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 you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. (Ezekiel 36:26-27)
When your heart of stone is taken out and a heart of flesh is put in you and you walk in obedience, you are the type of calling card the Lord wants to send out into the lives of many others. (2 Corinthians 5:17) says, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” When the things of the world grow very dim in your eyes and your focus is on the Lord and what matters to Him, you are a new creation that He wants to speak through and use in many people’s lives.
By the way do you hate your sin and wickedness in all forms? If you do not, you might be in a very bad state. When you walk closely with a holy God, you understand that evil and wickedness have nothing to do with Him. There are people who claim the name of Christ who continue to walk in sin. All Christians still sin, however, the real giveaways is if that sin bothers you or not when you commit it. Let me tell you something, if you sin and it doesn’t bother you, you have big problems. Those sins are what put Jesus on the cross. How can I enjoy the things that sent my Savior to His death? I need to hate wickedness and evil all the days of my life just like Jesus did. We need to loath the abominations in our lives and in the world, then we need to do something about it.
As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. (2 Corinthians 7:9-10)
True repentance of your sins, a changing of your heart, the renewing of your mind that leads to a changing of actions, is what the Lord desires of His followers. It is time to make sure you fall into that category and that wickedness and evil cannot be named amongst you.
Many times people say that they are a work in progress. They believe they are a new creation in Jesus, but a work in progress through sanctification as God molds them into the people they are supposed to be. All this is true however, we are not really a work in progress, but a masterpiece in progress! When your life is put into the hands of Almighty God, there is no telling what He can do with a life that is lived wholly for Him. Turn every area of your life over to Him and let Him shape a beautiful masterpiece of you that He can use for many years to come.
In His Service,
Eric Barnes
