HEART

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 19, 1900

The King's Messenger.

God gives a new heart, a heart to know him, a heart that returns unto him. A new heart and a new spirit are the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Without this new heart it is impossible to serve him. Our resolutions, our efforts, our consecrations and dedications, are of no avail without the new heart indwelt by the Holy Spirit, who causes us to walk in his commandments to do them, and makes us to walk in newness of life, and to run with alacrity and delight in the way of the Lord.

This heart life is not the growth of the head; it is not born of the intellect; it is the gift of God by the way of faith in the Lord Jesus. It is an entirely new creation. All things are new—a new birth, born of the Spirit, the stony heart displaced, a heart of flesh put in, making a new man in Christ Jesus—not outward reformation, but inward regeneration—not to know things, but to know God.

This kind of heart is God given; it is a new nature; all the old is revolutionized by the new. We receive this new heart at justification. Pardon and peace are its initials. Plans and purposes are entirely altered. Receiving a new experience, we become a new witness; we begin a new life. Then the heart becomes the throne room—the seat of power—the abiding of his presence. “Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.”

We can believe only with our heart. Head faith does not meet the need. It is with the heart man believes. The mistake we make is transferring the seat of power to the head. We think more than we love; we reason more than we believe; we speculate more than we practice. We have opinions of the head that are set forth in doctrines and dogmas and creeds: they make us learned, but not loving; they are of us, not of him.

Wise heads would displace loving hearts, and dub them fanatical, and fear to relinquish control and let the Holy Ghost rule. After heart belief comes heart love. We love with all our heart. This comes through the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. The supply is full, if we will only receive—full hearts properly filled, filled full of the Holy Ghost. Self must abdicate; self must be displaced, must be removed; not by us, for we are not able, but by him: he is all-powerful.