Archives - May 2008, Part 3, from www.timewithgod.blog-city.com

timewithgod.blog-city.com — May 2008

Ezekiel 35-36 How God Changed MY Heart

God's love for those He has chosen is indescribable, and the lengths He goes to in bringing them back to Himself are almost beyond belief.The people of Israel and Judah have continued to spit in God's face with their actions, to the point whe

God's love for those He has chosen is indescribable, and the lengths He goes to in bringing them back to Himself are almost beyond belief.

The people of Israel and Judah have continued to spit in God's face with their actions, to the point where they've been taken captive to Babylon, and they've dishonored His Holy Name, both in the Promised Land and in the countries to which He's scattered them.

Yet  God does not give up on them.  The honor of His Holy Name is most important, and to keep it from being defiled by human actions, God decides to act in a very unhuman way, for our reaction would be to lash out at those who've hurt us.  But God is not a human and He does not act in such petty ways.  Instead, His actions must reflect His Holiness -- His set-apartness and His My-thoughts-are-higher-than-your-thoughts ways.

What in the world is He going to do, then??

"I will take you ... and gather you ... and bring you BACK .... then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean.  I will cleanse you from all your uncleanness and your idols.  Also, I will teach you to respect Me completely, and I will put a new way of thinking inside you.  I will take out the stubborn hearts of stone from your bodies, and I will give you obedient hearts of flesh.  I will put My Spirit INSIDE you and help you live by My rules and carefully obey My laws.  You will live in the land I gave your ancestors, and you will be My people and I will be your God.  So I will save you from your uncleanness ... Then you will remember your evil ways and actions that were not good, and you will hate yourselves because of your sins and your terrible acts that I hate.  I want you to know that I am not going to do this for YOUR sake, says the Lord God.  Be ashamed and embarrassed about your ways."

But God wasn't going to just automatically start doing this.  Instead, in a gesture of divine grace, He says, " I will let Myself be ASKED by the people of Israel to do this for them again...."

God doesn't owe this to anyone.  We don't even have a right to ask Him to do it.  In fact, when God decided to start all this here, the nation of Israel was far from Him and could not possibly even fathom that they needed this!

God set to work first on the restoration process.  Only after He made us aware of our condition did He then allow us to ask for what He had already decided to do.  He is sovereignly in control of the restoration process.  Once He has restored us to fellowship with Him, we remember how far we'd gotten from Him and begin to hate ourselves for what we'd done -- not for the shame it brought us, but instead for what it did to God and to His Holy Name.  THAT realization is what leads us to be embarrassed and ashamed, for we have dishonored the Holy One.

Only God can do this.  Only He can replace our stubborn hearts of stone with hearts that will be tender toward Him.  Apart from His enabling, we cannot obey Him on our own.

Father, I've witnessed firsthand this very thing in my life, and though I still find myself with hardness of heart in a few areas, I marvel at how You pursued me and changed me when I was not Your friend.  Your love amazes me!

Your Brother In Christ,
Gary Ford

Published: Friday, 30 May 2008