“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” Ezekiel 36:26 NIV
When we ask Christ into our hearts, our lives, we are saved, we become new creations. I have written before about how the outward appearances of that new creation do not manifest over night. It takes an amount of time for us to follow the Holy Spirits promptings and allow our thoughts and reactions to things, the attitudes we have and the habits we have developed, to change. However, the change, if we are willing to let the Holy Spirit do the work He wants to do in us, does happen. It is a lifetime process, though.
One of the changes that occurs is that God removes our old heart of stone and gives us a new heart of flesh. In the Bible, the heart typically refers to a person’s soul, where their essence is located. It was believed that our heart played a large role in leading a person in the decisions they made. It was important then and is important now that we don’t have hearts of stone. God is offering in this verse to give us a new heart, not of stone but of flesh.
He removes the old heart, the old ways of seeing things and understanding the truth in the situations around us. Our old hearts wanted nothing to do with God, we only wanted to fulfill our fleshly desires and do what felt good to us at the time. He removes that heart, the heart of stone that is weighing us down and replaces it.
Our new heart wants to seek God, to seek knowledge about God, to interact with other believers, to worship God, to embrace having a relationship with God. Our new heart helps us to turn from our sinful nature to Christ as we grow in our faith.
My question for everyone is………is your heart made of stone or flesh?