Instructions On The Heart - The One Year Praying through the Bible for Your Kids

“This is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel after those days,” says the LORD. “I will put my instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.” Jeremiah 31:33

GOD HAD MADE A COVENANT with his people at Mount Sinai when he gave them the Ten Commandments and the rest of the law, which is called the old covenant. The people of Israel who were there that day pledged to obey it. Throughout the years, future generations recommitted to keeping it. But they didn’t. They couldn’t. Much later, in this prophecy given to Jeremiah, God promised that the day would come when he would make a new covenant with his people that would be different from the one he made at Mount Sinai with their forefathers.

Sin would be dealt with differently in the new covenant. No longer would God’s people be required to trek to the Temple with their ram or goat or bird to offer a sacrifice for sin. In a single, once-for-all sacrifice, all the sins of their past, present, and future would be fully and finally dealt with. People would relate to God in a different way. Under the old covenant, priests entered into the presence of God in the Temple, but ordinary people could never come near. But under the new covenant, Jesus would invite them to draw near based on his perfect record of holiness. God would give his people a new power to understand and obey him.

As hard as we might want to change, and as much as we might want our children to change, we can’t accomplish the kind of transformation that is needed on our own. God must do this work in us. When he performs this miracle in our hearts, we find that we want to know him in a way we just weren’t interested in before. We find the Bible to be curiously inviting rather than boring. We feel drawn to Christ instead of trying to keep him at a safe distance. We find ourselves grateful for conviction rather than resistant to it.

Lord, I find I am powerless to change the fundamental disposition of my own soul. I am in need of nothing less than a miracle. I need for you to create a new heart within me so that I will no longer walk in the same deep grooves engraved on my heart by years of habitual sin.