“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live,
but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh
I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me”
– Galatians 2:20 –
The news covered the front page of one of Brazil’s largest newspapers: The State of Sao Paulo. Only one photo was highlighted in the March 25, 2017 edition, with the title “Her Heart Arrived.” It was the story of thirty-four year old nurse Fabiana Ebani, who had been connected to an artificial heart for fifty-one days while she waited for a transplant.
The news put an end to a wait that already lasted one year. On January 24 of the same year, she suffered six cardiac arrests, and the organ permanently stopped working. She had to be connected to an artificial heart that was designed to function for just one month, but Fabiana went far beyond that time.
The surgery was performed on March 1. The donation had to wait because the organs were not compatible, and the families did not agree to make the donation. In Brazil, just in 2016, 5,939 families were asked, but 2,571 (forty-three percent) did not give the necessary authorization for the donation. Two thousand people who were waiting for an organ died; of those, eighty-two were children.
Fabiana knows little about the donor of her heart, just that she was a woman about the same age as she. “It is very hard to think that someone had to lose her life for me to survive,” she said.
We too need a “heart transplant.” We do not need to be on a waiting list, and the replacement is always immediate. The transplant happens at the speed of surrender and with the intensity of prayer.
The stony, callous heart needs to be replaced by a heart of flesh
that is sensitive to the voice of the Holy Spirit.
When there is no sensitivity to the great works of God and the evidences of His love, when the gravity of sin is not felt and the guidance of the Word is not sought, when the urgency of salvation seems only theory or a necessity for others, then we need a transplant.
When you are excited about God’s miracles, when you recognize the works He has done in your own life, when you feel uncomfortable with sin, when you are hungry for the Word and cannot live far from the Lord; then you already have a new heart. “To have a change of heart is to withdraw the affections from the world, and fasten them upon Christ. To have a new heart is to have a new mind, new purposes, new motives” (Messages to Young People, p. 72).
How is your heart?
Jesus came to Earth to give the great news:
“Your new heart has arrived.”
The risk is already at its limit.
Why waith longer for the “transplant?”
How is your heart today…?