Psalm 34:18 The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.
I left off yesterday with a very pertinent question, one that is not easily answered. How does belief go from the mind to the heart? I would be fooling myself if I thought that I could answer this for you on my own. We will need the help of the Holy Spirit.
In the parable of the seed sower the soil that receives the Word with understanding and takes root is a soil that is prepared to receive the Word. This is comparable to the tilling of the soil prior to the planting of seeds. The ground has to be broken. This is only the first part of psalm 34:18, He is nigh, meaning near. The saving however is not of the broken heart, it is of the contrite spirit. This is where many of us get lost and confused in the meaning.
Ezekiel 11:19 And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh:
Understanding is compounded when you add this verse. That broken stony heart is transformed into a heart of flesh. Here is where the Holy Spirit needs to lend us revelatory understanding.
The following is just a partial definition of flesh from Vine’s Expository Dictionary: Rom 7:5; 8:8,9; (h) “the seat of sin in man” (but this is not the same thing as in the body), 2 Peter 2:18, 1 John 2:16; (i) “the lower and temporary element in the Christian,” 2 Cr 7:1, Eph 6:5, Hbr 9:13; (l) by metonymy, “the outward and seeming,” as contrasted with the spirit, “the inward and real”.
Once you have received Jesus Christ into your heart, and it becomes flesh, then that same descriptive element of flesh “the seat of sin in man” has been transformed because Christ dealt with sin once and for all time. We are left with flesh but the inward and real has to accept that sin is no longer an issue. In Christ, we can accept and belief that our new creation has a new heart of flesh which is now “the seat of Christ in man”. Christ having replaced sin in our hearts and now rules and reigns there.
Which leaves us with the nearness but not the contrite spirit, which is the second part of the issue.