Heart of stone

A friend was sharing with me about a friend of hers who is extremely sick, and she said that she senses God is dealing with a whole family in this situation. God does that. He doesn’t cause sickness and tragedy but He uses it for our good. Romans 8:28, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.” So God takes the bad things that happen and uses them to work in our hearts. It doesn’t matter if those bad things happened accidentally or if they were self inflicted. Sometimes tragedy strikes and our hearts are broken, but not only because of what happened now, often old hurts are exposed and then everything just seems so much worse than they should have been. God can then start to heal those old wounds that have been exposed.
Psalm 147:3, “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”
Psalm 34:18, “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted, and saves the crushed in spirit.”
These verses are so true. We just need to allow God into our hearts and into our pain. When we are hurting and suffering He is doing His best work. When we get hurt and don’t allow God in, we build walls around our hearts, and then no-one can get in. We do it as protection but we are not protecting ourselves, we are harming ourselves. We are stopping the healing oil that God wants to pour onto our wounds from healing that hurting heart. We are also blocking blessings that we could have been receiving because we just aren’t open to receiving them. Our attitude of rejecting help from God also rejects people and we become bitter and nasty. You know the saying, ‘hurt people hurt people.’? That’s exactly what happens. Because we have shut down the loving, soft, humble and gentle parts of our hearts (those parts that get hurt so easily) we push away people who try to get close to us. It’s really sad but it happens all the time.
Ezekiel 26:36 says, “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.”
I think that God doesn’t just heal our hearts, He gives us a brand-new heart. When we are so hurt that our hearts have turned to stone, He can take out that stone and replace it with a new heart.
Isaiah 43:25, “I, I am He who blots our your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.”
Matthew 6:14 – 15, “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will you Father forgive your trespasses.”
So God forgives us and doesn’t remember our sins, and He expects the same from us. I have often heard that people say they can forgive but they cannot forget. I often have to forgive people, and I make a point of not doing it in my own strength. If I allow God to work in that situation He not only helps me to forgive, but also to forget. I know that the incident isn’t easily forgotten, but it’s the hurt that must be forgotten. There are in fact incidents that I have forgotten. How does God do this? He gives us new hearts when the old ones are hurting too much. We just have to ask Him and invite Him and allow Him to do his healing and renewing work in us. We have to allow the Holy Spirit to do what He is so good at doing.
Isaiah 11:2, “And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.”
The same Holy Spirit that was with Jesus and that is prophesied in Isaiah is the Holy Spirit that lives in every believer. He has been sent to be our helper, comforter, guide and advocate. How can we refuse the help that is available? All we have to do is allow Him to work. There’s no special ritual we have to go through, there aren’t special prayers. We just have to surrender our hearts to Him and let Him do the rest.