Stephen spoke tonight about having a heart for God. Our human hearts are amazing, beating about 100,000 times in a day and about 35 million times in one year. We can’t live without them; if the heart stops beating for any length of time, then we die.
God has a lot to say about the heart, which is often used to mean our inner life and spiritual walk, not just the physical muscle in our bodies. When God lives in us, He makes our hearts glad (Ps 16:9); ‘my flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.’ (Ps 73:26) The Bible talks of our hearts ‘crying out’ to God (Ps 84:2) and we are urged to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength (Matt 22:7, see Deut 6:5).
We need our hearts to be renewed and purified (Ps 51:10, 17); in fact, we need the new heart which Ezekiel prophesied about (Ezek 18:31) if we are to live for God. We need to walk with whole-hearted trust in God (Prov 3:5-6), keeping in step with the rhythm of God’s heartbeat (see Gal 5:16), knowing as we do so that ‘this beating heart, like a drum, it will beat for You.’ (‘This Beating Heart’, Matt Redman).