Danny Fourie

Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. Proverbs 4:23

Maybe you say my heart is not full, actually it is empty. So sadly empty. I have no desire to serve the Lord. The only thing I can do with my empty heart is to complain. I become so tired and dispirited.

This too is the type of person whose heart the Lord wants to renew. One tends to think that before the Lord wants to do this, one’s life has to change completely. Should one’s life not be filled with love and the desire to accept God’s salvation initially? No, that does not have to happen. Many people start on the outside of their life. The Bible though, shows us that we start on the wrong side. The Bible starts on the inside of the person. With his or her heart. The heart should be renewed. From the heart the whole life will be renewed.

The Lord wants your heart as it is now and fill it. He wants to take away the emptiness in your heart and fill it with his Spirit. Your heart will be filled with new hope and expectation, with new courage and strength. God sent his Son to the cross where his heart was drained to fill yours.

Someone who is young may say: “My heart is still young and beats with expectation. It sparkles with a yearning for the future. I hope to pass my examinations; I hope to embark on a good career; I hope to get married and I hope to be healed from my disease.” Younger people’s hearts can be filled with ideals. But to the young people God also said: "Give me your heart. I want to renew it – with all the yearnings and ideals. You need me. Some yearnings will not materialize. It is better for you. Or it will be fulfilled in quite another way.”

When the Lord asks us to renew our hearts, He does it with the intention that we serve Him wholeheartedly in our daily lives. In order that whole lives be renewed by the conversion of hearts. In order that we fear the Lord, heart and soul.

Prayer: Lord, take my heart just as it is: full or empty. Renew my heart that my whole life can be new. Amen.