A New Heart for a New Year

@audreycfrank

I was minding my own business when God’s Word took me by surprise, threw its handcuffs on me and placed me under arrest.

As part of my research for a new book, I was studying Psalm 51 because it is one of the many Biblical passages about being clean and pure. I am fascinated by the offer of a holy, pure God to make His followers clean.

Dirtiness comes from many sources. Sin is the most obvious, and the most nebulous category, sort of allowing us to toss our little selfishnesses into it like an ambiguous garbage can without taking a close look.

However, as I dug into the Hebrew of verse 10, I could not avoid the piercing examination of my own heart and its seemingly perpetual state of being dirty.

The verse is bursting with agony and ecstasy. It is agonizing to discover our own impure condition despite our best efforts, ecstasy to realize the possibility of being made new.

Being clean and good is possible. Not only is it attainable, but assured for all who follow the One who made it all possible, Jesus Christ.

Create in Me!

The Hebrew word bārā’ refers only to an activity that can be performed by God. There’s no new year’s resolution list embedded in this verse, no checklist of doing in order to improve ourselves. Simply a humbled heart asking the Creator to Create in me!

David, the writer of this Psalm, had just lusted after a beautiful woman, had her valiant husband killed, and taken the widow for his own wife. Besotted and drunk on his sin, it took his close friend and counselor, the man of God Nathan, to bring David to his senses.

Your dirty heart has led to dirty deeds.

The age-old theme of humanity: behavior begins in the heart.

Broken and sorry, David cried out to the only Hope he had for a fresh start.

Create in me!

Bārā’ indicates a new, creative act, rather than a refashioning of an object after its original creation. Hallelujah! We can have a new heart! Brand new.

Create in me!

For those whose hearts have been battered and beaten down, bullied into believing they can never really be anything other than what they already are, the fact that you can have a brand new heart is tremendous news. #newyear #renew Click To Tweet

Nothing that has happened to you or that you have made happen renders you hopeless or beyond being made new!

A Pure Heart

Here we find a fascinating word, tāhôr, from tāhēr, meaning to clean, be clean, to be pure, purified, unalloyed. The same word is used in Exodus 25:11 and 28:14 as God instructs Moses how to craft the gold overlay for the ark of the covenant and the gold rope on the high priest’s robe. The gold is to be unalloyed. That means pure gold, not combined with anything else to make it stronger or durable, but pure and singular.

Tāhôr flew like an arrow straight to the bullseye in me. I thought back to all I have relied upon to make me strong, to help me endure the suffering and the trials of the past year. All in addition to the Lord.

2018 was definitely a year of alloy for me. The New Oxford Dictionary defines alloy as “an inferior metal mixed with a precious one.” I have relied upon my Lord through dark days, alongside many other inferior sources of strength that did not give me lasting health or healing.

There is a proverb in Arabic that says, “Trust in God, but tie your camel tightly.” How easy it is for us to trust Him while we also make other arrangements just in case He doesn’t keep His word. Our hearts are alloyed, combining our precious faith in God with so many deficient and empty sources of help.

King David’s heart was alloyed. He trusted God, surely, but he also became enamored with his own strength and selfish desires. With a conflicted heart, he grew resistant to the voice of the Lord.

We must not underestimate the power of whatever we are alloyed to besides God. Insipid and stealthy, it will take over our trust in the Lord and leave us bereft, broken, and empty-handed.

What or who are you relying upon today? God can create in us a heart that is unalloyed, pure, and singular in focus, relying solely upon His strength and endurance.

For millennia people have tried to achieve purity through human effort. Entire religions are founded on the tenets of striving and doing to achieve a pure heart. It has yet to be accomplished through such rule-bound endeavors.

The reality of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that the Messiah has accomplished purity for us.

Psalm 51:10 is both an invitation and a sneak preview. God invites us to bring our hearts to him to be made completely new and clean. He gives us a glimpse of the work that would be done by Jesus Christ on the Cross, a sacrifice that would establish and complete the purity of humanity forever for all who would place their trust in Him.

Lord, do what only You can do and form a completely new, unalloyed heart in me this year. Amen.