The analogies between my daughter’s heart condition and the spiritual condition of every human being are here defined.Just as my daughter was born with a bad heart, so every human being who is born into this world has a spiritually corrupt heart.
Just as my daughter needs surgery performed on her heart so as to spare her life, so it is with every human. Every person needs spiritual surgery performed on one’s heart so that one can really spiritually live.
Just as my daughter needs someone outside of her to accomplish this new heart-surgery in her, so every sinner needs someone outside of himself to accomplish this heart-surgery which results in regeneration.
Just as my daughter now is in the NICU being so tenderly, constantly, and frequently attended to, we know that without surgery that fixes the problem, all this work by the NICU doctors would all be for naught. So it is with our spiritual conditions. Sinners can try to attend to themselves with such care, frequency, fervency, and diligence to give themselves life, but unless God performs the heart surgery and regenerates the heart, all that self-righteous lawkeeping will be for naught.
Just as my daughter has no idea that she has a bad heart and is in need of life-saving heart surgery, so the deadened sinner who is so blinded by his sin and false worship has no idea that he has a bad heart that will damn him to hell unless the Spirit gives life.
Just as my daughter looks beautiful and cute on the outside but yet her inward parts are in need of life-saving transformation, so it is with unregenerate sinners. They can look religious and ‘all-put-together’ on the outside but have no spiritual life because of the wickedness that resides in the inward parts.
Just as my daughter’s open heart surgery should (Lord willing), be a one-time surgery and thus fix her heart condition for life, so it is with the salvation God works in each sinner. When God takes a spiritually dead heart and breathes new life in it, that one-time “surgery” has spiritually justified the sinner so that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
Pray with me that God would spare Tikvah’s life so that we can use these (and many more) analogies to evangelize her in the coming years with the hopes that God might see fit to draw her to Himself in repentance and saving faith in the substitutionary work of Christ.
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