A New Heart Part 2

Hi, everyone, and welcome back to Church of the Bible. I am glad to be here with you all tonight. By now, most of you should know this is a prerecorded message. Just as we've been traveling to Alabama, we have made it here safely by now yesterday at the point that you're hearing this. And it's just I'm so happy, happy to be here.

We'll be continuing here as we get into The Message, our series or miniseries that we started this last week on repentance. And I'll get into that in the message. As far as announcements go, though, we will have Bible study this Wednesday at 06:30 P.m. Mountain Time. I'll have to remember 730 Central Time, because that's the times when I'll be in and I hope I don't forget.

I'll rely on you, mom, to make sure I don't forget that as far as Church and cedar City goes, there will still be no Bible study this Friday. I won't be there, obviously, I'm here in Alabama, but I still invite you to come and attend with us Wednesday at 630 in Zoom. So same place that we are all in now, and we'll be going through the book of exodus. With that said, I think there's no other announcements for this time, so let's open up with the word of prayer and we'll turn the time over to shawnee for praise and worship. And we'll dive into the message which by the way, it's going to be a little shortened because I'm recording three of these messages in a row or since Sunday.

And I am I'm at crunch hour to get ready to leave. So I do apologize. It's going to be a little shortened, but I still hope it's going to be everything that it needs to be for you guys to examine yourselves and pick up from where we were last week. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this time.

We thank You, Lord, for everything that you have done, for this technology, Lord, for your goodness, for your many blessings that you have given us. Lord, I pray now as I'm preparing to drive for a very safe trip from here to Alabama, but I also thank You, Lord, knowing that I will make it there and I'm at the time that this has played and there safely. So Lord, we pray for that and thank you for it at the same time, Lord, and we'll thank you when we get there as well. Father, I pray that as we go into this time, that our hearts will be opened up to Your Spirit, that we will worship you with our hearts. We'll worship you in truth as we pay attention to Your word, Lord, and that we will not only hear it today, but that it will get into our minds, into our hearts.

It will work inside of us to produce fruit glorifying to you. And we thank you and love you in Jesus holy name. amen.

As for me and my house will serve you, Lord. Lifting holy hands and worship.

We will not bow down to the gods of men. We will worship. The God lives. Right you are. Holy.

Holy. There is no one. Else like you. You are holy.

Holy. There is no one else like you. As for me and my house will serve you, Lord. Lifting holy hands and worship. We will not bow down to the gods of men.

We? Will shell. The God will be frightened. You are holy, holy. No one else like you.

You are holy, holy. There is no one else like you.

There is no one. Now choose to stay whom you will serve. Come. On. Choose to stay whom you will serve.

But as for me and my house, we will serve you, Lord. We will serve you, Lord. Oh, yeah. We will not bow through the gospel, man. We will not bow through the gospel mental will worship the golf is right we will not bow through the gospel man we will not bow through the gospel mental we worship the God of is right you are holy holy there is no one else like you.

We will not bow down to the gods of men. We will worship the god of its stride.

I can only imagine what it will be like when I walk by your side. I can only imagine. What my eyes will see when the face is before me I can only imagine I can only imagine surrounded by your glory what a will my heart feel will I dance for you, Jesus? Or in all of you? Be still?

Will I stand in your presence to my knees will not fall? Will I sing hallelujah? Will I be able to speak it all? I can only imagine I can only imagine I can only imagine when that day comes and I find myself standing in the sun I can only imagine when all I will do is forever forever worship yeah, I can only imagine I can only imagine surrounded by your glory what a will my heart feel will I dare give me your breath what do I need to be able to speak it all know you I can only imagine with all I will do is forever forever worship you I can only imagine you ever re battle? Do every heart break through every circumstance?

I believe that you are my fortress oh, you are my portion you are my hiding place oh, I believe you are the way the truth in the light I believe whoever we bless you whoever we promise whoever we breath I take I believe that you are for rider oh, you are protected you are the one that loves? I believe you are the way the truth all in the life I believe you are the way the truth once said on you. And you meet me here today with mercies that I knew all my fears and doubts. They can all come to because they can't stay. Long when I'm here with you it's the new ride and I'll sit on you and you made me here mercy's out of new doubts they can all come to because they can't stay long when I believe you are the way the truth I believe you are the way oh, and the truth the light is a new heart it's a new light you don't set on you and you mean mercy that I knew yeah, all my feelings out we can all come to because they can't stay long I think you are the way holding you are the way to wait I do you I managed to forget to unmute myself.

I apologize. Okay, so this week we're going to continue where we left off. Last week we were reading ezekiel 1830 to 32. Let's put it up there and go over it again real quick to refresh our memories and went off. And what we read it says, therefore I will judge you, House of Israel, each one according to his ways, declares the Lord yahweh.

Repent and turn around from all your transgression. And it will not be as a stumble and block of iniquity to you. Throw away from yourselves all of your transgressions that you committed and make for yourselves a new heart and new spirit. And so why will you die, House of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of the dying, declares the Lord yahweh.

And so repent and live. So last week, we hounded this topic of repentance. We hounded a new heart and a new spirit, and we began to look deeply at our need for it. We established a few facts as we got going. We established that we will be judged.

We established that we need to repent. And repentance is more than just turning around, but it is a persuasion. You are persuaded that your ways are wrong. You are persuaded to follow God. We also established here that we are responsible for making our new heart right.

And this is separate from the actions of God, where he will give us a new heart. But this is that conscious choice to make a new heart. Remember that God will not force us to submit to Him in this life. He will not force us to remove our crown in this life, and he will not force into us a new heart. But we must be willing.

And when we are commanded in ezekiel 31 here to make our new heart, he is telling us that this has to be our choice. We must decide through the persuasion of our mind to make this new heart, to remove our crown and submit to the crown and authority of Jesus Christ willingly, and to allow God to begin a work, anew inside of us. And then we establish as our last matter of fact here from the point that God has no pleasure in our deaths. God does not want us to die. It does not glorify God when we die.

And because he does not want it, we can be assured that he has provided a way to escape it so that he could have pleasure and glory. And that does not come in death, he says, and so repent and lives or repentance will bring eternal life. With that said, I want to remind you what we established here as the heart.

We read from Christ to Matthew 1519. He says that from the heart come evil plans, murder, adultery, sexual immortality, theft, false witness, abusive speech. These are the things that defile a person, and they come from the heart, right? I'll remind you of James. He says that we conceive sin in our mind, and then we birth it through our actions and fruit.

And now I'm not preaching last week's sermon again, but where we're caught up here, I left off with Tony last week. Now that we discussed our knee, we need to do this. How do we do it? And I said that I would announce that we would walk through how we do that this week. And as we begin to discuss how we do it, I want to tell you how we don't do it.

We don't do it through emotions.

There are so many people out there. There's one guy who lives in St. George. I've been working with him for a couple of months. I met him at Mad Peter on my way home from an art show on Saturday.

And he is this close to salvation. And if you're by chance, if you're watching this, I hope that this will help you. This person, he is waiting for a feeling. He is waiting so that he feels tingly or he feels emotional about it. And he keeps saying to me, matt, they don't feel that emotion.

And we do not do it through emotion. We have no control over emotion. We have control over our thoughts, right? If we think about something that we hate or that we dislike, we will feel emotions of anger stir up inside of us. And if we think about something that makes us happy, that we really like and that we really enjoy, we will begin to feel emotions of happiness and joy arouse inside of us.

We can control our thoughts and what we think, what we like and what we dislike, but our emotions are byproducts of that. And so if we are waiting I apologize about my dogs if we are waiting for an emotion to stir us into repentance and obedience to God, we will never be there. We can't control them. Not only can we not control our emotions and our feelings, I will remind you what the Lord has declared to us in jeremiah. He tells us in jeremiah 17, verse nine, he says that your heart is deceitful beyond all measures.

So you might be looking at something or thinking about something, and you have feelings of joy and happiness and gladness stirring up inside you. But what you are looking at is pornography, all right? So your emotions tell you, this is fantastic, this is great. Look at how I feel. But your heart is deceitful beyond all measure.

So we do not receive a new heart through our emotions. Remember, our emotions come out of our heart, right? They come out of the things that we have already set in our mind. As good, as pleasurable, or as evil and wicked. They stem from that.

And as we have established, our hearts are corrupt. So if we are waiting for emotions that flow out of a corrupt heart to convince us into repentance, that's not going to happen.

Now, that's not to discount that there are people who get emotional, right? Certainly there are people who they have emotions that work into the process. But emotions are not the end all, be all of it. Instead, this is a mental thing. Our heart, in the context of this is our mind.

Not just our mind and our top level thoughts, but what's deep rooted in our mind, in our subconscious, in the root of who we are, our decision making, what we hold near and dear to us.

So now that we've identified that we do not do it through emotion, I also want to let you know that we have to examine motive behind what we do. There are a lot of people who have realized that we cannot make ourselves happy in this life, in this world, through sin. And we talked about this last week as well, right? This old heart that we have, the corrupt one that we are born with, it is concerned with me, myself and I, right? My favorite person, the most important person in the world, right?

Me, myself and I. That is what the wicked heart is concerned with. And we learn to manipulate things and do things for our own pleasure. And we have determined that the number one idol that we worship is our own happiness, our own self will and self pleasure. And so then you have to begin to examine your motive.

How many people, when they realize that in the temporal things, most people are aware of the eternity, right? Even people who deny and reject God, they're aware of the eternity. And there are many people aware of God, aware of the eternities, aware of the promises, think the pharisees, right? The sadducees, all of the members of the Sanhedri, most of the Jews, all who kill the prophets, they were aware of all of these things, but they had the wrong attitude and mentality behind it. It was about them, right?

They sought to contain God and call upon Him and his might in his power to their own ends rather than God. So we examine our motives.

Do we follow God because God is a means to our end or do we follow God because it is right to do? All right, let's look at a couple of examples here. We're going to begin in Matthew, chapter five, verse 43. And we're going to we're going to look at a few examples in Matthew, chapter five. I want you to see this is all from the Sermon on the Mount will be in Matthew five and Matthew six, all from the Sermon on the Mount.

And I want you to see the point that Jesus is making beginning in verse 43. You have heard that it was said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you in order that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven because he causes his Son to rise on the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not the tax collectors also do the same?

And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing? That is remarkable. Do not the gentiles also do the same? Therefore, you be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Think about this on a philosophical level. What is Jesus telling us to do? Right? He says, you have heard it was said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

Those who love those who love them, what are they loving them out of? Right? My wife loves me. My mom loves me. My grandma loves me.

I have friends who love me. And if I love them back and no one knows what is my motive behind loving them, it's self interest. My wife loves me, so I'm going to love her so that she'll love me more and give me more of what pleases me. My friends love me and they like to go forewelling with me, bowling with me, watching movies with me, shooting guns with me. And I want them to continue doing that because it brings me pleasure.

So I'm going to love them in return, right?

The motivation behind that is self will. It's pride. I want them to love me. I want to hang out with them. I want to do what they want to do.

But why would you love your enemy if you are concerned with your favorite person? Me, myself and I. For what cause do you love your enemy? You don't.

But love of your enemy is because it's right.

We have made a decision that we will follow God because it's right. We have made a decision that we will love those who hate us, who persecute us, who despitefully use us, because it is right. It's a moral decision that stems from the heart that is not concerned with me, myself and I, but from a heart that is concerned with what is right? What is moral? What?

Pleases God. Think about this. I told you guys last week that no amount of truth will convince a sinner to repent or believe in God. No amount of evidence for God, no amount of proof for Him, no amount of his truth will convince them, because it's not the truth that they reject. It's the character of God they reject.

They reject him for who he is. Not because there's not evidence, not because they don't believe, but because of who he is. He's benevolent, right? We talked about that. God's character is the eternal and polar opposite of our characters, which is self will.

We're selfish. God's benevolent. And until we can be persuaded that we are wrong in that which God uses his truth to do, he pierces our hearts with his truth. He begins to lure us with this truth. But the truth alone cannot do it until we have made a determination.

And so think about the benevolence of God. Why is God so benevolent when we think about his character and his heart? What is it? What makes god. God.

Why does he have the law that he has? Does he have the law that he has because it's what he likes and what he wants and how he set it up? Or does he have the law that he has because he is concerned with the moral character, the moral rulings and foundations of the universe? Because he is concerned with what is right and because God is so concerned with what is right and he is so benevolent and so loving. Did he not die for his enemies?

Jesus once said, there is no greater love than this but for a man to lay down his life for his friends.

And I want to be very careful not to step over the line and to blasphemy here. And so, Lord, please forgive me for saying this, but I think Jesus was wrong. There's no greater love than this that a man would lay down his life for his enemies.

Think about that. Jesus didn't lay down his life for his friends. He laid down his life for his enemies. That through that action, we might become his friends. I want to be very careful.

I should not say that Jesus was wrong. He's God. He's perfect. Nothing he says is wrong. So I need to be careful not I'm walking a razor thin edge of blasphemy here.

But I think we can take that a step further than what Jesus said. That greatest love he died for his enemies was that self will? Would Jesus have been affected one way or another? That wasn't self will. That wasn't selfish.

It was selfless that God loved us so much, he was so benevolent that he would die and suffer in the personage of the Son.

He did it because it was right. Let's look at our next example here. It's chapter six, verses one to four. He says take care not to practice your righteousness before people, to be seen by them. Otherwise you have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.

Therefore, whenever you practice charitable given, do not sound a trumpet in front of you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets in order that they may be praised by people. Truly, I say to you, they have their reward in full. But you, when you practice charitable giving, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing in order that your charitable given may be in secret, that your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

Now, we don't have the very next passage in here, starting in verse five. And he goes on through the lord's Prayer. But he tells us the same thing when you pray, don't pray on the street corners at prayer time just to be heard and with your many babylons or your great and elegant words, so that people look at you and think, wow, what a great prayer he is. What a great man he is. Look at how religious he is, right?

Jesus is talking about our motive. He's talking about our motive. Why do you give charitably? Are you practicing righteousness and charitable giving? Because people will look at you when you give X amount of money or X amount of time or X amount of homes or cars or food or whatever it is you give to the poor and the homeless and the needy and they applaud you and pat you on the back.

That was a great job, Matt. And it makes you feel good if you are doing that, your heart is wicked, right? You still have that heart of stone, you're still perishing while you are doing many great deeds. You're doing it for the wrong reason. Or are you doing it because it's right?

Are you doing it because those are people too? Because they're God's creation, because they need it? And you don't care if you feeding someone means you're going to go hungry or you clothing someone means you're going to go cold, but you are doing it because they are God's creation, who he loves. And it is the right thing to do. When you're praying, are you praying so that people hear it and know, so that you seem religious?

Maybe you seem smart, maybe you'll make friends, maybe you'll be asked to be. If you pray eloquently enough, you'll be asked to pray in church or lead a Sunday school, right? If you're praying to get seen, jesus says you have your reward. When people clap for you and pat you on the back and you get that good feeling from it, you have your reward, but you are corrupt. Or are you praying because you love the Father who is in heaven and you want to commune with Him?

And it's right to do it. It's a good thing to do it. And so you are doing it to talk with your father, right? So what is the motivation in your heart? What is driving you to do these things?

Look at still in chapter six. But verses 19 through 21. He says do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where a moth and consume an insect destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasure in heaven where neither a moth nor consume an insect destroy, and where thieves do not break in or still for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

What is it that we treasure?

So far? Everything that Jesus has hit on, from Matthew chapter five, verses 43 through right here, it has all been about what it is we treasure in our heart, what our motivations are. Is it self interest? Or is it because it's moral? Because it's right, because it glorifies God and who he is, and it seeks to emulate his benevolent character, right?

And so where our treasure is and this can be seen I don't want to overspiritualize stuff, but it can be seen in a literal and a spiritualized sense. In the literal sense, are we more concerned with how much gold we can store up, or a dollar bills, how big our bank is, our homes, our cars, the amount of land we have, the best and greatest tech, right? Or are we concerned about the eternity? But even spiritually, are we concerned with making ourselves happy, ourselves feel good, elevating ourselves into glory? Or are we concerned with the kingdom and the glory of God?

Jesus says something interesting. If we seek first his kingdom, everything else would be given to us. It's a promise because it's promised. What is it that we're actually seeking if we're still constantly seeking after that, right? Everything good that we want.

Our heart isn't the kingdom of God.

He tells us in 22 to 24 this is our last passage. And Matthew, he says the eye of the lamp is the body. Sorry, the eye is the lamp of the body. Therefore, if your eye is sincere, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is evil, your whole body will be dark.

Therefore the light in you is darkness. How great is the darkness? No one is able to serve two masters, for either he will hate the one another, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You are not able to serve God and money, so you can't serve God and money, right? But let's look at this from other perspectives.

You can't serve God himself, right? You can't serve God in pride, you cannot serve God and your dream of becoming the world ruler. You can't serve God and anything else. You must either serve God or serve the devil. What does the devil tell you?

We talked about it last week. He tells you that you can be your own king, your own ruler, your own gods, you cannot serve God. And something else. And we either serve God or we do not serve God. And if we serve God, we look back to that motivation.

And so we're talking about serving one or the other and hating the 111, the other devoted to the one of the spies and the other. Look at romans 616 with me. Paul says, do you not know that to whoever you present yourselves as slaves for obedience, you are slaves to whoever you obey, whether sin leading to death or obedience leading to righteousness.

Whoever we present ourselves slaves to obey. Think about that for a minute. That word slave right there. Who is it that we present ourselves to?

Right? But also what is it that we're presenting ourselves to be? So we can present ourselves to God or we can present ourselves to the enemy, right? And to his illusion, to being our own ruler, to the lust of the flesh, to his wise, to selfishness. But regardless of who we present ourselves to, we are presenting ourselves as a slave.

But we can be a slave to sin, to lead into death or righteousness leading to eternal life.

It's your choice. You cannot escape it, though you will be one or the other.

As we get ready to close here, I want to look at one more element going back to emotion. How many people I hear, even myself. I'm not even going to talk about others. I have done this myself. Where I begin to sit and to think or set up in a fast.

How many of you have fasted? And the point of your fast, you're trying to get through something, a spiritual stronghold or darkness. And as you have fastened, you are focused on the way that you feel. I don't feel saved. I don't feel like God loves me or I don't feel that I love.

I don't feel this. And you spend the whole time of your fast thinking about that. Or do you sit down or lay down in bed at night and you think, I don't feel saved. I don't feel that I'm loved by God. I don't feel that if I were to die, I'm going to heaven.

And we get so caught up in how we feel that we begin to doubt our salvation altogether. Where we begin to fall away and decide we don't believe anymore or any other number of things. And this is something interesting you will never find anywhere in the Bible, from genesis to Revelation where God has appealed to your emotions. Think about that. God has never appealed to our emotions.

Any call to repentance. Look at acts two.

This is going to be by 30. Sorry, this is a spur of the moment. Men here. Men's. scripture, verse 37.

They heard this, right, the sermon of Peter, and they were a pierced in the heart and said, what shall we do? And he says, repent and be baptized. He does not say, well, think about how you feel, if you feel warm and fuzzy or if you feel good about it. He does not appeal to their emotions. repent and be baptized.

Because salvation a new heart. It's not an emotional experience. Emotions accompany it. But going back to the beginning of the sermon, we have no control over emotions. We have no control over how we feel.

How we feel as a response, a programmed response by our heart to what we perceive as good and bad, happy and sad, joyful and angry. Things that we perceive as horrible and bad and rage us, things we perceive as good and pleasant, they make us joyful. Salvation is not emotional, but emotions will accompany it. As your heart changes, as you become more like God as you begin to set it in your mind and your heart that what God likes, I like. What God hates, I hate.

And you begin to live by that and act upon it not upon how you feel, but upon the information that God says this is bad, and he hates it. So it's bad and I hate it, and I will act that way. Eventually, as your heart is made new by God, those emotions will follow. But you cannot rely on your emotions to lead you. And so God has never appealed to your emotions.

He's appealed to your intellect. He's appealed to reason. He wants you to reason. He will try and persuade you, but he has never appealed to your emotions. And I played the first song we played on worship today.

We played last week, too, right? We will not bow down to the gods of men will worship the God of Israel. And he starts, he says, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Look at Joshua 20 415. With me, Joshua 20 415.

He says, if it is bad in your eyes to serve yahweh choose for yourselves today whom you will serve. Whether it is the gods that your ancestors served beyond the river or the gods of the amorites and whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve yahweh.

Did Joshua appeal to your emotions?

Did he appeal to if you feel good about it? No. He appealed to your intellect. If it is bad to you right. With all the data you have, all the information you have, all the evidence you have of God all of his promises, everything he has taught, his benevolence if it is bad to serve yahweh then choose who you want to serve.

And then he says, but we will serve God. So as we end to the hell, do we make ourselves a clean heart, a new heart, right? And a new spirit. Because we are so persuaded, so convinced that God's character deserves to be worshiped his law. It's our duty to follow it.

We become so convinced that there is no other way, no other thing in heaven or earth or below earth anyway, no other thing that deserves our attention, and so we will follow it. And here is how you can know, how you can challenge yourself to know if you have a new heart, that if you were to die today and God were to send you to Hell, would you still follow Him anyways because of your persuasion and your mind that there is no other option. And I am so persuaded of God today, so persuaded of his character and his morality, of his worthiness and right, that I will serve God because there is no other in heaven on earth or below earth or anywhere else who deserves my attention. And so I will serve him. We can say, as did Joshua, you choose the state to whom you will serve, but I will serve yahweh.

And as we do that, as we make that choice and we stand upon that choice, and we commune with God and we abide with Jesus, and we allow Him to abide in us, you will see that God puts inside of you a new heart.

There's so much I could add and want to add, and I don't want to begin tripping over myself and repeating everything. But I want you to know today, I want to come down to this. If you are waiting for that deeply emotional experience, stop and just ask yourself, with all the data you have, are you intellectually satisfied and persuaded to the point that you can decide and put it inside of yourself, inside of your heart to follow God? Not emotionally they'll lie to you, but with are you persuaded? Are you convinced that God is real?

Are you convinced that he's benevolent? Are you convinced that you're a sinner? Are you convinced that God is deserving, that he is worthy of our attention and worship, that we should be glorifying Him not because you feel that way, but because you know it is true through the data you have. And if so, and you have not yet given your life to Jesus. Let's do that today where you will admit that you're a sinner.

You'll admit that you cannot save yourself. You will admit that your ways are wrong, but that Jesus is God in the flesh, who is King, right, who is the sovereign ruler of the universe, to whom you will take off your crown and bow to submit to his. You will believe that his death on the cross and his bury on resurrection. The offer of reconciliation is enough to get you to heaven, to remove the barriers, to save you on that merit alone, on Jesus Christ and confess Him as your Lord and King. We're going to do that in our closing prayer, if you are ready right now to declare, as did Joshua, that as for me in my household, we will serve yahweh.

Welcome to the family of God. Let's pray to him. Let's submit it to Him and ask Him into our hearts right now. Just repeat after me, and for everyone watching this in somewhere other than Zoom, and even those on Zoom when this recording ends, we will still have communion. So we're going to kind of not time travel because they're not moving through time, but we're going to kind of teleport from the office here to my mom's place in Alabama where we'll have communion.

So please stay in Zoom when this ends. And for those watching anywhere else, if you would like to participate in communion, please take this time during the closing prayer to get logged into Zoom, because we will have it immediately following, and I will see you guys next week. Let's pray. Father, I admit that I am a sinner and cannot say myself, and Lord, I admit that my heart has been full of pride and self interest and my own will, and I have been my own greatest idol. Lord, I know that me, myself, and I has been my best friend, and I know what's wrong, but Lord, I am now convinced and persuaded in my mind to follow you, and I am making a decision right now to worship and to serve you.

yahweh.

And I believe that despite all my sins and everything I did, that you have reconciled me to Yourself through your death and your works, and that alone is sufficient, Father. And I confess you, Lord Jesus, that you are my god, my king and my lord. And I will remove my crown to bow to yours now. And I love you. I thank you for this in the beautiful and precious name of Jesus Christ.

amen. And Father, we just thank you for all that you have done. And I pray, Lord, that you will help us to examine today our motives, our reasoning for what we do, what is truly in our heart. Lord, help us to make this decision for you. And help us, Lord, give us a new heart and a new spirit.

Remove from us as you have said and promised that you would do, our heart of stone or pit of stone, and give us today a heart of flesh. In Jesus name we pray. amen.