LAW IN MY HEART

Heb.8:10 – FOR THIS IS THE COVENANT WHICH I WILL MAKE WITH THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL
AFTER THOSE DAYS, DECLARES THE LORD:
I WILL PUT MY LAWS INTO THEIR MINDS,
AND WRITE THEM ON THEIR HEARTS.
AND I WILL BE THEIR GOD,
AND THEY SHALL BE MY PEOPLE.

I was recently on a short getaway to Ft.Pickens National Park. Parris and I love this spot, it feels so isolated and remote even though its just a few miles from Pensacola Beach. In the afternoon we went for a swim, the water was warm and calm and was quite therapeutic. A little out from the shore were some fishing boats apparently the fish were biting because there was quite a bit of activity going on. Suddenly several dolphins began to show up near the boat. They were obviously having quite a time with the fish in the area, it seemed like these dolphins were almost dancing for joy. They were circling and diving and surfacing in quite a display of excitement, their joy was attracting the attention of swimmers, sunbathers, and fishermen. As for the dolphins, well they were just being dolphins. Creatures all have a particular DNA and respond accordingly. Actually that would be the problem with fallen man. Our nature has been corrupted, we cannot change ourselves, only divine intervention can make the needed changes. Here is how Murray describes this.

“The promise of the new covenant is to convert the external law into an inner life, to put it so in the heart that it shall be its inmost life, so that, as naturally as the heart wills and lives and acts on earth, it shall will and live and do what God demands. Why does an acorn so spontaneously grow up into an oak? Because the law of the oak is written in the heart of the acorn. The life of every creature acts with delight in accordance with the law of its Creator, that is, its inner nature. God and His holiness, Christ and His Holy Spirit, if they belong to us, must be as near to us, as essentially within us, as truly inherent in our own life, as our own thinking, willing, and feeling. And so God promises that He will put His law in our minds and write it in our hearts, in such a way that it shall be our inner nature, our very life, and we shall act according to it as naturally as we think or live.”

So our fallen nature cannot and will not follow the ways of the Lord. It is in regeneration that we receive a different nature, this is the power of the new covenant. Once we are born again we take on the nature of sons and daughters of God. Like the dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico we must follow our nature. Let the dolphins be dolphins, as for us, we are now sons and daughters of God.