Ezekiel 36:26-28
"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statues, and you will keep My judgments and do them. Then you shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; you shall be My people, and I will be your God."
I'm old enough to remember the novelty of when heart transplants became national news in the 1960's. Magazines like Life plastered their covers with the pictures of the doctors who would dare such procedures, prolonging life in the face of heart disease. I still think it a noble thing for a family to donate an organ from a lost loved one, seeking to prolong the life of stranger who needs a healthy heart.
A heart transplant is the illustration God uses for the change that overcomes the life of one who experiences the Spirit's touch. With the Spirit upon the believer, we receive new life in Christ. Hearts which were hardened to the things of God are replaced with a new, soft one, able to be molded by the Spirit for God's purposes.
To take this illustration one step further, just as too much cholesterol in our diets hardens the heart's arteries, causing it to malfunction, sin in our lives causes us to be hardened to the Spirit's voice. Literally, what was once a heart easily molded for God's purposes, is now unfit for service. We've become again a heart of stone.
With a hardened heart, we struggle to inhale the life-giving breath of our Lord. Without the Spirit, our lives are smothered, bringing us to what is essentially a spiritual death as we go through life without experiencing the leadership of our Lord.
Of course, God wants us to experience life to the fullest, filling us daily with the breath of the Spirit. Let's embrace this new life by exercising our faith daily, thanking the Lord for our new heart.
LORD JESUS
Lord, I thank you for the life-giving transplant you've worked in my life. I look to you daily for sustainment and to be used for your purposes. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment