Do You Have a Good Heart?

Sometimes genuine kindness oozes from me. I think of other people more than myself. My words are encouraging, my actions are helpful, and my attitudes reflect the character of God. Well, kind of; I know it’s all relative. At those times, though, I feel God must be pleased with me.

Then there are stretches where if my thoughts, words, and actions were written down, the paper wouldn’t be considered fit to line the bottom of my grandma’s parakeet cage. Negative thoughts become critical words, actions are thoughtless, and motives are selfish. Rather than a reflection of Jesus, I see a badly cracked image of myself.

A while back in the midst of one of these periods, I became beyond frustrated. Day after day, I felt like a failure—to myself and to God. I was well acquainted with Jesus’ words, “…out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34). I thought my heart must have been jam-packed with awfulness because negativity kept flowing out through my mouth and actions.

I also recalled an even more condemning verse. The prophet Jeremiah said, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9, KJV). The word for “desperately wicked” is also translated “incurable.” That was exactly how I felt—desperately wicked and beyond cure. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t seem to clean out my heart. I cried out to God for a new heart, knowing that he is the only one who can change hearts.

Not long after that, I began reading Waking the Dead by John Eldredge. I thought it was going to be about one thing, but instead, it turned out to be God’s reply to my plea for a new heart, which I discovered when I came to these words: You have a new life—the life of Christ. And you have a new heart. Do you know what this means? Your heart is good.

I’ve heard this. I knew this. But I had never truly internalized it. God was speaking directly to me, telling me I already have a new heart. And it isn’t wicked, despite the awful things that sometimes seem to flow from it. It’s a good heart.

Mankind started out with good hearts. When God created Adam and Eve—including their hearts—he said that they were very good (Genesis 1:31). Then Adam disobeyed God, and mankind received its sinful nature. Our hearts were turned from their original goodness to enmity with God. That is the desperately wicked heart Jeremiah referred to.

Since then, God has always desired to restore our good heart. He said through Ezekiel, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26). That was part of God’s promise to renew his covenant with Israel following their Babylonian captivity. Wiersbe says the promise illustrates what happens now when a person trusts in Jesus. [1] That new covenant was ultimately fulfilled in Christ.

The stony heart is unable to understand spiritual things (1 Corinthians 2:14), and man cannot rid himself of such a heart. But when a person chooses to follow Jesus, God removes the hard heart that is set against him and replaces it with a heart of flesh. The new heart desires to please God, it is submissive to his will, and it seeks righteousness.

The Hebrew word translated heart means “inner man, mind, will, heart” (Strong’s Concordance). Eldredge says, “The heart is the deep center of our life . . . The heart is who we are. The real self . . . Me. My heart is me. The real me.” In giving us a new heart, God makes us into a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17)—a new “Me.”

We can be assured our new heart is good because God is good (Mark 10:18; Psalm 25:8). He is incapable of giving “bad” gifts. He doesn’t give us a secondhand or refurbished heart. It is not defective or even slightly blemished. And it comes with everything needed to function perfectly, including an instruction manual (2 Timothy 3:16).

I was overjoyed with this new understanding of the state of my heart. But I questioned God about why my good heart sometimes feels so wicked. He answered me through more of Eldredge’s insights.

Eldredge says, though it may seem as if awful things issue from our heart, they are not a reflection of what’s really going on in our heart. In some cases, they are “an attempt of the Enemy to distress you by throwing all sorts of thoughts your way and blaming you for it.” Because your heart—the real you—is special to God, the Enemy “and all his forces are fixed upon its destruction. For if he can disable or deaden your heart, then he has effectively foiled the plan of God.”

In other situations, we may be hearing the voice of our flesh. James says we are tempted by our own evil desire (James 1:14). We still live in a fallen world. Temptations do not cease when we receive a new heart, and we will sometimes choose the wrong path. The difference is that we are no longer slaves to sin (Romans 6:6); now we have a heart that wants to serve God and the power of the Holy Spirit to help us make godly choices.

Like any possession of great value, our new heart will work best when we take care of it. We are told, “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life” (Proverbs 4:23). We can learn from God’s Word to discern where various thoughts originate. Then we must be vigilant in keeping ideas contrary to God from entering in. Heart care is a lifelong process.

So, do you have a good heart? If you are a follower of Jesus, you have a new heart—and, yes, it is very good. Take special care of it. And remember that those undesirable thoughts are remnants of who you were, they are not who you are.

Scripture quotations are from NIV unless otherwise noted.

Hebrew definition is from Bible Hub. See Resources.

[1] Wiersbe, Warren, The Bible Exposition Commentary, Old Testament: The Prophets, p.228

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