Zeke Showed up Again!!

Ezekiel 11:19 and 36:26 both refer to God saying he is going to give his people a heart of flesh instead of a heart of stone. I have those underlined. That is just so significant. If you really just sit and compare flesh and stone, it's quite an interesting comparison. We don't typically use these two as a standard example of opposites, but think about how opposite they are.

I guess I just got excited about Zeke all over again because I'm just finishing it and in the last two days on two different podcasts from two different preachers, they both talked about Ezekiel! I love how themes start showing up in my life like that.

Anyway, as I thought about this and listened to teaching and pondered Ezekiel, something became clear. Flesh can feel. Stone can't. Flesh can respond. Stone can't. This new person God has made me is him taking my heart of stone and giving me one of flesh. It sounds to me like someone with that heart of flesh actually feels more, not less. As believers, we get so knotted up, trying not to feel all the "bad" stuff anymore. It almost seems like a weakness for believers to feel deeply, to weep, to grieve, to be white-hot angry at injustice. We talk about God moving in our hearts, but do we actually let ourselves fall facedown, weeping in repentance, stretching out our hands to God? Do tears fall on our computer keyboards when we read of an injustice in the world or do we quickly whisk away any chance of feeling? Do we wake up in the night, grieving over a friend in pain? Do we let ourselves have a heart of flesh? Or, have we decided the heart of stone approach is preferable, more spiritual somehow? I think the Psalms might have some insight here....I'm thinking God never intended for us to feel less as believers, quite the opposite. I think we feel more intensely the gulf between God's design and our current reality and a crazy longing for him to set it all right.

He will. :) Yup, he will.