Good morning…
Her short text included one soulful sketch created by Atlanta artist Danielle Coke.
Postive.
Powerful.
Process-oriented, right?
And I will give them one heart [a new heart], and put a new spirit within them. I will take from them the heart of stone, and will give them a heart of flesh [that is responsive to My touch] (Ezekiel 11:19, AMP). In this transformational time in our human history, I sense God offering us one heart, a new heart, putting within us a nurturing new spirit. Collectively it seems our old hard heart is being exchanged for a heart of fertile flesh, and we are becoming more responsive to God’s tender touch.
I feel drawn to search Biblegateway.com, typing into the subject line “change heart.” Though lots of Scripture references pop up, weirdly, my focus zeros in on the four verses in Deuteronomy. Here is what I discover.
Deuteronomy 10:16 – New Living Translation
Therefore, change your hearts and stop being stubborn.
Deuteronomy 29:4-6 – Contemporary English Version
He has even told you, “For forty years I, the Lord, led you through the desert, but your clothes and your sandals didn’t wear out, and I gave you special food. I did these things so you would realize that I am your God.” But the Lord must give you a change of heart before you truly understand what you have seen and heard.
Deuteronomy 30:6 – New Living Translation
“The Lord your God will change your heart and the hearts of all your descendants, so that you will love him with all your heart and soul and so you may live!”
Deuteronomy 30:17-18 – The Message
But I warn you: If you have a change of heart, refuse to listen obediently, and willfully go off to serve and worship other gods, you will most certainly die. You won’t last long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.
During this liminal time in our history as God-followers, I truly believe, individually and collectively, we are crossing a key threshold as we seek to settle into the center of God’s promised land, a lush land freely flowing with milk and honey for all of God’s people.
With a growing sense of awareness, seeing and hearing with my soul, I begin to understand that the healing of our world starts in our hearts. When our tenderized hearts are touched by the Maker of all people and we learn to love the LORD with our whole being, God’s unconditional love expands in our hearts before overflowing into our homes, pumping new life into the hearts of all our descendants. God has touched hearts before and God will touch hearts again, person by person, home by home, generation by generation, in the LORD’s unstoppable process of making everything new.
But if we personally have a change of heart, slipping away from intimate dependency upon God, back into our own defensive, stone cold ways, we will refuse to listen to the LORD’s guiding voice. We will fail to obey God’s higher, healing wisdom. We will willfully go off to serve and worship other gods (money, human effort, manmade power, prestigious achievements, white privilege built on black suppression, inequitable justice, education, and housing systems, outdated “us” and “them” thinking – to name just a few). These false, flimsy gods will eventually stifle us to death, and we will not last long in the land of freedom for all, the abundant land we are entering and possessing with the God of our universe.
I am drawn to this soulful sketch, a dynamic depiction by Danielle Coke. God’s deep healing begins in our hearts, lives in our homes, and eventually expands out into our wide wide world, collaboratively creating freedom for all. Such life-changing transformation occurs gradually, if and only if we allow God to first touch and tenderize our own vulnerable heart.
…Sue…
