Romans 10:9 and 10 say, “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart there is believing unto righteousness, and with the mouth there is confession unto salvation.” After turning to the Lord, the second thing the heart must do is believe. To believe is not a matter in the spirit, the mind, or the will. To believe is a matter of the heart; the heart has to believe. First we have to turn our heart to the Lord, and second we must exercise our heart to believe in the Lord. To believe in the Lord is something in the heart.
Verse 10 says that with the heart there is believing. We must learn to exercise our heart to cooperate with the indwelling Spirit in faith. After we turn our heart to the Lord, we must always exercise our heart to believe. We have to exercise to believe in our heart whatever the Lord says in His Word, and we have to exercise to believe in our heart whatever we sense deep within us. We must also exercise our heart to believe in the Lord for all our environment and circumstances, for all the things happening to us. We must pray that the Lord would protect our heart from any kind of doubt.
Hebrews 10:22 says, “Let us come forward to the Holy of Holies with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.” The third dealing with our heart is that it must be sprinkled from an evil conscience. With our heart, there is always the need of the sprinkling of the redeeming blood of the Lord Jesus. The more we turn our heart to the Lord and believe in the Lord by exercising our heart, the more we will have many feelings in our conscience that we are wrong in certain matters. When our heart is not turned to the Lord, we do not have the sense that we are wrong. We have only one sense, that is, that we are right in everything; everyone but us is wrong. However, when we turn our heart to the Lord, immediately we do not see others as wrong; we only see ourselves as wrong.
It is even more so with believing in the Lord. The more we believe in Him, the more we have the sense of how wrong we are in many things. We are wrong with our spouse, wrong with our children, wrong with our schoolmates, and wrong with our parents. We are wrong with everything, and have many accusations in our heart. These are the accusations in the conscience. At this time spontaneously we should confess our sins according to the inner accusations, one by one. The more we confess, the more the blood of the Lord Jesus is applied to our conscience. Then our conscience will be purged, cleansed, and we will have a conscience with no offense, a pure conscience. This means that our heart is sprinkled from an evil conscience. Because our conscience has been purged, there is no more condemnation in our heart. Our heart is at peace and full of joy. We will sense joy in our heart with the Lord.
Ezekiel 36:26 speaks of the renewing of the heart. Verse 25 says, “And I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you will be clean; from all your filthiness and from all your idols I will cleanse you.” However, this is not all. This is still something on the negative side. We need something on the positive side. Verse 26 says, “I will also give you a new heart.” A new heart is the old heart renewed.
Here we have four steps to deal with our heart. Not only at the time we first believe in the Lord Jesus to receive Him as our Savior, but as Christians seeking the Lord, from the time we are saved and all the days afterward, we must deal with our heart in these four steps. We must turn our heart to the Lord, exercise to believe the Lord in our heart, have our heart sprinkled from an evil conscience, and be renewed in our heart again and again. Even the renewing of the heart is not just once for all. If the apostle Paul were on the earth today, he would still need the renewing of the heart. We all must put these matters into practice right away. At the latest, tomorrow morning when we rise up, we have to go to the Lord and say, “Lord, cause me to turn my heart to You.” Then we must exercise our heart to believe the Lord, telling Him, “Lord, I believe You! In Your Word I believe You. In Your dealings within me I believe You. In all my environment and in all the things happening to me I believe You.” By this point we will realize how wrong we are, how many mistakes we have made, and how much filthiness we have to deal with. We will need to confess to have the cleansing, the sprinkling of the blood, that we may be sprinkled from an evil conscience. Then once again our heart will be renewed.
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