God says “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit inside you; I will take the stony heart out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” Ezekiel 36:26.
The Jewish prophet Ezekiel makes it clear that God will change you in this life and for eternity. The fact that it is God who gives the new heart is not something we pay as much attention to as we should. It is very easy to believe that God said what God said intellectually without allowing it to fully take root in our minds and hearts in order to change us internally.
For a long time I heard and professed to believe (and assumed I believed) that it is God that makes the changes in our lives but I spent a lot of time worrying about my own spiritual progress or lack thereof and wondering what I should be doing to speed the progress up myself. While it looked like I was trying to lean on God on the surface, God revealed to me that I was actually trying to lean on myself. I spent more time trying to figure out what was wrong with me than I did praying to God about identifying the problems or the solutions.
However when I started praying to God to change me I started noticing more things about myself that were wrong I didn’t pay much attention to. Besides trying to fix myself I noticed my concern about avoiding sin, as noble as it may have looked was actually rooted in sin. I didn’t care about hurting God’s heart, I cared about myself. My desire to avoid sin has be motivated by fear. I wanted to avoid the Labans of earth, so I wouldn’t have to suffer unnecessarily like Jacob did after lying to his father and 100% perfect obedience to God the 1st time without error was viewed as means of avoiding my own suffering in this life with little or no consideration of the love of God or even spiritual wellbeing for the next life. Spirituality was just a means learn God’s will to get by with an easier life now by avoiding mistakes.
And when I look back on my decision to be immersed in Yeshua I think I was putting far more faith was more in the act of immersion in and of itself to help restore my relationship God than the blood of Yehusa. I thought my doing was the cure and the immersion was done more out of impatience to be fixed quickly, not a desire to invest the time in building a relationship with God in order to grow more in love with the Lord. I approached God wrong, and hated God for robing me of a good father figure for years and thought of God as too cruel to worship. But I am starting to see a different God, not the one I thought let me down so much and made life a long a cruel joke.
I also see I don't need to stress about being tempted or not, since it isn't my job to fight it but God's. I also need to let go of fear of what might happen if I fail while trying to do good because just as God was still able to use Jacob after lying to his father and spending years suffering in Laban even if I fall God is still able to redeem me. While of course I think it is best to avoid mistakes fear of making a mistake them should paralyze me from trying to do the right because my mistakes will are not bigger than God’s power to redeem. If I have places of vulnerability God's grace is sufficient for the thorns in our sides, God can manage the bleeding. So lots of stuff. But, I need to learn some more. But God is the one responsible for the learning and one shouldn’t try to do it alone.
