September 12, AD 2008

The Greatest "Change" Needed in America
Frank Allnutt

From Presidential aspirants to the man on the street, it seems like everyone is clamoring for changes. The Presidential campaign is charged with the candidates’ promises of change... Barack Obama vows to change almost everything...John McCain wants most of all to change the ways the federal government operates.

Americans want the economy changed...the war against terrorism changed...the immigration policy changed...and the way government conducts its business changed. And many of our brothers and sisters in Christ want our nation’s laws changed—to ban abortion, to legally define marriage in the biblical sense, and on and on....

Yet, the most important change needed in America today is none of the above. All of those are but symptoms of the root cause: many Americans’ hearts are not right with God. Non-believers need Jesus and the new heart promised by God in Ezekiel 36:26, and many believers need a change of heart—from self-centered, half-hearted or fleshly functioning to Christ-centered, whole-hearted or spiritual functioning.

"If you’re going to change destructive behavior,
you’ve got to change hearts."—Gov. Tim Pawlenty

Fifteen years ago I began an exhaustive biblical study of “heart.” The result is my compilation of two Advanced Studies on the biblical doctrine of the heart (The Christian’s New Heart and The Ways of the Heart), along with several booklets and extensive, illustrated slide presentations. I developed them as reference and resource materials for Christian counselors, pastors, Bible teachers, and other serious students of the Bible.

The following briefly sets forth the need for these materials.

What did the word “heart” mean when Moses preached about loving God with “all your heart,” when taught by Jesus and written about so many other times in Scripture so long ago? And what does this archaic term from Scripture have to do with Christianity at the dawn of the 21st Century?

God gave us His model of the heart to help us better understand who we are, our spiritual relationships, and why we think and behave as we do. If we don’t understand the intended meanings of “heart,” the heart of the New Covenant is literally and figuratively plucked out and the Greatest Commandments are reduced to sentimental fluff.

Andrew Murray, the beloved 19th Century pastor, missionary, and author from South Africa, was concerned that, even in his day, some biblical words were succumbing to overuse and misuse, and that their original meanings were fading into obscurity:

"It is often said that the great aim of the preacher should be to translate Scripture truth from its original form into the language and the thought of the present century, and so to make it understandable to our ordinary Christians. It is to be feared that the experiment will often do more harm than good. In the course of the translation the force of the original is easily lost. The result has been a race of Christians to whom the language and meaning of God’s Word is foreign. With the loss of the meaning of the Scripture words comes the loss of Scripture truth. When truth is lost, the God who spoke the words will be lost. It is imperative, therefore, that the Christian life should involve each person studying and understanding the very words which the Holy Spirit has spoken." (The Believer’s New Covenant, page 9).

“Heart” is one such word that has all but lost its meaning over time. The importance of understanding its meaning cannot be overemphasized. If the meaning of heart is not understood, the doctrine the heart cannot be understood. And if the doctrine of the heart is not understood, then the Gospel itself and biblical doctrines of anthropology, psychology, and a host of other truths cannot be fully understood and appreciated. Consequently, the promises of the New Covenant (e.g., the “new heart” of Ezekiel 36:26,27) cannot be fully understood, and if the New Covenant is not understood, then a believer cannot adequately understand and appreciate salvation and who he is in Christ.

On this website, you'll find much more information about the heart—articles, books, slide presentations, and my new DVD.