RESPONSIVE HEARTS

Ezekiel 11:19-20 NLT And I will give them singleness of heart and put a new spirit within them. I will take away their stony, stubborn heart and give them a tender, responsive heart, so they will obey my decrees and regulations. Then they will truly be my people, and I will be their God.

I’ve been renovating an old nest of tables recently with duck egg blue chalk paint and was quite chuffed with the results. But sometimes I come to use a pot of paint and find the air has seeped in and it’s gone so hard it’s no use and I can’t use it any more. 

In the same way our hearts can become hardened by circumstances when things haven’t gone the way we wanted, or God didn’t do what we thought He would, or by the things people say, or just through entrenched old beliefs that were put into us maybe years ago and it makes it hard to believe what God says.

Jesus talked about the Pharisees having hard hearts and He was not pleased with them. He didn’t like their attitude at all! He was wanting to heal somebody on the Sabbath day but they were indignant because it didn’t fit with their ‘religious’ beliefs. They were not willing to yield!

Now and again it’s good to go to the Lord and ask Him to do a health check on our hearts, to see if we’ve become hard hearted in any way. A hard heart finds it hard to believe God’s promises, it can be unyielding, stubborn and obstinate but it doesn’t have to stay that way!😊

Are we teachable, are we willing to learn new things from the Holy Spirit or are we so comfortable with what we’ve believed in the past about sickness and disease, about finances, about anything, that we’re not willing to check His word and see if He has something to say to us that’s different to what we thought, that might show us we need to be transformed by the renewing of our minds?

My prayer is that we have tender, responsive hearts that are teachable and willing to learn from the Holy Spirit even if it goes against our upbringing or culture or even what we’ve heard from the pulpit. We need to check what we hear is New Covenant, not Old Covenant.  I’ve had to unlearn some things over the years and let the truth set me free from other things, that I thought were right, when they weren’t.😊

How about you? Is it time to go to Jesus and have your heart checked out? 

Lord as we come to You today we ask You to take away any hardness in our hearts and give us tender, responsive hearts, to be willing to change anything You show us is not right, anything You’re not happy with, and help us to believe and receive all You say in Your word. In Jesus name. Amen.