[Mr Rogers]

"If your heart could do this good thing of sincerity prior to its being regenerated, then your heart was not "deceitful above all things and desperately wicked..."

Except God says otherwise - explicitly.

"But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God."

"these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name."

[P-Marlowe]

Except God says otherwise - explicitly.

No Mr R, those scripture are entirely consistent with what xzins said. Your deceitful heart must be changed before you can receive Christ. So the question becomes whether or not you changed your own heart to make it yearn for Christ, or whether God changed your heart to make it yearn for Christ.

Did you change your own evil heart and did your yearning for Christ come from within your deceitful spiritually dead stone cold heart, or did it come from a heart for God which was spiritually changed before you ever turned to Christ and received him?

If you did it yourself, if you were good enough and wise enough to do it, then congratulations. If God did it, then He is to be praised.