“‘For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. 28 Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God.
Ezekiel 36:24-28 NKJV
This is a message specifically for Israel from God through Ezekiel, and I would be extremely hesitant to take it out of that context and claim these verses as a promise to His New Testament church. That said, this message to the nation He chose to bring the Messiah through was a nation that belonged to God, was called by God and loved by God. The truths about God's love, desire for, and the treatment of those who belong to Him found in this prophecy transcend one prophecy and show God's methods and motives in relationship with His people.
So, in this passage to an ancient people we find principles that hold true and apply to our lives today. If we will turn to God and surrender to His love, if we will simply accept that we are accepted and become His, He will draw us to Him out of the places of pain, strange and misery. The land of brokenness will no longer have to be our home. He will bring us back to the place we were always meant to be, where we can live a life worth living and be the best us that we could ever be. We will come home as one released from prison.
We have come to the place where we know we can never be clean again. Those like me who spent any length of time in addiction to alcohol and drugs have more than likely been places, done things and seen more that we can't take enough showers to wash away. Even those whose areas of bondage never took them to the gutters and dungeons where some of us dwelled but struggle with truly liking, much less loving, you. then there is an innate understanding of not being clean, of not being right, of not measuring up, of not being enough. God not only can make us clean, He desires to, more than we desire to be and feel clean and well. He wants to wash away the stink of where we go without Him, remove the grime that we've been covered in for so long we thought our spirit was naturally dark, when in truth we were created pure as fresh snow. God wants to restore us to that state we were created to be.
Once we surrender to Him, He will set us free. It's ironic but true that the only way to find life is to die and the only way to be free is to give up our will. But God's love makes our surrender the start of a relationship, not forced slavery, and He will set us free from the bondage in our lives, our addictions and habits and selfishness and from the idols, those people, places, things and feelings that we chased because the attracted us at first, but that once we gave them the keys to our heart they moved in, took over and beat us to bits day by day.
Living locked up will make one hard. When we've spent time in bondage, we become callused, bitter, untrusting.... Our hearts become stone. We can't seem to make the transformation go the other direction. But God wants to heal and restore us because He loves us, and we are His. He is the first heart transplant surgeon, and for thousands of years been taking out hearts of stone and replacing them with human hearts capable of love, care and compassion. We simply have to place our stony hearts in His care. He does all the rest.
And then the best part, the relationship begins. God moves in with us. He sends His Spirit to live in the depths of who we are, where we begin and end. His Spirit is the influx of power within that makes it possible to live clean and well, to have a life that produces love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, a life worth living rather than the chaotic, out of control, impulse driven and selfish life of bondage, brokenness, lonely, painful and miserable existence that resulted from the reactions of our self will run riot.
We become His. We know love. We are moved to and live in the Promised Land. No, it's not in the Middle East. It's in relationship with our Creator and Daddy. We get to live in, and by the power of, and with the joy and peace of love. We can hold on to the misery that comes with running our own life or we can have the restoration and freedom that comes from fully surrendering to love.
Daddy, help me to be quick to return to You when I wander off and quick to remember that I am Yours and You are mine and that in Your love is the better place and way to live, in You is freedom and restoration. Thank You for cleansing me, for healing me, for bringing me home. Your love is the very definition of awesome. I love you. Thank You for Your love for me. Amen
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