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A New Heart

A New Heart

A New Heart

Three quotes from the teaching on 5 Nov, 2025

It’s not what you say, but what you live, that shows your heart.

God wants to give you a completely new heart, not repair the old one.

The heart of stone can never be transformed—only replaced with a heart of flesh.

Short description of the teaching

This teaching explores the significance of the heart from medical, biblical, and personal perspectives. It focuses on the connection between what fills the heart and how it manifests in words, actions, and choices. It unfolds that human evil and selfishness are rooted in the heart’s condition, and God’s solution is not to change the old heart but to give a completely new one. Through biblical texts, the heart’s deceitfulness, the need for transformation, and God’s offer of a heart of flesh, moldable by the Holy Spirit, are discussed. The challenge is not just to fight sin but to constantly seek cleansing and live in truth, so the heart remains a temple for God’s presence and love.

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This teaching is categorized within the following topics:
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Character and Attitude,Discipleship,General Teaching,God, Jesus & the Holy Spirit,Identity and Forgiveness,Repentance and Baptism

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  • Scriptures from the teaching on 'A New Heart'

Leviticus 17:11
Luke 2:19
Luke 6:45
Genesis 6:5
Deuteronomy 6:4-7
Psalms 51:12-14
Jeremiah 17:9-10
Deuteronomy 7:1-4
Matthew 21:28-32
Ezekiel 36:25-27
Matthew 6:21
Psalms 139:23-24
Romans 10:9-10
Mark 7:6
Mark 7:15

NB! The summary below is an automatically AI-generated text from the teaching itself. Errors may occur to a greater or lesser degree!!
Watch the whole teaching on YouTube instead!!

  • Summary of the teaching on 'A New Heart'

Andreas Slot-Henriksen discusses the topic “A New Heart” by exploring what the heart truly means both physically and spiritually. He highlights how blood itself—pumped by the heart—is life according to Scripture, and that blood cannot be created but must be received. The heart, beating millions of times in a lifetime, illustrates God’s wonderful creation and how precious yet fragile life is. Proverbs and biblical texts are linked with images of how the heart is not just a physical muscle but the deepest center of identity, choice, and motivation. The Book of Proverbs talks about guarding the heart, for life flows from it, and Jesus emphasizes that what fills the heart overflows from the mouth. The teaching reflects the pressures of daily life and situations where what we truly harbor is revealed: bitterness, joy, anger, or love. Everything we listen to, see, and engage in helps fill the heart’s treasury, making it clear that the disciple’s call is to fill oneself with God’s word and truth rather than trivial or harmful things.

Based on Creation, the teaching reminds us that God saw everything as good, but through the fall, the heart is twisted by selfishness and sin. Before the Mosaic Law was given, God’s law was in the heart, but humanity chose its own way. The teaching makes it clear that the fundamental problem is not outward sin but the heart’s attitude and desires. Bible verses from Genesis describe how “every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time,” and Jesus highlights that it is not what goes into the mouth but what comes out that defiles a person. Again, words and actions reveal the heart’s true state. With quotes from the Psalms and prophecies, the longing for a pure heart and God, who alone can create transformation from within, is exemplified.

Throughout the Old Testament, the theme follows: a crucial choice between God and the world, between truth and self-deception. The teaching warns against swapping standards and falling for the trap of humanism, where charity takes precedence over pointing to Jesus. From God’s perspective, it always points back to Him—and only a transformed heart can truly honor Him in private and public. This includes the warning about the heart’s deceitful nature: only God can truly know and cleanse the heart. When people seek God, they must, like David, pray to be tested and cleansed, making the heart the center of transformation. A new heart, promised by God in the Book of Ezekiel, is not made of stone but of flesh, opening the way for the Holy Spirit to work and call for real transformation and obedience.

In conclusion, it is pointed out that the new heart means a new identity as a reborn believer, where God’s law comes to dwell in us. Confession, honesty, and community become the prerequisites for the new heart to grow and be shaped—not just by outward deeds but in fellowship with God. The challenge is passed on: What are you filling your heart with? Are you living in constant renewal so the heart can carry God’s life to others? Only in a heart that continuously returns to Jesus can faith and love become alive and strong.

Quote from the teaching: “God wants to give you a completely new heart, not repair the old one.“

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Please note that there may be deviations and errors, as the text below has been transcribed and adjusted automatically.

We’re going to talk about a topic called a new heart. It’s a very intriguing topic, but it’s also a really, really important one because the heart, when you read the Bible and even when we talk to each other, is something incredibly vague. It’s like, well, I can feel it in my heart, but can we really feel it in our hearts? What exactly is the heart?

Because if you ask a doctor what the heart is, they’ll say it’s a big muscle lump located roughly in the middle, just a tiny bit to the left, but mainly in the center. And it’s what makes you feel your pulse. But what’s special about the heart is that the Hebrew word for heart, I love it. Especially if you’re Danish, because it’s “lev.” Lev, lev, lev. That’s the Hebrew word for heart. So I actually quite like that.

And it fits really well with what we read in Leviticus chapter 17 verse 11, which says: “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you to put on the altar to make atonement for your souls. It is the blood that makes atonement, because it is the life.” So we know that the blood in our bodies is life. Super strange. And what does the heart do? The heart pumps the blood around. The heart pumps life around the body. Without blood, you simply can’t live.

And did you know that you can reproduce so many things? I mean, really, you can do the wildest lab experiments. You can get stem cells to do this and that and the 17th and the 10th. And you can do all sorts of things that are totally ethically indefensible, but you can do a lot. But one thing you can’t do is create blood. You can’t create blood. You have to get blood from someone who has it if you need it. And that’s really thought-provoking.

God has created it so wonderfully. It can’t be plagiarized. It can’t be copied. It can’t be anything. Did you know that a human heart beats about 65 times a minute? Roughly. That equals 93,600 beats in a day. In a day. That equals 34,186,464 beats in a year. That means if you live to be 90, your heart has beaten 3 billion times without stopping, pumping life around your body and keeping you alive.

A small muscle that God has placed with such great power. Wow. Such great power that if precisely that little muscle stops, then you’re dead. Then you’re done. Did you know that no matter what you suffer from, the cause of death is cardiac arrest? That’s what people die from. No matter what’s wrong, you die from cardiac arrest. When the heart stops, death occurs. And it’s really special when you know that life is in the blood.

It also says, if we go further to Proverbs, chapter 4 verses 20 to 27, it says: “My son, pay attention to my words. Turn your ear to what I say. Do not let them out of your sight. Keep them within your heart. For they are life to those who find them and health to one’s whole body. Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. Keep your mouth free of perversity; keep corrupt talk far from your lips. Let your eyes look straight ahead; fix your gaze directly before you. Give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your ways. Do not turn to the right or the left; keep your foot from evil.”

See, what it says here is actually a recipe for guarding our heart. Why should we guard the heart? Because everything you do flows from it. And that’s what it’s all about. Yes, life flows. It’s a part.

It’s pumped around via our physical. But the heart we have, when we say, but Mary, we know it from the Gospel of Luke, where we have the Christmas story, as it’s called, where it talks about the shepherds, how they came to Mary and told her what they had experienced out in the field. And it says, and Mary treasured up all these things in her heart. And it wasn’t because she took a scalpel and opened it all up and took the little words and crumpled them with some paper and put them in the heart so it could pump around.

No, it’s because suddenly there’s another form of heart, which isn’t the physical one. And the Bible talks about that too. And that’s also why Jesus is so clear. Jesus is actually, he’s simply our Lord and Master. And he has laid the foundation for a lot.

And one of the sayings we know very well is something Jesus said. And it’s said in Luke 6:45. A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of. The mouth speaks what the heart is full of.

What are you putting into your heart? What is your mouth overflowing with? What happens when you’re under pressure? What happens when you feel stressed? What does your mouth overflow with then? Is it good things? Is it bad things? Is it curses and swearing? Or is it the fruit of the Spirit?

Because we might have an outer shell that’s nice and neat and polished, but what’s hiding inside? And often it comes out if you’re a bit pressured, pushed a little, have some rough edges smoothed out. I can assure you, in a building process like this one, which has been going on for three and a half years, oh man, we’ve had our edges smoothed. Oh man.

This place, I would say those who have been here to help, I think they know that this place is a place where you get your edges smoothed. It’s a place where we all practice the fruits of the Spirit. Hey. And we’re really, really good at the fruits of the Spirit. And I’ve been given a special gift, and that’s to push people to the point where they need to have the fruits of the Spirit. And I think that’s a very, very important gift to have.

And when people can’t figure out how to have the fruits of the Spirit, you just have to sing: “The fruit of the Spirit is not a banana. The fruit of the Spirit is not a banana.” It’s a fun part if you’d like to hear it. And it’s so funny because you can even more see if people have the fruits of the Spirit or not when you start singing a song like that. So it’s just a good tip. If people get angry or grumpy, just start singing that song. And it’s really funny to see what happens afterward.

Now, Proverbs 18:21. It says: “The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.” And again in Proverbs 10:11: “The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence.” And it’s interesting because when Jesus says, what the heart is full of, the mouth speaks. And it says the heart is the source of life. And here we hear, life and death are in the power of the tongue.

So, this means the heart and the tongue suddenly get linked here because something comes out of the mouth. And what comes out of the mouth is what’s inside here. So, when you meet people, are you someone so filled with Jesus that you can’t help but talk about Him? Or are you so full of yourself and your own strategies that you have to talk about what you’ve achieved?

Or are you so angry and bitter that you need to tell what everyone else has done to you? What is it that comes out of your mouth? Is it Jesus? Is it your ministry? Is it frustrations? Is it bitterness? Is it gossip? And a lot of what comes out of the mouth is actually part of what fills us.

So, what are we letting in? Is it God’s word we’re letting in? Is it endless Netflix series we’re letting in? Is it gossiping friends we’re letting in? What is it that we’re letting in? I love Smith Wigglesworth. If you don’t know who he is, go home and look him up on YouTube. A fantastic man who just loved Jesus and, I think, he’s probably one of those prayer warriors who experienced the wildest, greatest things.

He was also one of those who was so dedicated in his life to prayer that he decided he wouldn’t have any lies in his life. He wouldn’t have lies in his life because it’s the truth that sets free, lies bind. And one of the stories about Smith Wigglesworth is that he had a friend visiting. And when there was a knock on the door, he said, “What’s that you’ve got under your arm there?” “It’s today’s newspaper.” “You can leave that outside. I don’t want lies in my house.”

He always carried a New Testament in his pocket. Always. He had no smartphone. He had no Facebook. He had no Instagram. He didn’t want to fill himself with news and so on. No, he wanted to fill himself with the good news, the joyful news, the gospel. He read it again and again and again. His little New Testament.

When he was in the bathroom, he read it. When he was washing dishes and peeling potatoes, he read it. He read it in all the places where today you might take out your not smartphone, but dumb phone. And he saw God’s miracles, and he walked in the truth because he had filled his heart with what was truly good.

But what happens, and the problem here is, when God creates man, He sees that everything is good. It says so. Everything is good. He created man in His image. He created it exactly as it should be. It was just right. And as the icing on the cake, He created woman. So now there are two created in God’s image.

But then a little temptation comes in. Can it really be that God said they couldn’t eat from that tree? That can’t be right, can it? Oh, come on. It’s just a little bite. Come on. Just a little bite. Come on, you fool. Just a little bite. And it was said, God said, well, you don’t really believe He meant it, it’s not that bad. Come on, you coward.

And so, you egg on some, even though the devil was only one, it was a bit of peer pressure because there weren’t that many at the time. So it ends up with Eve eating it. Adam eats it, and death and sin just come into the world. And the wild thing is, in Genesis chapter 6 verse 5, it says, try reading it in the authorized 1992 version first, and it’s completely off.

But it says: “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” And I don’t know how they came to that translation because if you go back and see the 1871 translation and the King James Version and all sorts of other translations, it says in the 1871 one: “But the Lord saw that the wickedness of man increased on the earth, and that every imagination and inclination of his heart was only evil all day long.” Or in English, “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” So this is the human heart, which is evil. In fact, it says in the English every imagination. Every fantasy, every thought. Everything that lies here in the human heart is evil.

And it starts quite simply with us seeing Adam and Eve having children. And what do the children do? Cain and Abel. Cain kills Abel, and then we’re off to a good start. And then it continues with death and destruction because sin has come into the world. Because selfishness has come into the world. Because what God wanted to be a pure heart became a corrupted heart of egocentric, what’s it called? Yeah. Egocentrism. Egoism. Man at the center. I want, I do, I decide.

And no, there was no law at this time. The Mosaic law wasn’t made, but God has placed His law on people’s hearts, and they didn’t follow it. We see, when we read through, how Sodom and Gomorrah, people were atrocious. It was completely, when you read what happened, dragging people out in front and having sexual relations with them in the streets and wickedness, and it’s horrifying, completely insane. And unfortunately, it fits very much with what we see in society today. It’s just done in slightly more justified surroundings here in the West, but it’s so rotten. And God destroyed it.

We see the human heart being completely driven by I want and I need and I feel and I must. And no one should correct me because I know best. So the heart is corrupt. And God sets up a law for His people. He makes the Ten Commandments, and shortly after the Ten Commandments, He sums it up in a single sentence. And He says in Deuteronomy, chapter 6, verses 4 to 7, it says: Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.

Just try. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart. In here. It means get brainwashed up here so it can come down here. With all your soul, that’s your personality. Your soul is what tells you what to do, when. All your soul and all your strength. Why does it say strength? Because it takes, in good old Danish, guts to hold on. Because the devil comes just like he came to Adam and Eve and says, “Hey, can it really be?” That’s where you need to use your strength. That’s where you need to use the steadfastness that God has placed in you. For when you know the truth in here, the devil will try to shake you. He will try to manipulate you.

And he’s good at it. And he does it again and again and again and again and again. And that’s why it’s not enough to just love God with your heart.

It has to be your whole personality, who you are inside, and it has to be all your strength because that’s how we can muster the courage and stand firm. It’s so important. In the Book of Psalms, we also read a fantastic prayer. Create in me a clean heart, God. This is Psalm 51, verses 12 to 14. Create in me a clean heart, God. Give me a new steadfast spirit. Do not cast me away and do not take your Holy Spirit from me. Let me rejoice in your salvation. Strengthen me with a willing spirit.

Create in me a clean heart. God, what does it mean to have a clean heart? It means, God, all that doesn’t please you, will you please rip it out of me? Will you please remove everything from me that makes you unable to do things, that makes you dislike what you see? Whether it’s my personality, things I do, or whatever. But may my motivations inside be genuine.

It’s no use saying something with your mouth if you don’t live it out in your everyday life. I try with everything I am, and everything I have, and everything I can. I really try to live out everything I know, everything I say. And if I don’t do it, then I really have a serious problem. And that’s how we all should feel.

We should try to live out what is written and try to let God transform us again and again and again. We are never done being transformed. And every time we come to God and ask him, show me if there’s something in the way. And the first many, many times, he will show you a picture of yourself because it’s you standing in the way. Because you have some problems.

You have ideas about how God should solve it. You’ve planned the next 10 years for God. You’ve planned how he should reach your family members and everything else. You have it all timed and arranged. But that’s not how God does it, the way you’ve planned it. He has his own agenda, and he’s much smarter than you because he can see the perspective.

So when we learn to take a step back and move aside, sometimes our service for God can become so overwhelming and get in the way that suddenly we don’t see when God is calling us because we’ve decided, I want this because I have this ministry. What if God doesn’t call you to something else, then you can’t hear with earplugs in. Is there something in the way? God, is it my own ideas? Have I used my strength wrongly to do what I want instead of doing what you want, and sometimes it’s important because again, we have the story of Abraham, who is to sacrifice his son Isaac.

Just think for a moment if Abraham gets this, now you must sacrifice Isaac, they arrive at the altar. He ties his son up. And this is not a little boy here. So he was about 18 years old or something. It’s not a little boy, but he ties him up and is about to sacrifice him. Just think for a moment when God says, “No, no, you must not sacrifice him. Stop.” Sends an angel to stop. But Abraham says, this is my ministry. I heard God say it, so I continue. And like that.

Sometimes I think that’s what we come to because we’ve heard God say some things, and then we become so focused on it that we forget part two, part three, part four, part five. Also because it says in the Book of Jeremiah, chapter 17, verses 9 to 10, something so paradoxical. The heart is the most deceitful of all. It is incurable. Who can understand it?

I, the Lord, search the heart and examine the kidneys. I give to each according to his ways and according to his deeds. And I don’t know if you’ve ever considered how wild this verse is, where God says: “I search the heart and examine the kidneys.” At first, you might think, examine the kidneys? Why do you intend to examine my kidney? I mean, might as well cleanse my liver or my knee, or why the kidneys? Because the kidneys help cleanse.

God can see what dirt and trouble and waste are in your blood, which is life. God wants to cleanse you to find out if there is any poison in your blood? Is there something that shouldn’t be there? Wow. Imagine the God we have.

But the heart is the most deceitful of all. Who can understand it? Incurable. But doesn’t it say we should renew our heart? No. It doesn’t say that. It says he will give us a new heart of flesh and renew the stony heart. For the stony heart is incurable. The stony heart cannot be repaired. The stony heart is made of stone. Period. And it will never be anything other than stone. Never.

That’s why he will give us a new heart of flesh. A new heart that can pump life around. A new heart that contains God’s law. For it says, God’s law is written on… Sometimes you can also see it when you go through the Bible. It’s actually very interesting that sometimes you want the best for people. You really want the best, and you might experience that people stab you in the back, or so many things can happen, you can experience so much trouble.

And it says we must forgive again and again and again, and we must. And it says God’s grace is new every morning, and we must forgive seventy times seven times a day, and we must bear over, and we must turn the other cheek. And we must. But sometimes it’s just that if we let ourselves be guided by the heart instead of God’s wisdom, it can turn into a humanism that makes us suddenly knocked down by the person who might stab you in the back, continuing to be allowed to stab you in the back.

That means what God is actually trying to build up, he is not allowed to because you constantly allow yourself to be trampled on, or whatever it might be. And we actually see a wild example of this in the Bible, where in connection with God’s chosen people, the Jews, they are to take possession of the land of Canaan. Canaan, that’s the land they’ve been promised with milk and honey. A large part of it is what we have as Israel today. And the Canaanites live there.

And then you could say, if we look with human, humanistic eyes, the best thing would actually be to go into Canaan and say, God has promised us this land, so you can move now. And God would probably do it if that was the way it should be done. It could also be that you should set up some small discussion groups and then try to explain to them why they should move and try to make some small enclaves around the cities outside to politically help them out and ensure that they are really well taken care of and aid to those who might lose some houses, and we really need to get this sorted. So out with the Canaanites as kindly and nicely as possible.

But that’s not how God is. God is actually, you might say, not very humanistic in this regard if we take that angle. It says here, Deuteronomy chapter seven, the first four verses: When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out many nations before you.

The Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you. And when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons.

For they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods, and the Lord’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. You see, here’s the paradox. God wants them to go in and wipe out all the Canaanites. No mercy. But why? Because God knows the perspective. God knows that if they aren’t simply wiped out by them, then their idolatry will infect the entire Jewish people.

And that means God would have to push the Jewish people away or kill them. And it’s not because God loves killing people, but simply because people have made choices not to want God, and they hate God despite, I mean, you can see the Jews in the desert, they’ve seen the wildest miracles, and the fools are making a golden calf. They start offering to it. I mean, excuse me, but how idiotic can it be when you, I just don’t get it, but it shows the corrupt heart of man. It shows I need to have something I can see. I need to, therefore I do.

And people, throughout the Old Testament, we have idolatry upon idolatry because of people’s selfishness. And that’s why God comes with his hand and sweeps them away. That’s why he does it, because God’s heart is just. And he wants us to have a just heart. We shouldn’t have a humanistic heart. We should be kind, we should be nice, we should of course have the biblical principles. We should help people with food and clothes and all these things we can. We should visit people in prison if we are allowed to go in. All these things. Of course, we should.

Why? To talk about Jesus, for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. It must never become a huge organization of humanism or humanitarian work, aid. Never. No. It should be an engine that can’t keep its mouth shut about Jesus Christ. And therefore, there are things you do, and then you eradicate what is evil. You eradicate people who will not turn away from idolatry. It’s not that I’m telling you to go out and kill them, but if they won’t turn around, then just consider, is it you who are being influenced by them, or are they being influenced by you?

And that’s a really important question to have. And that’s why it says we should guard our heart. What is it you listen to? What do you let in? And I would say, yes, have lots of friends who aren’t believers. Go out and be a light to them. But if you can feel that what they have in the world starts to color you, then you need to take a step back. Then you need to get everything out of your heart that doesn’t please God. And then you need to consider whether you should withdraw from those people for a period or always, or at least until God says go again.

So that’s why it’s so important that we don’t equate having a good heart with humanism. Because they are two very different things. We need to preserve our heart. We need to protect it. We also have, again, Jesus is super brilliant. He comes with a parable in Matthew 21, 28 to 32. And he says: “What do you think?”

A man had two sons. He went to the first and said, “Son, go and work today in the vineyard.” “I will not,” he answered, but later he changed his mind and went. Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, “I will, sir,” but he did not go. Which of the two did what his father wanted? “The first,” they answered.

Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.”

Jesus wants, it may be that our flesh says no, but then listen to your heart afterward and act on it. And it’s not because you should listen to your heart as in because the heart is deceitful. But we also have to trust that when we become born-again Christians, when we are baptized with water and baptized with the Spirit, we get a new heart. We get a new heart. And the new heart is led by God’s Spirit.

And therefore, you can feel inside when you come to faith that your conscience changes. Suddenly there are things you don’t want to do. No one has told you it’s wrong, but you can just feel, phew, I don’t like that. No, I shouldn’t. That’s what God does.

When I really got on fire for Jesus. I had been a lukewarm Christian for far too many years. I did everything you shouldn’t, but I really got on fire for Jesus, like really. And I wasn’t there because of a church, but I was there because of Jesus Christ. Before, I came to church because of the fellowship, but suddenly it turned to now I came to church because of Jesus. He was the one I focused on. Something happened inside. I got a new heart.

That’s why he watered so much inside. I simply had to, there were several things I had to… There were things I had to separate myself from. There were things I couldn’t be a part of anymore. There were many social events. Our little male horror club we had, I almost said, where we watched the wildest horror movies. Yeah, couldn’t be a part of it. I couldn’t at all, I couldn’t understand at all. Well, that’s kind of irrelevant.

But this thing about, when you might say one thing with your mouth and then find out afterward, oops, then you can feel inside God starts to speak, then act on it. Come on, act on it. Oh, but it’s embarrassing. I lose face in front of whom? In front of God or in front of your human friends? Who is it you want to resemble? Is it Jesus, or is it your friends, who are probably only your friends when you’re doing well? Unless they love Jesus.

The flesh and our spirit are in constant conflict with each other. We do. And that’s why we started by reading that we should have strength in it. We need to have strength in it.

And speaking of giving a new heart, it’s written in the book of Ezekiel, very literally. Ezekiel 36:25-27: I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 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. I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

Jesus says in Matthew 6:21, he actually says, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. And what is a treasure? A treasure is what’s important to us. It’s what matters to us.

It’s what we don’t want to give up. A treasure is something, I mean, if you take a treasure as a real treasure, it’s something you lock up tight with security and big chains, especially if it’s a big treasure, and you really, really, really make sure no one steals it.

Sometimes we forget to treat our faith the same way. We forget to protect it. We forget to guard it. But where our treasure is, that’s where the heart is. And that’s why it must always be Jesus. May it always be him. May it always be him that we truly want, and who is our treasure completely.

And what’s interesting here is, it says we should become a new person. We become a new person when we are baptized to belong to him. The Bible also talks about it as the inner man in Danish or the inner man in English, which we might have heard a lot about. And the interesting thing is, the inner man, well, that’s our conscience. That’s what God has placed inside us.

It’s so curious that it’s referred to as a person. The inner man. That’s where your spiritual heart is. Your inner man needs the heart to live. And that’s where God’s law is. That’s where your conscience is. That’s where you can feel what’s right and wrong. It’s when your inner man is renewed. It’s simply amazing.

And what we need to be careful about is, Jesus is so clear. He is so clear. He rebukes the Pharisees and the teachers of the law because they are about the outward. He actually says in Mark 7:6-8: “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.” And he called the crowd to him and said: “Listen and understand, what goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them.” That means there’s no food that makes one unclean, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.

He is so clear about this, what comes out of the mouth. But the Pharisees, they could say the right things, but it was in their outward. Their inner, their inner man, was dark. It was about how can I get honor now? How can I get the most respect when I come to the synagogue? And what can I read now? If I just shine with, their phylacteries were extra wide, and that was because then they could get recognition.

So I read, ah, this is the scripture we read. So I have the coolest one. Uh. Then they all come and pat me on the back afterward and say, I have a really, really good, really, really good teacher of the law. That’s what they basked in. They basked in the recognition. They basked in how people, uh, he was really good, that Nicodemus, heard in his teaching. Oh, he really knows the Old Testament stuff?

But deep inside, they were rotten because they were collecting recognition. I don’t think they prayed the prayer: God, when I teach, I want to teach to honor you. Will you just strip away everything that doesn’t please me? I don’t think many did that. And that’s what we need to do, no matter what we do.

And it’s not about teaching and all sorts of other things, but it’s generally in our lives, in everything we are, and everything we have. Ask God, what should I strip away? What doesn’t please you? What? Just like David says in Psalm 139: “Search me, God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts.” It’s in verses 23 to 24. Just try, just try to pray that prayer.

Search me, God, and know my heart. Test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. It’s an honest prayer if you pray it when you’re alone. It’s not an honest prayer if you pray it because now I’m standing in front of a lot of people. Now I have to pray it now. No, those down there, they’re not listening. Those who hear. Hello, just listen. I just have to pray a prayer here, right? I mean, no, no, forget it.

This happens at home in your private room. It happens between you and Jesus because that’s where he transforms. That’s where he transforms. And that’s where you are transformed. It’s when you come to him and lay down everything you have. But your heart, it’s the center. It’s the center for conversion. It’s the center for his word to come down here.

Because we can have, I mean, I remember at one point, we prayed for a guy who came to us. Wow, he knew his Bible. You wouldn’t believe it, I mean, it’s saying something, but he knew it better than Jehovah’s Witnesses. He knew it front and back. He knew everything that was in it. Everything. I was sitting there thinking, wow, I thought I knew my Bible, but I didn’t. I sat there and got a complete inferiority complex over that. Wow. He just had a big problem. It was all up here, and absolutely none of it was down here.

And when he left, I just had this, thank God, because I don’t know a fraction of it, but what I know, it’s down here. And may I just know even more of your word and become even hungrier and store it down here? It’s important, of course, we need to know God’s word, and of course, we have to read it up here. But it’s with God’s Spirit that we need to understand it. For God’s Spirit speaks to our heart.

And that means, we might suddenly find ourselves in situations where we need it, then God reminds us of what’s written in it. He does because he is faithful. Paul’s letter to the Hebrews chapter 3 verses 12 to 14. It says: “See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.” See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.

What does it mean to be evil? If we read what Jesus talks about regarding being evil, it’s actually about living in sin, walking in sin that you refuse to turn away from, then you are indeed an evil person. The wild part is, if we read verse 13, it’s incredibly politically incorrect to read, especially in a Christian gathering. Whew. It says here, exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, so that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.

What does it say? We should exhort one another. The Bible says we must not judge one another. It says we shouldn’t lord over each other. Ah, well, that’s not what it says in my Bible. It says we shouldn’t judge the world because God does that. But it actually says we should correct one another. And why should we do that? And how? Because I’ve seen many misguided attempts at correcting each other. Someone comes with the Bible, preferably the biggest and thickest one, and does this. Bang. The Bible says you shouldn’t do that. So now I’ve corrected them. Wasn’t I clever? No. You just make people fall away from the faith with that. You make people think, these are some really weird folks here. I think I should go home. No.

The way you correct is by doing it in love. Listen. Are you aware that when you do this, you open up for this and that? And when God looks at it, and I say this in love, because I want you to turn away from it, because God really wants to be with you, but He can’t be near this.

You just have to say it in love and say it in a way. Ask God to guide you. But a lot, a lot, a lot of discord happens over time because things aren’t addressed. Maybe because you don’t address, what’s it called? You know someone is living in sin. And instead of confronting and saying, I’ve heard this and that, is it true? No. No. Then you go and create a really good story behind the scenes, and then there’s talk, and that’s not biblical at all, but what’s biblical here is to confront.

It’s to go to, to do it in love. And he believes that if we did that, wow, we would all grow so much. And we would help each other not to walk the path of sin, but the path of life. And that’s why it says we should correct and exhort one another. It’s precisely so that we can walk in unity on the path of life, on the narrow path.

If I see a brother who’s heading down the broad path out there, and I know he used to walk the narrow one, then it’s: “Hey, come on. Won’t you come back? Look, this is in the way. This is what pushed you out there. Come on.” Why? Because my heart should call for what’s right. Do I want to do it? Oh no, I don’t. Because it can create conflicts, and I’m a bit conflict-averse. Also, I’m actually quite introverted when it comes down to it. So I think I’m best off at home. Let everyone else do that.

But God has shown me so many times that the difficult conversation is sometimes the best conversation. And the difficult conversation is the one you need to have when you’re there. You shouldn’t talk about it, but you should have the difficult conversation because you need to keep your heart pure, and you need to help the other person keep their heart pure.

It says, let’s see if I can find it. Yes. We’re reading Romans 10. Because the heart that God has created in you and me is the core. And it should be the center of our faith and our repentance. When I say heart, I’m not talking about the physical heart. I’m talking about the new heart that God has given, where God’s law, the conscience, if you will, what is right, what is wrong.

Not about feeling each other’s hearts, then we’re into the new age spiritual stuff, because over in this spiritual realm, it’s love. It’s the universal. We just need to feel each other. If we can feel each other, then everything is good. And then the heart is also a center for all energy, positive energy. And that’s a big deal in the spiritual realm. And that’s not what we’re talking about here.

It’s the heart in the new person we become, the reborn Christian. It says in Romans 10:9-10: Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation, for the heart is full of. The mouth overflows. Amen.

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