Open Heart Surgery

Ezekiel 11:19-20 NLT - And I will give them singleness of heart and put a new spirit within them. I will take away their hearts of stone and give them tender hearts instead, so they will obey my laws and regulations. Then they will truly be my people, and I will be their God.

In my High School Science class we would have to dissect frogs or perhaps a lambs heart that had been soaked in formaldehyde. It was a little weird to take that heart in your hand that once was vibrant and beating and begin to cut it into sections. Now it was stiff and hard and was a little difficult to deal with. Our hearts are often like that – hard and callous, un-pliable and difficult to deal with. The harshness of life causes our hearts to move away from tender compassionate heart that God meant for it to be.

Recently I was reading an article about Heart Surgeons and how they have to actually stop the heart for a while and re-start it again to bring it back with vitality.

Seymour Kessler, a surgeon, authored a book that dealt with his own open heart surgeries say, “Open heart surgery is a confrontation with one’s own mortality. Once someone has held your heart in his hand – its beat will forever have a new meaning.” Another doctor, William Knowland, speaking of his own heart surgery said, “In my opinion – it is unlike any other surgery. Of course – I didn’t like the idea of anyone operating on my heart. I accepted it as a necessity – but I didn’t like it.”Imagine that this is a man who does this every day of his life – struggling with the idea of someone else doing that to him. He writes, “What I particularly dislike about the operation is the idea that at some point my heart would be stopped. It had been beating for 47 years – keeping me alive. Now, someone was going to invade my chest and for an hour (more or less) stop my heart. Now, for that hour, I knew that I would be dependent for continued life on the proper functioning, not of an organ made by God, but by machinery put together by people. By people who are fallible.”

Spiritually speaking – our hearts often need open heart surgery. We need for God open us up and work on our heart that has become what it was not intended to be. Ezekiel knew about this full well. He had watched the people end up in captivity because of their sin. He knew that they needed “a new spirit” and “a new heart” that would be pliable and receptive to God. It is my prayer today that each of us would allow the Holy Spirit to do an examination on our hearts to see what it is really like. When we then see how ugly our heart have become I pray that we would each allow ourselves to go under the knife of God to allow Him to reshape us back to where we should be.