We’ve got to stop asking the world to do for us what only God can.

Those little screams. I still remember them. Those tears still puddling in his sweet, little eyes, and his tiny lip still quivering as they handed my infant son back to me.

I tenderly cradled him against my chest trying to comfort my tiny baby boy after the painful, but for-his-good circumcision procedure.

I thought about that moment as Paul talks to the early Christians about circumcision in Romans (chapter two).

The Jews, thought the physical act of circumcision somehow made them superior to the non-circumcised Greeks.

But Paul tells them all, “circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter” (v 29).

An outward act is not enough. We can say and do the right things. We can look clean on the outside, and in our hearts, still hold tightly to unclean things.

Spiritual circumcision is the work of the Holy Spirit. Unlike physical circumcision, it is rarely quick like the doctor’s scalpel, but often slow and hard at times, as we fight against it. But when we are still, and allow the Great Physician to do His work, we find eternal reward.

Circumcised hearts stop asking this world to do for us what only God can.

We let go of things we don’t need and things that hurt us.

We learn to hold loosely even the good things and good relationships of this life.

“Why do you need this? You need it because you struggle in this life to remember what is truly important, that is, what God says is important. You and I place much more importance on things than they truly possess, and when we do so, these things begin to claim our heart allegiance. So God ordains for us to experience that physical things get old and break. The people in our lives fail us. Relationships sour and become painful. Our physical bodies weaken. Flowers die and food spoils. All of this is meant to teach us that these things are beautiful and enjoyable, but they cannot give us what we all long for—life. …He works through loss to protect us from giving our allegiance to things that will never ever deliver what our hearts seek.” Paul David Tripp

Are you suffering loss and disappointment? Are you walking a hard road? Is the Great Physician asking you to let go, to be still, so He can do His work?

For only a circumcised heart can be truly free.

Only a circumcised heart can enjoy the things of this world as they were meant to be enjoyed.

Only a circumcised heart can have peace, hope and joy that doesn’t change with the circumstances because those with circumcised hearts have learned to find their praise in God not in men (Rom 2:29).

Prayer—oh God, do the work in my heart that only You can. Cut away anything that is keeping me from all You want for me. May the security, the praise, the desires my heart seeks, be of You. For when my heart delights in You first, all other affections find their right place. And it’s there that my heart can freely DANCE!

readRomans

kimjaggers.com