October 14

Read: Ezekiel 11:19-20

I will take the stony heart out of their flesh (Ezekiel 11:19).

The Stony Heart

A stone is hard, it is cold, it is unresponsive, and it resists all efforts to move or to reshape it. This is the Bible picture of the human heart corrupted by sin and alien to God.

This is the condition of the willful sinner. He is unmoved by the call of God. He wants God to let him alone. When urged by the people of God or prodded by the Spirit of God, he becomes downright rebellious and antagonistic. One would think it was literal stones of which the Scripture speaks, but it was of men of whom it was written. “Having eyes, they see not; having ears, they hear not; neither do they understand.”

But is this condition true only of a man who has never known God? No, there is in the heart of even the saved man a tendency to hardening of his spiritual arteries.

It was the stony heart that troubled Mrs. Hannah Whitall Smith even after she had been saved. She testified: “It was not my outward walk that caused me sorrow… it was the sins of my heart that troubled me — coldness, deadness, want of Christian love… roots of bitterness, want of a meek and quiet spirit… Sin still had more or less dominion over me, and I did not come up to the Bible standard.”

God has a gracious promise for every child who is thus troubled, “I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh.”

Spirit of the living God, Fall fresh on me. Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me.

Spirit of the living God, Fall fresh on me.

— Daniel Iverson