Now a confirmed atheist, I’ve become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people’s hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.  –Matthew Parris

And this:

Do materialists really think that language just “evolved”, like finches’ beaks, or have they simply never thought about the matter rationally? Where’s the evidence? How could it come about that human beings all agreed that particular grunts carried particular connotations? How could it have come about that groups of anthropoid apes developed the amazing morphological complexity of a single sentence, let alone the whole grammatical mystery which has engaged Chomsky and others in our lifetime and linguists for time out of mind? No, the existence of language is one of the many phenomena – of which love and music are the two strongest – which suggest that human beings are very much more than collections of meat. They convince me that we are spiritual beings, and that the religion of the incarnation, asserting that God made humanity in His image, and continually restores humanity in His image, is simply true. As a working blueprint for life, as a template against which to measure experience, it fits.  –A.N. Wilson

…materialist atheism is not merely an arid creed, but totally irrational. Materialist atheism says we are just a collection of chemicals. It has no answer whatsoever to the question of how we should be capable of love or heroism or poetry if we are simply animated pieces of meat.  –A.N. Wilson

But this post is not about those reasons. It is a reminder to me and to you that God has a heart and we are made in his image to have one too. This is a reminder that Jesus wants us to accept his love and grace and offer our love and devotion in return to Him. Only here can we find The Truth and find it to be the reason for living we’ve been searching for.

The heart is central. That I would even need to remind you of this only shows how far we have fallen from the life we were meant to live—or how powerful the spell has been. The subject of the heart is addressed in the Bible more than any other topic—more than “works” or “serve,” more than “believe” or “obey,” more than money and even more than worship. Maybe God knows something we’ve forgotten. But of course—all those other things are matters of the heart. Consider but a few passages:

Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. (Deut. 6:5) [Jesus called this the greatest of all the command-ments—and notice that the heart comes first.]

Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart. (1 Sam. 16:7)

Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Luke 12:34)

Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. (Prov. 3:5)

Your word I have treasured in my heart, that I may not sin against You. (Ps. 119:11 NASB)

These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. (Matt 15:8)

For the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him. (2 Chron. 16:9)

–John Eldridge (Waking the Dead, 39-40)