Wholeness - The One Year Heaven on Earth Devotional

Read: Ezekiel 11:17-25

I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them. Ezekiel 11:19, NIV

IN WORD

Ezekiel’s prophecies are harsh, stern indictments against Judah and her sins. But sandwiched between the many rebukes are several passages of marvelous hope. This is one of them, and its message is repeated later in chapter 36. It’s a promise not just to bring God’s people back into the land He had promised them long ago; it’s a promise to correct the fundamental problem that led them into judgment to begin with. He promises to fix their hearts.

That’s an amazing promise if you think about it. Many propose for our world political, economic, military, social, and religious remedies. We’ve heard that the answer is education or adequate health care or pursuing world peace. But God promises something more fundamental, more at the heart of the problems of the human race. He promises to change what’s in our core. It’s the only plausible solution for a world that has tried all of the above answers and failed. You won’t get perfect solutions from flawed people. God foretells a day when He will address the fundamental flaw.

And what is that flaw? We have divided hearts and dead spirits. That happened at the Fall in Eden, when for some reason we decided to believe the serpent’s suggestion that God must be holding out on us. It was a lie of epic proportions, and the consequences have been devastating. East of Eden, where God seemed so much more invisible and distant than before, we learned to depend on ourselves. It was the only way we could cope, we thought. But in so doing, we developed other allegiances—attachments to what we thought would fulfill us, give us power, or save us. We became idolaters.

IN DEED

God has a solution. He foretold it in Ezekiel and elsewhere, and He fulfilled it in His Son. The radical truth of the Kingdom is that the human heart really can, contrary to popular opinion, change from the inside out. It can be reborn, reconstructed, rewired for the Spirit of God Himself. It can be made whole.

ADDITIONAL READING: 2 Corinthians 5:17

It is impossible for us to be the children of God naturally . . . we must be born again.

OSWALD CHAMBERS