My son, give me your heart… Proverbs 23:26
If you do not give your heart to God, you will give it to something else. You might give it to your work, to your family, or to some great cause. Whatever you give heart to, it will have a growing importance in your life.
People who don’t give their hearts somewhere else often end up giving their hearts to despair: “I… gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun” (Eccl. 2:20). Here is a discouraged person looking at his life’s work and he doesn’t like what he sees. Don’t give your heart to despair. Give your heart to Jesus!
What would compel you to give your discouraged, tired heart fully and freely to God today? Remember who it is that says, “Give me your heart!” This is the call of your wise and loving heavenly Father. If you carry a lurking suspicion in your heart that God has it in for you, you will hold back from giving him your heart, because you will be afraid of what he might do with it.
You think to yourself: God is just and that means he must punish sin. And, even at my Christian best, I’m a sinner. If you think like that, even a little bit, you will feel that safety for you lies in keeping at a distance from God.
But here’s why you can feel completely safe in giving your heart to God: God has already dealt with all your sin at the cross. Justice has already been satisfied, so that God is free to pour out his love on you for all eternity.
Use the words of this hymn in prayer to God: “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. Here’s my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.”