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It was the religious program she had heard on the radio a few weeks back that sent Shawn Rose on a mission to her pastor. Shawn had been a solid church-going member all of her life. She took her faith seriously. She had taken it seriously already in her Sunday school years. In high school, too, she really tried to live out the truth of her religious belief in the midst of incredible peer pressure to do otherwise.

Shawn's growing up years tested her faith conviction a lot but nothing prepared her for the difficulty of living out her faith as an adult. Shawn wanted desperately to be obedient to her Lord's demands upon her life. Deep inside herself, however, she knew that she was not living up to the letter of the law. In personal relationships, in business relationships and in just plain living she found that she just did not measure up to God's standards. Something was horribly wrong, she thought.

And then she heard this religious radio program sponsored by her denomination that had simply pushed her over the edge. It was a sermon centered on the words God spoke to Jesus when Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist. God said to Jesus: "You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased" (Luke 3:22). The content of the sermon was basically that God was pleased with Jesus because Jesus truly did God's will. "If we do God's will," the pastor had said, "then God will speak words of favor to us as well."

"I didn't like that sermon at all," Shawn told Pastor Chung.

"Well it sounds all right to me," Pastor Chung responds. "What is it that you don't like?"

"I don't know," Shawn replied. "Something is just not right here. Look, I've been trying all my life to do God's will and please God. I think when I was younger I actually believed I could do it. God's will, I mean. I would just put my mind to it and be obedient. I'm not so sure about that any more. Maybe I'm the only one in your congregation who has this problem but, quite frankly, there are just too many times when I don't do God's will as I understand it. Is there something wrong with me?"

"I suppose what's wrong with you is that you are a sinner," Pastor Chung offered softly.

"Yeah," said Shawn, "that's what I've heard here all of my life. Yet, in spite of all the sermons that I've heard, all the teaching and all the Bible that I've read, nothing in me changes very much. What I've heard doesn't seem to have taken very deep root. I hear, but I do not do."

"I'm sure you can do better, Shawn," Pastor Chung said assuredly.

"Well I'm not so sure I can do better," Shawn Rose shot back almost in anger. "Do better, do better, do better! It seems that's all I've heard my whole life. And I've tried. God knows I've tried. But I don't get any better. In fact, I think I'm getting worse."

"You really have to dig deep inside yourself to get this right," declared her pastor.

"But that's where the problem lies," Ms. Rose protested. "How can my inner self be the solution when that's where the problem is? You know what? I need a new answer to my question. Something new has got to happen to me. I think what I really need is a new heart."