Soft or Stony Hearts

The people of Israel had been conquered and scattered among the nations. God had removed his Spirit from the temple, and they felt abandoned. They had been warned of what would happen if they did not repent, turn away from idol worship and turn to God alone. They did not turn to God, and so he had exiled them. This was a punishment that was for their own good, to bring them back into relationship with God. He didn’t intend to leave them scattered and in slavery. He sent Ezekiel to encourage them, and to prepare them for their restoration.

I shall gather you from the peoples and assemble you out of the countries among which you have been scattered, and I shall give you the land of Israel. When they come there, they will remove all its detestable things and all its abominations from it. And I shall give them one heart, and shall put a new spirit within them. And I shall take the heart of stone out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my ordinances, and do them. Then they will be my people, and I shall be their God. Ezekiel 11:17-20

God would restore them. He would not abandon them to their sin but would bring them home. And then he would do the most amazing thing! He would remove their hard heart, their heart of stone, and give them instead a soft heart, a tender heart of flesh. Then they would be his people, and he would be their God.

This same thing happens to us. We sin. We refuse to turn away from the idolatry in our lives, and instead continue to worship power or money or ourselves. God withdraws his blessing. But he does not abandon us. He draws us unto himself. When we respond with repentance, he gives us one heart and one Spirit, so that we are part of one body to worship him. He removes our old, hard heart and replaces it with a heart of flesh, a soft and responsive heart.

Too many times we hang on to our old stony heart. We refuse to see our own sin, rationalizing it away. We look at others without any compassion, seeing only their faults and mistakes. We miss the look of hurt on our spouses face when we make flip and harsh comments, disguising it as humor. We overlook the tender feelings of a little boy or girl who just wants to feel significant in your eyes. We tear each other down instead of building each other up. We push ahead without ever seeing the people God has put around us, those who need our encouragement. We see the power of a leader instead of the breaking heart or the wealth of a coworker instead of the loneliness that she lives in. We choose a heart of stone.

God has given us a heart of flesh, a soft, responsive heart that reaches out to individuals regardless of their immigration status, their sexuality, their skin color or their gender. We have hearts capable of empathy regardless of social status, wealth, power or lack of it. We have soft hearts capable of loving like God does, of being his representative and of reconciliation.

Being soft requires that we are open to being hurt. Being soft sets aside old wounds and scars and loves anyway. A heart of stone can hide behind political affiliations, social mores and emotional walls; a heart of flesh cannot.

Jesus loved regardless of the cost. He who was God chose a heart of flesh, and loved us recklessly. He knew we would fail him, betray him, reject him. His people had done so consistently from the garden forward. And still he chose to love us and to reach to us, providing a way for us to be with him in relationship.

How can we do less? Only by holding on to our heart of stone.

Who has God put in your life to love today? Who are you hardening your heart against? What little person or poor person or illegal person or smelly person is God calling you to soften your heart toward?

Not too long ago God called me to love a group of ladies. I didn’t want to. Love requires vulnerability. I never agreed to love them; I just agreed to join them, as God was being pretty persistent about it. People are messy. We all carry around our own baggage that we’d just as soon leave somewhere else. We certainly don’t want to open it up and share it with others. I joined the group, God softened my heart, and I am so surprised by how much I love them. If I had chosen to keep my stony heart I would have missed out on so much blessing and kindness and friendship. When we choose to remain hard, we forget that sometimes the mess we’re avoiding is our own.

Soften your heart. Allow God to love through you. Allow God to love you through others.

How big is your heart?

“I shall run the way of Thy commandments, for Thou wilt enlarge my heart.”  Psalm 119:32

God desires obedience.  “Be holy as I am holy” says God in Lev. 19:2 and again in I Peter 1:16.  Holiness demands sinlessness, an adherence to God’s commands. We need to “run in the way” of His commandments, understanding and obeying them.  Many of us work hard to be obedient, believing that the key to obedience is self-discipline and prayer. I am a fairly disciplined person, but when I think of being sinless, of being holy, I am overwhelmed. There is not enough discipline in the world to make me always obedient.   The Psalmist suggests that the key is to be found elsewhere.

           

Jesus said that the whole of the law could be summed up in two phrases: love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.  He also said that He didn’t come to abolish the law but to fulfill it.  The key to obedience to God is to embrace and live by the committed and self-sacrificing love to which Jesus refers. 

           

Love goes beyond the rules and straight to the heart.  Love tells us not only to love our neighbor, but to love our enemy and to pray for him.  Love tells us to go beyond human response and to instead respond like Jesus would the same situation.  Love does what the law could only hint at; it changes us at the heart level.  Love remakes us in the image of God because God is love and the author and originator of love.  Love obeys the spirit of the law, and so obedience is achieved.  We can run in the way of His commands because we reflect the image of Jesus, and fulfill the commands.

           

The reason we struggle to live in obedience is because our hearts are too small.  To become more obedient, we need to become more loving.  To overcome temptation, we need to see things through the eyes of the other, to love enough to do the right thing, to live as Jesus would.  We need Him to enlarge our hearts.

Dear God, enlarge my heart.  Give me enough love, for You and others, to be obedient.  Make me holy.

How clean is the inside of the cup?

            In Israel the people would paint the outside of the tombs every year.  This was done so that no one would accidentally defile himself by touching something that was dead or was in the presence of a dead person and become unclean for seven days.  The stark white of the tomb was an extreme contrast to the brown and tan of the desert landscape that surrounded them.  There was no mistaking the unclean for the clean.

The scribes and Pharisees were so righteous in their actions that they were also an extreme contrast to the normal working people around them.  Jesus points out, however, that the comparison didn’t stop with the appearance.  Like the tombs that were beautiful on the outside, they were also full of uncleanness and death.  They looked good when you looked at their actions, but their motives and attitudes were lawless and hypocritical. 

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.  Even so you too outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”  Matt. 23:27-28

Our society is marked by our desire to look good on the outside.  We go to the right school and get a degree or two or three in the right field.  It hardly matters what we actually learned or if we have any aptitude in our given field.  We work hard to drive the right car and buy a house in a good neighborhood, but is it worth the amount of debt we have to carry to pull it off?  As we age, we buy anti-wrinkle creams and invest in face-lifts and private trainers to continue to look young.  A former President said that character doesn’t matter.  As long as we look good and can get the job done, we’re OK. 

As Christians, our standards are to be different.  We are to understand that there are many different ways to obtain an education, and that location isn’t everything.  A pretty face is just that, a pretty face, and no more.  Our standards are supposed to be God’s standards, and so we look for humility, a heart that is tuned to the voice of God, and the fruit of the Spirit evidenced in one’s life.  We count as success the wisdom and knowledge of God that one applies to their life.  We love simply because God loves.  We offer forgiveness and mercy, remembering how much God offered to us. 

Our faith must be lived on God’s terms, lest we also become hypocrites, lumped in with the scribes and Pharisees.  We must learn to see through God’s eyes, to love with His heart, to think with the very mind of Christ.  This is real faith.  This is belief in action.

“…God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”  I Sam. 16:7b