p. 5 | Reforming the Life by Changing the Heart

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 9, 1914

Reforming the Life by Changing the Heart

“Out of it [the heart] are the issues of life.” Prov. 4:23. The only way to bring about a change in the life is to effect a change in the heart, from which spring all the underlying motives and purposes which shape and mold the outward experience. Israel of old sought through outward forms and ceremonies to effect this change. By their own promises, resolutions, and will power they thought they could make themselves a peculiar people, a holy nation. But the spirit of inspiration declares that this old covenant relationship was weak, and powerless to accomplish the desires of God for his people. In its place the Lord established the new covenant. Hebrews 8.

This new covenant relationship works from within outward. In its operation the Lord declares, “I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts.” We must learn, as did Israel of old, that the children of God are “born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man.” Never by power of will alone can we become Christians, and so yield ourselves to God that the heart will be sanctified and placed under the control of the Holy Spirit. It is for us to choose the right, to open our hearts to receive of the ministry of grace. This permits God to come in and to change and fashion us after his own divine image.

Sometimes in instructing those newly come to the faith, and for that matter some who have been connected with the church for years, it becomes necessary to admonish them against conformity to the world, its follies, and fashions. If in this instruction the heart can be reached and the viewpoint of the individual changed, the battle is won. It accomplishes but little to sound the warning cry against these evils unless by the Spirit of the Lord there can be wrought in the hearts of those we warn a change of desires and purposes. We may frown upon these evils; we may read the warnings given in the Scriptures and in the Testimonies against them, and for a time secure acquiescence on the part of those concerned. But this change will not be maintained unless the heart is converted.

The truly converted man desires to know but one thing, and that is that he is accepted of the Lord. Knowing this, he stops at no sacrifice. He has given himself to his Master for willing, loving service, and in his dress, deportment, and his entire life his first thought is the glory of the one he serves and the pleasure of his will. God’s way of reforming the life is by changing the heart. This is the way of the new covenant. Let us seek to change our own life experience by this divine method, and let us in our labor for others employ the way of the new covenant instead of the plan of the old.