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Well, last week was rather busy. It appears retirement doesn’t leave much time for sitting by the lake, meditating on the scenery. Monday was the church pancake supper, later in the week, I worked on a little project for a friend, and we made two trips to Kearney to visit an old friend in the hospital. Oh, and Saturday we attended a cowboy poets gathering in Comstock. If someone else had written this, I would feel tired, just from reading it. Really though, it was most enjoyable.

Our friend was in the hospital for quadruple by-pass surgery, after suffering a mild heart attack on Monday. We visited him on Wednesday before his operation, and then again Sunday. There was a noticeable difference in his appearance after the surgery, due to the repairs made by the surgeon. You might call it a miraculous change.

This experience brings to mind God’s promise to his people. Because of Israel’s disobedience, the people had been scattered. Now, for the sake of his own holy name, God would bring his people back, and let the nations know that he would restore His relationship with them. Here is the promise he made: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws…You will be my people, and I will be your God” (Ezekiel 36:26-28).

In the New Testament, the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ provided the way for sinners to have a restored relationship with God. When we place our faith in Him, God changes our hearts, also.
Just as our friend’s appearance was transformed by the surgeon’s skilled hand, so is the Christian transformed by the work of the Holy Spirit, given by the hand of God.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ…” (2 Corinthians 5:17-18).

Only by placing our faith in Jesus, can we have our hard hearts transformed. Have you experienced this change? Do your friends see a change in you because of your relationship with the Lord?

In Him,
Pastor Jerry