Into My Heart

It is a common phrase and thought – “You need to accept Jesus into your heart.”

We sing, “If you want joy, real joy, let Jesus come into your heart.”

But, nowhere does the Bible use that terminology.

From compellingtruth.org:  What does it mean to ‘ask Jesus into your heart’? (excerpt)

Many have taught that a person must “ask Jesus into your heart” to be saved. Is this true?

Actually, the Bible does not use the wording of asking Jesus into your heart. The closest passage is found in Revelation 3:20 where we read, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” The problem with using this passage to teach that a person must ask Jesus into his or her heart to be saved is that the original context of this verse discusses a group of people who are already Christians. These Christians at the church of Laodicea were told to leave their lukewarm approach to Jesus and to walk closely with Him.

Certainly those who teach you are to ask Jesus into your heart mean well. What is generally meant by this phrase is that a person needs to experience salvation in Jesus Christ. How does this take place? The Bible teaches that salvation involves believing that Jesus is Lord who rose from the dead (Romans 10:9). We are to believe in Jesus as God’s only Son to receive eternal life (John 3:16).

I suggest that we actually need to flip the thinking of accepting Jesus into our hearts to that we need to be asking God to accept us into His heart.  While He is a God of love, He is also angry with the wicked every day (Psalm 7:11) and a consuming fire (Hebrews 12:29) and we are vile sinners, rebels, enemies, and wretches with a life of dishonoring and rejecting God.  So, it is that we rotten sinners need to plead that God not strike us in judgment, but to ask that He accept us into His heart, into His love and arms.

Also, it seems that this idea of asking Jesus into our hearts has a little too much pride in it.  “Oh, how good it is of us to let Jesus come into our hearts!”  “Oh, how kind of us!”  “How big of us to let Jesus in.”  There just seems to be a strain of pride in that thinking.

The truth is that we must come “naked” – bringing nothing and admitting everything.  We come realizing that we are completely unworthy of His grace, mercy or love.  It is that we must confess, admit, loath, grieve, and weep over our sin and our rebellion.  Knowing that we have no good thing to bring or goodness within and that we are fully, completely at His mercy for acceptance; we must plead that He accept us into His heart.

We need to approach God as did the prodigal son coming to his father: “I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, and I am no longer worthy to be called your son.  Make me like one of your hired servants.’”  Luke 15:18-19

Or as the tax collector: “And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’”  Luke 18:13

If we come to grips with who we are before a holy, pure, perfect, blazing, unapproachable God; the words from our lips ought to be contrite and humble and pleading for God to accept us into His heart.