Editor's note: Yesterday, we shared a devotion from Seeking After the Heart of God for 52 Weeks by Max Lucado. You can read it here and then continue reading below.
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Some years ago I underwent a heart procedure. My heartbeat had the regularity of a telegraph operator sending Morse code. Fast, fast, fast. Sloooow.
After several failed attempts to restore healthy rhythm with medication, my doctor decided I should have a catheter ablation. The plan went like this: A cardiologist would insert two cables into my heart via a blood vessel. One was a camera; the other was an ablation tool. To ablate is to burn. Yes, burn, cauterize, singe, brand. If all went well, the doctor, to use his coinage, would destroy the “misbehaving” parts of my heart.
As I was being wheeled into surgery, he asked if I had any final questions. (Not the best choice of words.) I tried to be witty.
“You’re burning the interior of my heart, right?”
“Correct.”
“You intend to kill the misbehaving cells, yes?”
“That is my plan.”
“As long as you are in there, could you take your little blowtorch to some of my greed, selfishness, superiority, and guilt?”
He smiled and answered, “Sorry, that’s out of my pay grade.”
Indeed it was, but it’s not out of God’s. He is in the business of changing hearts.
We would be wrong to think this change happens overnight. But we would be equally wrong to assume change never happens at all. It may come in fits and spurts—an “aha” here, a breakthrough there. But it comes.
The grace of God that brings salvation has appeared. — Titus 2:11 NKJV
The floodgates are open, and you just never know when grace will seep in. Grace. We talk as though we understand the term. The bank gives us a grace period. The seedy politician falls from grace. Musicians speak of a grace note. We describe an actress as gracious, a dancer as graceful. We use the word for hospitals, baby girls, kings, and premeal prayers. We talk as though we know what grace means.
Especially at church. Grace graces the songs we sing and the Bible verses we read. Grace shares the church parsonage with its cousins: forgiveness, faith, and fellowship. Preachers explain it. Hymns proclaim it. Seminaries teach it. But do we really understand it?
Here’s my hunch: We’ve settled for wimpy grace. It politely occupies a phrase in a hymn, fits nicely on a church sign. Never causes trouble or demands a response. When asked, “Do you believe in grace?” who could say no?
The deeper question is whether you have been changed by grace—shaped by it, emboldened by it, softened by it. Have you been snatched by the nape of your neck and shaken to your senses by grace?
God’s grace has a drenching about it. A wildness about it. A white-water, riptide, turn-you-upside-downness about it. Grace comes after you. It rewires you.
When grace happens, you receive not a nice compliment from God but a new heart. Give your heart to Christ, and He returns the favor.
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. — Ezekiel 36:26 NKJV
You might call it a spiritual heart transplant.
Tara Storch understands this miracle as much as anyone can. A skiing accident took the life of her thirteen-year-old daughter, Taylor. What followed for Tara and her husband, Todd, was every parent’s worst nightmare: a funeral, a burial, a flood of questions and tears. They decided to donate their daughter’s organs to needy patients.
Few people needed a heart more than Patricia Winters. Her heart had begun to fail five years earlier, leaving her too weak to do much more than sleep. Taylor’s heart gave Patricia a fresh start on life. Tara had only one request: She wanted to hear the heart of her daughter. She and Todd flew from Dallas to Phoenix and went to Patricia’s home to listen to Taylor’s heart. The two mothers embraced for a long time. Then Patricia offered Tara and Todd a stethoscope.1
When they listened to the healthy rhythm, did they not hear the still-beating heart of their daughter? It indwelt a different body, but the heart was the heart of their child. And when God hears your heart, does He not hear the still-beating heart of His Son? As Paul said,
It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. — Galatians 2:20 NKJV
The apostle sensed within himself not just the philosophy, ideals, or influence of Christ but the person of Jesus. Christ had moved in. He still does.
When grace happens, Christ enters.
Christ in you, the hope of glory. — Colossians 1:27 NKJV
Grace is God as heart surgeon cracking open your chest, removing your heart—poisoned as it is with pride and pain—and replacing it with His own. His dream isn’t just to get you into Heaven but to get Heaven into you. What a difference this makes! Can’t forgive your enemy? Can’t forgive your past? Christ can, and He is on the move, budging you from graceless to grace-shaped living. Forgiven people forgiving people. Stumbles aplenty but despair seldom.
Grace lives because Jesus does, works because He works, and matters because He matters. He placed a term limit on sin and danced a victory jig in a graveyard. To be saved by grace is to be saved by Him—not by an idea, doctrine, creed, or church membership—but by Jesus Himself, who will sweep into Heaven anyone who so much as gives Him the nod.
If you fear you’ve written too many checks on God’s kindness account, drag regrets around like a broken bumper, huff and puff more than you delight and rest, and wonder whether God can do something with the mess of your life, then grace is what you need.
Let’s make certain it happens to you.
The Heart of the Matter
- For as much as we use the word grace, we often misunderstand its meaning.
- We settle for wimpy grace—one that never causes trouble or demands a response.
- Grace is God removing your heart and replacing it with His own.
- Jesus is on the move, budging you from graceless to grace-shaped living.
Memory Verse
James 5:16 — Take a few moments to review this verse, and then write it out from memory.
After God’s Own Heart
Checking your bag at the airport requires trust. You hand your suitcase over to the airline attendant and believe it will be waiting for you when you arrive at your destination. Is this trust well-founded? The research suggests yes. Only a fraction of luggage—less than one percent are deemed permanently lost or stolen each year.
In the same way that checking a bag requires trust, so does repentance. When you hand your baggage (your sins) over to God, you believe that He will wipe them from your record and create in you a new heart. You trust that God’s grace is enough. You don’t repent and then work to try and make up for your sins. No, you recognize that grace is enough.
Is this trust in God’s goodness well-founded? Well, the Bible reveals that His record is flawless. He has never once failed to deliver on His promise of forgiving sins that are entrusted to Him through confession. For this reason, we trust God when He says,
We have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. — Hebrews 10:10
1. Todd and Tara Storch, parents of Taylor and founders of Taylor’s Gift Foundation (www.TaylorsGift.org), tell the ongoing story of their journey of regifting life, renewing health, and restoring families in their book (with Jennifer Schuchmann) Taylor’s Gift: A Courageous Story of Life, Loss, and Unexpected Blessings (Revell, 2013).
Excerpted with permission from Seeking After the Heart of God for 52 Weeks by Max Lucado, copyright Max Lucado.
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Your Turn
Do you know what grace means? Not the wimpy grace too easily accepted, but the real, white-water, riptide, turn-you-upside-downness kind of grace. God in His grace is replacing your heart with His own! Now, that’s grace! ~ Devotionals Daily