Ask Jesus into Your Heart -- and More!

A movement of some alarm has sprouted up recently. The "Don't Ask Jesus into Your Heart".

The concern is understandable, as many people simply ask Jesus into their hearts, but then their lives do not change.

We need more than just to ask Jesus into our hearts. We need a new heart altogether:

"For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies:

"These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man." (Matthew 15: 19-20)

But through the Holy Spirit, every believer can receive a new heart, with God's laws of life and love written upon them:

"For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:

"And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.

"For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more."  (Hebrews 8: 10-12)

When we have received a new heart, one rooted in the Gospel of all sins forgiven (Ezekiel 11: 18), replacing a stony heart bent on trying to keep the law, which no man can keep (Romans 3: 20)

The key element to the New Covenant is that through Christ blood's, we receive remission of all our sins:

"For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;

"Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:

"Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;

"To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus." (Romans 3: 23-26)

The only reason why "Asking Jesus into Your Heart" in itself can lead to bondage is only if the person asked to believe does not understand that Jesus is He whom the Father hath sent to redeem us from our sin and restore us to sonship before the Father.

After every believer passes from death to life:

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life." (John 5: 24)

We are then invited to ask God to open the eyes of our understanding (Ephesians 1: 18) that Christ may indeed dwell in our hearts:

"That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,

"May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height;

"And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God." (Ephesians 3: 17-19)

Indeed, let us ask Jesus to dwell in our Hearts, that we may understand the forgiveness, the acceptance, and the power that we receive through Him living in us!