Circumcised Heart

Deuteronomy 30:6 "Moreover the Lord you God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live."

In my daily time of devotion, as some would call it, I came across the following from T Austin-Sparks. This article titled Government by the Holy Spirit said, "...One of the primal features of this new day is this (take careful note of it because it is the key and the basis of everything): the voice of the Spirit is to be taken account of rather than what is going on in the religious world around. It is that which cleaves things asunder, puts things into two different realms in this book of ''The Acts.'' With this new age we see on the one hand in the religious world that which claims authority with power, position, and influence, which has established itself and taken possession, but which is shown to be something which is not according to the Spirit of God. On the other hand, over against that, we see what is brought out into such clear, manifest relief, that to hear and to take account of the voice of the Spirit of God may be, and very often is, another thing altogether.

You recall Stephen's defense. You know that he comprehends the whole of this history. He starts with Abraham: ''The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham'' (Acts 7:2). That is the beginning of this religious history, and he traces right through stage by stage until he arrives at the murder of the Lord Jesus; and he sums it up in one great declaration, sweeping away the whole ground of that established thing on the earth and saying, as comprehending it all: ''Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ear, ye do always resist the Holy Spirit'' (Acts 7:51). Something spiritual, a taking note of the voice of the Spirit of God, is something very different indeed from an established religious order on this earth, and very often runs directly counter to it.

That is a strong statement, but it is said in order that we may immediately get to the very heart of what it is the Lord is seeking in this present age: a people of a spiritual life who are governed by the Spirit of God, who take account of what the Spirit says and are obedient and conform thereunto. It is a spiritual people God is after in this age, not religious people.

Paul has built a very great spiritual structure upon this very principle. A large part of his letter to the Romans and the whole of his letter to the Galatians is occupied with the sole object of pointing out that traditional religion is one thing and life in the Spirit is another; that religion as here on this earth in all its forms may be one thing, while what is of the Spirit of God may be altogether another thing. That is what Paul set out to make clear, and he built this tremendous edifice upon this fact. If you read Galatians carefully in the light of that, you will see that that is what he is after, to divide between this religious thing and this other, which is of the Spirit...

...At any rate, the world will know something if we are really living in touch with the Lord, and there will be a language which only the spiritual can enjoy and understand. There will be those spiritual counterparts of the seed of Abraham, a people different from all the rest...

...The progress and increase of spiritual life mean this, that the gap widens all the time between the children of God and those in the world who are not such. That is not to be taken literally in this sense, that we begin a mistaken system of hiving off, shutting ourselves up, getting out of touch. That is a wrong application of the principle. The Lord Jesus is preeminently our example in that He could move in any circle, and He did so deliberately, publicans and sinners, all classes, He moved amongst them, but His power over them was in His basic difference from them. Let us be careful how we are caught in this great movement of conforming to this age. To conform is to lose spiritual power. Well, spiritual seed is what God is after, a spiritual seed of Abraham.

This is the day of the Spirit, and those who are the spiritual seed of Abraham, who are now under the power of the Spirit, governed by the Spirit, will be made alive by the Spirit continually to that which is of the Spirit and that which is not. The more we go on with the Lord, the fuller and clearer will become our perception as to what is spiritual and what is natural, even in our Christian life. It is a whole life of education. Things that we thought at one time were quite all right, quite permissible, quite in line with the Lord 's will, as we go on we come to find that even those things have come into a realm of question; the Spirit is not agreeing with them now. We have come to discover that He never did agree with them, but we were not enough alive to Him to know His mind about them. He deals with us as with children as long as we are children, but when it is time that we should leave childhood the Spirit begins to deal with us very drastically if we are going on with the Lord.

It is this kind of people that the Lord is after in this age. Oh, what a difference it would make if all the Lord' s people were really governed by this law of the Spirit of life in Christ, if their hearts were truly circumcised, that all the fruit of life should be wholly unto God, because this law of the Spirit is not outward but inward."

In all of what T Austin-Sparks writes I agree. The intrigue comes to me in the notion of this circumcision of the heart. What great implications this genderless circumcision carries. What explanations to the soul being laid bare and sensitive to God. What a description of surrender, and of the occasionally painful process of the removal of that which is in the way of our heart being totally in love with, and in touch with God. What better description of the un-learning that must take place to truly be a bond-servant of God. The removal of walls, triggers, calluses, all things preventing a pure heart. Best of all is the prayer it can be. Father, circumcise my heart that I might fully love You.

The consequences of which are described here by T Austin-Sparks.