Ezekiel 36:26 – And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart. And I will put my Spirit in you so that you will follow my decrees and be careful to obey my regulations.
How do we come to know that misunderstandings and unforgiven situations can cause a hard heart? We know when we just stop caring, we stop showing up and we stop responding. God in the book of Ezekiel spoke to the Mountains of Israel. In reading, I was trying to understand why He was speaking to the mountains.
I hope in me sharing this today, we can (I) now understood how we are such a great concern and possession to God, that when we are minimized in our thoughts, our actions and behavior he reminds us who we are, and all things are tied together. When God spoke to the mountains, He also spoke to the ravines, valleys, ruined wastes, and long-deserted cities.
If we can see this from a spiritual perspective, the Lord was speaking to everything in us and outside of us that affects our walk with Him. There are roots of misunderstandings that have not been squared away within us and with God. These misunderstandings that lead to a hard heart usually begin with roots of bitterness, unforgiveness, disobedience, rebellion, jealousy, lust, and very often despising the Word of God that can actually help us respond and resolve most of what is in us.
I truly believe that God can speak one word to the giants in our lives, but I also believe that He desires we get enough word in us to realize that we too can tear the giant down. When I consider David, it wasn’t the stone that killed his giant, it’s what He spoke about His God, it is the truth He spoke that came alongside that stone that tore that giants head off.
This is where the Lord wants us, but how can we get there if our hard hearts won’t respond submissively to God? Where we plant ourselves daily is very important and crucial to our growth and our victories. Its everything God was reminding the children of Israel, when He spoke ….O Mountain of Israel!
These are words of encouragement to the one who will listen and actually respond. God, our creator, is encouraging His children to know and accept that He sees how far they have fallen. Here is God not only pointing out the obvious by what they are enduring, He tells them how their enemies have seemed to have gotten the best of them, how for a time they were destroyed, mocked and robbed.
In the process of how their enemies reacted, the Lord chose to share in love how He would respond. The Lord told them He would gather them from where they all got swept away and would restore them to the loving responsive children He desires for them to be. But something has to take place first. God has to clean them up. See, they have been through some stuff, gave into some stuff, let some stuff take a hold of their hearts. Because they didn’t keep watch, and they were robbed, taken captive, and held prisoner, the hardening of their hearts shut out the instruction of the Lord who could redeem them.
Somehow, the cries of those small voices that still believed, and still hoped reached heaven and God once again responds lovingly to His prison bound children. He says “and I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart. And I will put my Spirit in you so that you will follow my decrees and be careful to obey my regulations.
Prayer
Listen Beloved, I pray that your sound this week will produce an exchange in spirit and in truth. I pray it will shake the foundations of your past, it will uproot everything and anything hidden that is hindering healing, progress, your identity in Christ and prosperity in spirit. I pray today that as you draw closer to the Mountain of God and seek first His kingdom and His righteousness that the hurt, the pain, the unforgiveness, the bitterness and misunderstandings will all fall away and in exchange, in the beauty of His presence, you will be transformed and made new according to the promises of God in His living word. Amen
Until next week beloved, Read His Word to Know Him!
Scripture
Isaiah 61:3, Matthew 6:33
Comments