we do make it happen? How can we get it done? What can I do to get this change started and working in my heart? Nothing. Nada. Zero. There is nothing we can do to make a true heart change happen for ourselves, it is something we have to completely rely on God to perform. I like to see it as surgery in a sense. God has to constantly remove our hearts and replace it with one that is closer to his own. To do this he must re-open our wounds. This is another major reason why a heart change is so difficult, we try to hold on to the heart we have, with all its faults and deformities, and hide it. But why do we try and hide what God longs to heal? If we try to re-open our wounds on our own it causes more damage to our heart and soul then when the injury first occurred. Our operating theatre resembles those from the Middle Ages: crude surgical instruments, dull blades covered in dried blood, unsterilized so when we make an incision we infect ourselves further. Many times we don't even anesthetize ourselves when we try to operate. No wonder the pain is so intense, no wonder we have hardened hearts and why so few of us survive our own procedure thus ensuring we never heal properly.

God's operating theatre is a stark contrast to ours: The room is spotless and clean, the instruments are new and sterile, the blades sharp, the procedures are all state of the art, and like some procedures there may be some pain after we are groggy after waking up but we do not feel the actual surgery being performed. When we re-open our wounds it is usually to dwell on those wounds and how they were given to us. When God re-opens our wounds it's to heal them. His spirit is the salve that heals our souls. It is the only thing known to cure the ails of our hearts. You may be reading this wondering, "Well great Mike that's wonderful. Only God can, I can't. That still doesn't help me though. when will he do it? How will I know?"

Those are good questions but if you are asking those questions he has probably just performed a procedure on you already. You are just feeling the after pains of surgery. When you are having surgery you are unconscious so you do not feel anything, but when you wake up it hurts. Sure it hurts, but it hurts far less then the actual surgery itself. This is our road to understanding what has just happened in us. I'm not sure what the next step is because I feel like God has already done something in me but I don't know what it exactly is and what it is for, but as I walk and trust him I will begin to understand. Perhaps the second step is hope, but real hope not manufactured presidential hope; a hope that God is faithful, and that he will continue the work he started in us. One of my teachers, Dr. Bekker, once said that sometimes the Holy Spirit has changed us and we haven't yet become aware of it, but we will as we continue our walk and trust in him.