I WILL II

Continuing from yesterday’s Journal entry on the promises of the Lord to deliver us from captivity and bondage. The promise is in Ezekiel 36:26-28: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will place my Spirit within you and cause you to follow my statutes and carefully observe my ordinances.” This is also mentioned and promised throughout the Book of Ezekiel: 11:19; 18:31 and 36:26 are all promises of a ‘new heart and a new spirit.’

Then, as now, the Lord does not insist that we walk in obedience by forced rules and regulations. We are now given the choice to have an internal experience of grace and love to change our hearts and allow us to ‘follow the Lord.
Or as Ezekiel writes, “I will place my Spirit within you and cause you to follow my statutes and carefully observe my ordinances” (Ezekiel 36:27). To be filled with the Holy Spirit of God is the only way to walk the Kingdom Way.

There is a final wonderful little reference in Ezekiel 36 for us who have ‘a new heart and a new spirit.’ What was desolate land and hopelessness, captivity, chaos and ruin will be restored “and become like the Garden of Eden” (36:35. I will restore you and present you to a New Heaven and a New Earth… Paradise, like the Garden of Eden.

“Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what he is saying to the churches. To everyone who is victorious I will give fruit from the tree of life in the paradise of God.” Jesus