But God

“I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause.” (Ezekiel 36:24-27 ESV)

When we accept Christ as our Savior, God changes us. It is something we cannot do. We cannot change our essence of sin. But God…God can change us. He pulls us from the pit of hell and stands us up on righteous footing. Jonathan Edwards, in his sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” wrote “The God that holds you over the pit of Hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times so abominable in his eyes as the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.” This is our nature before we come to Christ.

When I first read this sermon, I broke out into a sweat. Edwards captures our wicked nature so well. He makes it clear that it is by the grace of God we are not placed in hell for our rebellion. But God, He cleanses us with the blood of the Lamb. In our baptism, we outwardly show our inner devotion to the Lord. The one thing about this scripture that touches my heart is the heart. God removes our heart of stone and gives us a heart of flesh. These are God's words given to Ezekiel.

God changed me; I did not change on my own. I cannot change on my own. There is a saying that a leopard cannot change its spots. It cannot, and we cannot change our evil nature. It is God who changes us. In a million years, I would never have believed that looking at my life before Christ, God would bring me to where He has, a useful servant of the Lord. I can only imagine how Paul felt, but I have an idea. If you have been saved, it truly grieves you to think of your life before Christ. When we do think about it, we never ever want to go back to that death again. It was not life. It was in death that we lived.

When our heart is replaced, God places the Spirit of the Lord in us, God’s Spirit. The Spirit drives us forward. He convicts us of our sins. Our repentance brings forth the grace of God, which is new every day. Paul’s words should echo in our heads and our hearts, "To live is Christ and to die is gain"(Philippians 1:21).

God has a plan for you. Whatever you are going through, He has control of it, yet you cannot see it. We cannot fathom the plan of God. God uses evil for good, and He does this in our lives every day. If you know Christ, you have this assurance. Yes, the roads are long, and the hills are high. There is deep water, and often, we tread on thin ice. But you are in the care of the Lord. You are His, and He is your shepherd. Never forget that never. Satan will try to make us forget, but do not forget it; you belong to Christ.

May the peace of the Lord rest upon you, always.