God Remove My Heart of Stone

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

Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you. Hosea 10:12

Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts…Psalm 95:7; Hebrews 3:7-8ff

Lately, the hardening of the heart has been a central theme in my life. I guess it’s because I have a close friend who has done just that. In the ESV study Bible, the note on Psalm 95:7 describes harden in this way. “The biblical writers use heart for the central core of the person’s thoughts, feelings, and choices. To harden the heart is to make it dull and unresponsive to God, and thus to strengthen it in disbelief.” As I’ve prayed for this friend, I’ve found myself clinging to the promise in Ezekiel 36:26. I believe wholeheartedly that God can remove the heart of stone, but I also think I’ve been a bit flawed in my thinking, perhaps because I am so personally involved in the situation. I keep envisioning this removal of the heart of stone as an immediate action, and while I fully believe that God can do that in an instant if He so chooses, I also must be prepared for this removal of the hardening to be a slower, more natural process.

When I think of something being hardened, I think of dirty dishes, you know, the empty lasagna pan that you left sitting on the stove overnight. The food hardens to the pan, and there are usually two different things that have to be done to get the pan clean. The first is soaking. Soaking the pan in water can soften the hardened food, making it wipe completely clean. When our hearts are hardened, we have to be willing to be soaked—soaked in Scripture, soaked in fellowship with people who will encourage us to walk in God’s ways, soaked in the glory of God. Once we’re soaked, the hardened parts sometimes wipe clean easily. It’s a process, though. It takes time. It takes patience. It takes a willingness to allow God to cover and drown those parts of us that aren’t pleasing to Him. Sometimes, though, even after a soaking, there must be some scrubbing.

Scrubbing or chipping away is the other way to get rid of the hardenedness. I will gladly admit that the Amway Scrub Bud is my friend! It never fails me when trying to remove stuck on food from my dishes. It does, however, take lots of effort on my part, and if I were the food, I can imagine it would be quite painful. Sometimes our hardened hearts must be scrubbed. The hardened pieces must be chipped away, one layer at a time. As Hosea prophesied to Israel, we must allow God to break up our fallow ground, to plow through our heart. It’s in those places where the heart is chipped, broken, and plowed, that God’s glory will soak in. God’s glory and God’s presence will fill those places until our heart is not longer hard like stone.

God’s promises can be trusted. God will remove hearts of stone. It might be instantaneous, but more than likely it will be a process, a process that requires scrubbing and soaking, a process that is painful, a process that will change us.

God break up my fallow ground! For any area of my own heart that is hardened, I want to be soaked! I want your glory and your presence to fill up those broken places. I want to experience and showers of righteousness. I want to reap steadfast love, a stronger love for you and a stronger love for those around me.