Imagine with me that you are starting a Rebuild project on an old car, where would you start this project? What is the most important thing that must be working in a car? This question is rhetorical because you know the answer. You would start with the engine! Otherwise, this car if just a yard ornament, which there are a lot of yard ornaments in areas across America (including my hometown).

Now I want to remind you that God is in the Rebuilding ministry. God is in the business of transforming people from old to new. He wants to take people from yard ornaments to show cars. So the question becomes what is the starting point in the Rebuild project on a human being? I think the Bible is clear that the starting point is the heart of a human being. Now the Bible does not mean a physical organ but the term heart in the Bible means something much bigger. The heart is what makes you who you are, it is your thoughts, desires, and your will.

If you have a chance read Mark 7:14-23 and study it. Jesus says that the Heart is the place where all types of Sins start. The heart before we meet Jesus is deceitful and corrupt. It is the place where all sin begins, you see sin is not outside you but it is who you are before you meet Christ. Jesus says that it is not what is outside you that makes you dirty but it is what is inside you.

Now with that being said God wants to transform your heart! He wants to take out that heart of stone and put in a heart of flesh, he wants to warm a cold heart and he wants to soften a hard heart. Now the problem is that many of us as Christians don’t even recognize it when someone’s or even our own heart has been changed because we are looking at the wrong signs. We as people look at one action and we say that is what shows me your true heart when God’s first change is not to actions but to desires!

See if you catch what I mean in Romans 7:15-20 says this “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.” Did you see the dramatic change in Paul’s life? His desires changed, he no longer delighted in doing things wrong but he delighted in the Law of God! He delighted in the things of God but he did not always carry them out. See for many of us as Christians we look to the action as the only source of fruit when God wants us to look to the desires of our heart.

Here is the point that when you come to know Christ the first thing to change is your desires. If we are honest with ourselves as Christians we feel exactly like Paul does in Romans 7 many days in our lives. We feel like we don’t have the ability to do all the good we want to do because we do the bad we don’t want to do. Don’t lose heart though because the first work has been done, your engine or your heart has been REBUILT! But this is just the starting point in your rebuild process.