At the 2016 Malaysian Grand Prix, British driver Lewis Hamilton seemed to be having it all his own way. Having won pole position, he led from the front and was on course for an easy win that would have taken him back to the top of the Driver’s Championship. But that all changed in lap 43 when his engine burst into flames and suddenly his race was over.
As in sport so too in life. All too frequently those at the top of their game – whether it be in politics, business, the church or some other walk of life – suffer some sudden catastrophic failure that leads to a spectacular fall from grace. The human ‘engine’ that so often lets us down is the heart, which the Bible describes as being ‘deceitful above all things and beyond cure’1. Our hearts are divided, wrestling between desires that are both good and evil, and sometimes the evil overwhelms us and wins out.
So is there any way to prevent such failure and the tragedy that ensues? Well the Bible tells us that God makes the following promise to those who choose to follow Him: “I will give [you] an undivided heart and put a new spirit in [you]; I will remove from [you your] heart of stone and give [you] a heart of flesh”2.
1Jeremiah 17:9 2Ezekiel 11:19