For 2 weeks, whilst Wendy and I are away playing some heat climate, I’ll be counting down the highest ten chapter-a-day posts of 2024 (in keeping with overall perspectives and performs). It’ s at all times fascinating which posts resonated with readers and listeners. The bankruptcy for the following day’s submit will likely be indexed on the backside.
I can give them an undivided coronary heart and put a brand new spirit in them; I can take away from them their coronary heart of stone and provides them a coronary heart of flesh.Ezekiel 11:19 (NIV)
I were given to bless a chum the day before today. A couple of weeks in the past a mutual acquaintance advised me how blown away he used to be by means of a dialog the 2 of them had. “Tom, the individual I spoke with isn’t the similar individual I knew ten years in the past. He’s modified!” It used to be a praise of the best possible order. One good friend noticed within the different good friend the existence transformation that occurs when God’s Spirit indwells a prepared coronary heart. What a fab factor.
The lifetime of John the Apostle is every other glorious tale of transformation. When Jesus first meets the fisherman and his brother, they’re brash males. When a village refused to let Jesus and His disciples into the city, John and his brother prompt to Jesus that He name down hearth from heaven and burn the village and all of the folks in it. Jesus referred to as the pair “The Sons of Thunder” for his or her fast, unbridled tempers.
A couple of years later, John is a special individual. Not “Son of Thunder,” John has change into “the disciple Jesus’ beloved.” That love had a reworking impact in John’s existence. It’s John that Jesus chooses to present the accountability of taking care of and loving His mom after His loss of life. John’s letters repeat the significance of affection over and over and over. Past due in existence, the elderly John reportedly stated not anything however, “Little kids, love one every other” again and again.
In these days’s bankruptcy, Ezekiel’s imaginative and prescient, which started again in bankruptcy 9, involves a conclusion. Zeke, having noticed God’s judgment and anger cries out and asks God if He’s any of His folks will live to tell the tale. God responds with a promise {that a} remnant will live to tell the tale. Exiles like Zeke will go back to Jerusalem and Israel. God then offers Zeke a captivating metaphor, telling the prophet that He’s going to put a “new spirit” into them, “take away their coronary heart of stone,” and “give them a coronary heart of flesh.”
One of the most powers of metaphor is that they’re layered with that means. The Hebrew folks had spent 400 years in slavery in Egypt, and Egypt used to be a well-liked position to escape in instances of bother (e.g. Mary and Joseph took flight to Egypt with child Jesus to steer clear of Herod’s wrath). So the ideals and customs of Egypt had been recognized.
The Egyptians believed that the guts used to be used to pass judgement on a lifeless individual’s worthiness for the afterlife. All through the mummification procedure, the guts could be actually weighed. A heavy coronary heart, weighed down with guilt and disgrace, would now not make the reduce. Those that heard Zeke’s prophetic phrase, would have identified that “a coronary heart of stone” used to be now not a excellent factor. To nowadays, we keep in mind that a difficult coronary heart is a foul factor.
When God says He’ll take away the guts of stone and substitute it with a coronary heart of flesh, there may be hope of a brand new existence. This is a gorgeous image of the transformation that happens within the lifetime of Jesus’ disciples. Paul wrote that anybody who’s in Christ is a “new introduction.” Outdated issues go away and new issues come. The rock-hard coronary heart is changed with a coronary heart of flesh, pumping new Lifestyles into the individual.
Within the quiet this morning, I mirrored at the transformation I’ve felt in my very own existence over the process forty-plus years as a disciple. Like John, like my good friend, I will glance again at issues I felt, issues I did, and issues I stated and really feel ashamed for it all. I’m so thankful to God that my coronary heart has an increasing number of softened and I don’t really feel, act, or say the such things as that any further. I pray that God continues my religious heart-replacement treatment so long as I’m in this earthly adventure. I by no means need God’s reworking paintings to finish in me. Ten years from now I’d love to have anyone say, “Tom’s now not the individual he used to be ten years in the past! He’s modified.”
Day after today’s Bankruptcy: Romans 8
If you understand any individual who may well be inspired by means of these days’s submit, please proportion.
