God Will Change Your Heart

When you experience all these blessings and curses I have listed for you, and when you are living among the nations to which the LORD your God has exiled you, take to heart all these instructions. If at that time you and your children return to the LORD your God, and if you obey with all your heart and all your soul all the commands I have given you today, then the LORD your God will restore your fortunes. He will have mercy on you and gather you back from all the nations where he has scattered you. . . . The LORD your God will change your heart and the hearts of all your descendants, so that you will love him with all your heart and soul and so you may live! Deuteronomy 30:1-3, 6

MOSES TOLD the people of God that after they entered Canaan, they would disobey God and be exiled and scattered from the land. But the day would also come when they would be regathered there. At that time, God would change their hearts. We learn more about this change from the words God spoke through Ezekiel: “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. . . . I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules” (Ezekiel 36:26-27, ESV).

This happened on the Day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came down to indwell those who embraced Christ by faith. This is the change we and our children still desperately need. Until the Spirit of God does this supernatural work, our children will have no heart to love the Lord, no power to obey him.

As parents, we can’t make this happen, but we can create an atmosphere that opens them to the Holy Spirit’s work. We can read, discuss, and revere God’s Word in our homes. We can pray that God, by his Spirit, will do what only he can do, which is to call and then unite our children to Christ. We can challenge our children to choose the God who chose them in Christ before the foundations of the world. And we can live in such a way that they see the beauty of having a heart that is being changed by the Spirit of God.

Lord, just as I am powerless to generate genuine spiritual life in myself apart from the work of your Spirit, so I am powerless to generate spiritual life in ________. So I am taking hold of your Word and your promise that the change of heart you accomplish in your people is also for our children and our children’s children. Transform us into people who obey you out of an intrinsic desire rather than an imposed demand.