I recently read that over one million Europeans were captured by Arab slave traders and sold as slaves to North Africa between 1530 and 1780. Many Europeans later went on to be become master slave traders who enslaved and transported people from Central and West Africa. Irrespective of our race, we all have one common problem – our heart. According to the Holy Book “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?” This terrible condition of man’s heart is as the result of Adam’s fall, everyone is enslaved to service of sins because of the fall i.e., Adam’s sin corrupts the entire human nature. Our hearts have therefore been inclined toward sin from the time we were born. We easily fall into the routine of forgetting and forsaking God. Perhaps, the Biblical Paul was thinking about the problem with our hearts when he said “Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death?” Paul later revealed the solution to the problem with our hearts. “Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord…” He said. To corroborate Paul’s assertion, Christians through the ages have testified how Christ gave them a ‘new heart’. One of them is John Newton, a former slave trader and author of the popular Christian hymn – Amazing Grace. See what John told a friend nearing the end of his long life, with his health broken and his eyesight grown dim: “My memory is nearly gone, but still I remember two things: that I am a great sinner – and that Christ is a great savior.” Profound. Even after Christ has healed our heart, we must guide it jealously by opening the door of our heart permanently to Jesus. We should seek to know Him more, love Him, remember Him and imitate Him.
May God help us to live by the Holy Spirit’s power and may this be our song every day – Into my heart come into my heart, Lord Jesus. Come in to stay, come in to live, into my heart Lord Jesus!
“Seek the Lord, for He is near,
Embrace Him; He is your brother,
Hold Him close to your heart, for He is your own flesh and blood.” Charles Spurgeon
“When Scripture talks about the heart, it’s not talking about that life-sustaining muscle. It’s talking about our entire inner being. The heart is the seat of our emotions, the seat of decisive action, and the seat of belief (as well as doubt).” Billy Graham
