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very useful—it didn’t keep the time correctly. It would “cuckoo” when it wasn’t supposed to! Because I loved the clock, I took it to be repaired. The clocksmith examined the inside of my cherished gift and said it needed a new mainspring. Laughingly, he told me, “Your clock needs a new heart!”
    This is true for more than clocks. Every person needs a new heart. Just look around you. How many parents have intentionally trained their children to lie, or encouraged them to steal from another child, or to yell at another, or to hit another? Very few, if any. Yet how many children have lied, stolen, yelled at, and hit others? All have. Why? Because their hearts have been self-seeking and self-centered from birth.
    According to the Word of God, you were born with a sinful nature. Psalm 51:5 says, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” And Jeremiah 17:9 adds, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.”
    But the good news is that God said, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you.” When you come into a genuine relationship with Christ, God puts a new heart inside you.
    Your need is very similar to the need of someone who has a diseased heart and whose only hope for life is a heart transplant. In a spiritual sense, God takes your “diseased” heart and replaces it with a new one.
    After this divine transplant, healing begins and, as promised, over time your new heart becomes capable of perfect love. Your self-centeredness is now Christ-centeredness. There is healing to replace the hatred; there is a balm for bitterness. You can face the world with a freedom and a future you have never known before.
    “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10). Once you have a changed heart, you have a changed life. Seeing yourself through God’s eyes, you can love the unlovable, be kind to the unkind, and forgive the unforgivable. All this because you have a new heart—God’s heart.
     
    Personalize these verses in your own words:

    1 Timothy 1:5

    2 Timothy 2:22

    Father, through Your eyes I can see that I…

    I have worth because…I am given a new heart by God.

Day 17

    I Am Given the Spirit of God

    “We have…received…the Spirit who is from God”

    (1 C ORINTHIANS 2:12).

    A n unexpected blackout took my neighborhood by surprise. One minute the lights were on, the next they were off. In total darkness, I inched my way to the bedside table and fumbled for the flashlight. Finding it, I flipped the switch. What frustration…the flashlight didn’t work! How useless—a flashlight that didn’t function.
    Just as dysfunctional…just as unproductive…is the person who is not operating in the power of the Spirit. God has given each believer meaningful work to do, but it is to be done in His strength, by His Spirit. Many people rely totally on their own human abilities for power in their lives, whereas Zechariah 4:6 says it is “‘not by might nor by power but by my Spirit,’ says the L ORD Almighty.”
    Likewise, many others simply don’t know much about the Spirit of God, even though they are very familiar with Jesus and the heavenly Father. Yet the Bible has much to say about the role of the Holy Spirit. Specifically, “the Spirit helps us in our weakness” (Romans 8:26). What a blessing! And “the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace” (Romans 8:6). Think about it—those are huge benefits! Trying to serve God in our own strength is just as futile as trying to light our path with a dysfunctional flashlight.
    Everyone knows the frustration of wandering in the dark. Where do I go? What should I do? How am I to think? When you are saved, you are also “marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit” (Ephesians 1:13). The Holy Spirit comes in to be the illuminator of your life and enlightens your path into the future.
    Because He knows all—past, present, and future—He