A new heart.
A new spirit.
We are to be
receptacles of ALL that will enable us to be God's.
This include
receiving a new heart and a new spirit.
Eze 36:26 A new heart also will I give you, and a new
spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your
flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.
Eze 36:27 And I will put my spirit within you, and
cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.
A car engine does
not produce oil, you must add oil to that engine. Take all the oil out of the
car and you're left with a hunk of useless metal that might be good for spare
parts, or a non-moving, eventually rusting and empty shell that could be used
for all sorts of things other than what it was intended to be used for.
There is no doubt in
my mind a person could find many uses for a non-moving vehicle. Some could make
art sculptures from it. The less fortunate might even convert it to a tiny
living space to keep them out of the elements. While we have all probably seen
rotting cars as eyesores filling up the yards of people who have refused to
have them towed away to a yard full of useless cars, that doesn't mean that's
all the non-working car is good for.
Sometimes someone
will come along and take a disgusting piece of metal garbage once called a car
and they'll painstakingly and lovingly as a hobby restore that car to working
condition. In order for that car to ever work again though, oil will have to be
reintroduced to it and flow freely to all the place it is needed to keep the
engine running smoothly.
Like this attempt at
an analogy between the car and the oil it must have in order to work, we, to
belong to God, must have His Spirit within us and it's a constant in filling of
the Spirit, a constant renewal, just like oil must be checked and replenished
in a car. No, the analogy isn't
perfectly matched but you get what I'm saying.
Us human beings can
live every day of our lives without the Spirit, but we are just living,
breathing, empty husks, we are dead cars turned into something else. We
seemingly work but we are NOT working for the purpose we were created to work
for.
How many of us have
become husks and don't even know that's what we are, and frankly, don't even
care? A shiny well polished, painted and
decorated car turned into a fancy restaurant booth has certainly made its new
use special and comely, even coveted perhaps by those who would dine in it, but
for all that it's serving a new reinvented purpose it is NOT being used for
what it had been created to be used for.
Us human beings may be special, lovely, amazing husks of intended human
beings, but unless we are being made new, unless we are being given the Spirit
of God, we are not living as we were intended to live.
The lowliest of
people living in rags, barely surviving on crumbs and the good will of others,
if filled with God's Spirit are living their lives as they were created to live
it, more so than the wealthiest person living without the Spirit of God. The measure
of success we measure with ia NOT the measure of success God measures
with. We measure success so differently
that it's hard for us to truly imagine any thing else. To say a poor, homeless
widow is closer to God than the Pastor of a mega church seems ludicrous but
it's closer to being true than anyone really wants to admit.
How do we measure
our success as human beings? It truly does depend on whether or not you are
living contently as an empty husk void of God's Spirit, or seeking to be made
new and given a new heart, and a new spirit.
Empty husks strive for material success and look at the world with the
same standard, labelling successes those who have money enough to afford a good
home, car, etc, etc, etc. We don't call
those struggling to make ends meet a success, we label them inferior.
God wants to give us
a new heart and a new spirit--
Eze 36:26 A new heart also will I give you, and a new
spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your
flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.
Eze 36:27 And I will put my spirit within you, and
cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.
This is our
success-- being given a new heart, and a new spirit.
This is our success-
having God's spirit within us causing us to walk in God's ways.
We do not find
success on our own, not spiritual success, not true success as the human beings
we were created to be.
Don't we need the
stony hearts taken out of us?
2Co 3:3 Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be
the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the
Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the
heart.
2Co 3:4 And such trust have we through Christ to
God-ward:
2Co 3:5 Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to
think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God
Our sufficiency
truly is of GOD and GOD ALONE.
In His GRACE! In His
LOVE ALWAYS!
Amen!!!!
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