Last week, in Written on the Heart, Part 10, we learned that we must accept God’s grace to soften our hearts and make it easier for God to write there. So what, then, if anything, is keeping God from writing on our hearts?
I have said that where I grew up there was a lovely rocky hill about right for stretching the legs and exercising the lungs.
I remember the blue granite rocks that were solidly inbuilt and you could sit on them or hide behind them for hours. Solid rocks do not shift or roll around or get kicked out of the way and they reminded me of the spiritual rock that followed the children of Israel during their wanderings, and “that Rock was Christ.” (1st Corinthians 10:4).
There were even little indents that held the water in the rocks where I grew up that overflowed in the fissures and poured down the rock as living streams reminding me that God’s people “did all drink the same spiritual drink.”
It was Christ who said to his disciples, “on this rock will I build my church.” (Matt 16:18) because He is the rock dispensing spiritual water and rocks are dependable.
But there were loose stones lying about on the pathways on our hillside, and loose stones disrupt walking paths and planting time and harvest. Loose stones must be rolled away.
So God sent word that He would do just that and roll the stones away. He said, “I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh and give you an heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgements and do them.” (Ezekiel 36:26,27).
He will roll our stones away and “put my law in their inward parts, and write it on their hearts, and will be their God, and they shall be my people.” (Jeremiah 31:33.)
He cannot write on our heart until the stone is rolled away and we cannot roll it away ourselves. It must be rolled away for us.
And God has rolled the stone away!
Read it again and read it carefully. Three women went to the tomb to tend the body of Jesus, worried because they could not move the stone that guarded the tomb “for it was very great.” But “when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away.” (Mark 16:4). What they could not do for themselves, was done for them.
The stone was rolled away and when Jesus rose from the dead and went back to heaven, He declared again through Hebrews that He would do the writing He promised to do, “saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them.” (Hebrews 10:16).
The writing has begun and it will be complete at the end of Revelation when “behold, I come quickly” and “Blessed are they that do his commandments…and may enter in through the gates into the city.” (Revelation 22:13,14).
Our hearts must be softened if we are to be once again “made in his image” but the stones in our live “are very great.” Our Lord has rolled the stone away because He must write the law of our Rock on our hearts. To give His access to our hearts, the stone was rolled away from the tomb. The decision to have God write on our hearts is ours to make.
So let the writing begin!
Elizabeth Price
(To access the entire “Written on the Heart” mini-series, please click here.)