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.
I visited Brookgreen Gardens south of Murrells Inlet, SC. It is a 9,000 acre area in South Carolina’s Lowcountry with beautiful landscapes and a collection of outdoor figurative sculptures. Several of the sculptures were of dogs and two were of my favorite breeds, Greyhounds and Great Danes. The sculptures were made out of various materials and they all brought the scriptures about stony hearts and stony ground to mind.
God doesn’t want our hearts to be hard like the dog statues. He wants them to be soft and pliant.
In the Parable of the Sower recorded in Matthew 13, the farmer tries to sow seed in different soils. The stony soil was not a good place for the seed to be sown as it couldn’t go down deep and take root. When God’s word is spoken and read, it should find our hearts prepared and ready for the Holy Spirit to change our lives for the better.
God tells us in Ezekiel that He will give us a new heart and a new spirit. He will get rid of our stony hearts and our new heart will be made of flesh. This transformation can only be accomplished through Christ. When we give our hearts to Him, he will soften them and mold us into His image.
Daily living can accumulate lots of hard-core calluses on our hearts. As we go to God in prayer and scripture meditation, he softens those calluses and breaks down our attitudes.
David cried out in Psalm 51, after his sin with Bathsheba, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me”. Let’s follow David’s example and ask God for a new heart.
Transformation is always possible. There are no hopeless causes with God. He is our hope. He is our deliverer and he can soften the hardest of hearts.
Just Another Dog Devotion 