A New Heart

I'm going to quote some good thoughts from John Eldredge's book Waking the Dead:
"You have been ransomed by Christ.  Your treachery is forgiven.  You are entirely pardoned for every wrong thought and desire and deed.  This is what the vast majority of Christians understand as the central work of Christ for us.  And make no mistake about it--it is a deep and stunning truth, one that will set you free and bring you joy.  For a while."
"But the joy for most of us has proven fleeting, because we find that we need to be forgiven again and again and again.  Chirst has died for us, but we remain (so we believe) deeply marred.  It actually ends up producing a great deal of guilt.  'After all that Christ has done for you....and now you're back here asking forgiveness again?'  To be destined to a life of repeating the very things that sent our Savior to the cross can hardly be called salvation."
"Think of it: you are a shadow of the person you were meant to be.  You have nothing close to the life you were meant to have.  And you have no real chance of becoming that person or finding that life.  However, you are forgiven.  For the rest of your days, you will fail in your attempts to become what God wants you to be.  You should seek forgiveness and try again.  Eventually, shame and disappointment will cloud your understanding of yourself and your God.  When this ongoing hell on earth is over, you will die, and you will be taken before your God for a full account of how you didn't measure up.  But you will be forgiven.  After that, you'll be asked to take your place in the choir of heaven.  This is what we mean by salvation."
"The good news is...that is not Christianity.".....
"God promised in the new covenant to 'take away your heart of stone.'  How?  By joining us to the death of Christ.  Our nature was nailed to the cross with Christ; we died there, with him, in him.  Yes, it is a deep mystery--'deep magic' as Lewis called it--but that does not make it untrue.  'The death he died, he died to sin once for all...In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin' (Rom. 6:10-11).  Jesus was the Last Adam, the end of the terrible story."
"You've been far more than forgiven.  God has removed your heart of stone.  You've been delivered of what held you back from what you were meant to be.  You've been rescued from the part of you that sabotages even your best intentions.  Your heart has been circumcised to God.  Your heart has been set free."
"And there is even more."
"Most people assume that the Cross is the total work of Christ.  The two go hand in hand in our minds--Jesus Christ and the Cross; the Cross and Jesus Christ......."
"The cross is not the sole focal point of Christianity....."
"We say Christ died for us, and that is true.  But Christ was also raised for us.  His resurrection was as much for us as his death was."
"For if, by the trespass of the one man [the first Adam], death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.(Rom. 5:17, emphasis added)"
"We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life...In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Rom. 6:4, 11)"
"But because of his great love for us, God...made us alive with Christ. (Eph. 2:4-5)"
...."Adam was a pattern of the One to come.  He was the root and trunk of our family tree.  Our hearts fell when he fell.  We received our sinful nature from him.  So we now receive a new nature and a new heart from Christ, our Second Man.   We have been made alive with the life of Christ.  Just as we received our sinful nature from Adam, so we now receive a good and holy nature from Christ.  It has always been God's plan not just to forgive you, but to restore you:  'Make a tree good and its fruit will be good' (Matt. 12:33)"....
"The new covenant has two parts to it:  '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: (Ezek. 36:26).  God removed your old heart when he circumcised your heart; he gives you a new heart when he joins you to the life of Christ.  That's why Paul can say 'count yourselves dead to sin' and 'alive to God in Christ Jesus' (Rom. 6:11)."
"The resurrection affirms the promise Christ made.  For it was life he offered to give us:  'I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full' (John 10:10).  We are saved by his life when we find that we are able to live the way we've always known we should live.  We are free to be what he meant when he meant us.  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."
......"Paul teaches us in Ephesians that 'Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith (3:17).  God comes down to dwell in us, in our hearts.  Now, we know this:  God cannot dwell where there is evil.  'You are not a God who takes pleasure in evil; with you the wicked cannot dwell' (Ps. 5:4).  Something pretty dramatic must have happened in our hearts, then, to make them fit to be the dwelling place of a holy God."
"Of course, none of this can happen for us until we give our lives back to God.  We cannot know the joy or the life or the freedom of heart I've described here until we surrender our lives to Jesus and surrender them totally.  Renouncing all the ways we have turned from God in our hearts, we forsake the idols we have worshiped and given our hearts to.  We turn, and give ourselves body, soul, and spirit back to God, asking him to cleanse our hearts and make them new.  And he does.  He gives us a new heart.  And he comes to dwell there, in our hearts."
Thank You Lord!