According to Ezek. 36:26, for the inward recovery of His people God gives them a new heart and a new spirit; in His organic salvation God revives us, renews our heart, and gives us a heart to love Him, and He gives us a new spirit to receive and contact Him.
On the negative side, as a preparatory work, God comes in and does many things on behalf of His holy name; because His name is not sanctified among the nations by His own people, God does many things in us and for us to sanctify His name.
Our being saved has nothing to do with our merit or seeking: it is because of His mercy and grace, and it is for the sake of His holy name that we are called, redeemed, saved, regenerated, and we are now being sanctified, transformed, and we will be glorified.
For the inward recovery of His people, God applies His judicial redemption to them for their being cleansed with the precious blood of Christ (see Ezek. 36:25; 1 Pet. 1:18-19).
The base of His recovery by life is His judicial redemption; the Lord comes in, on the negative side, to cleanse us with water so that we may be clean and pure, suitable for Him to save us organically and recover us to the uttermost.
From the Lord’s side flows a fountain of blood for uncleanness, filthiness, and any sin. Praise the Lord, there is a cleansing and opened fountain for sin and for impurity! We need to come to the Lord as we are to be cleansed and washed from all our filthiness, including all kinds of sinful things, unjust things, dark things, and unrighteous things.
We need to come to the Lord again and again as we are, and He will shine on us to expose anything dirty, sinful, unjust, and dark in our being; under His light, we agree with Him, and He cleanses us, washes us, and removes any unrighteousness from us.
Furthermore, the Lord cleanses us from all our idols; it is abominable in His eyes that we spend more time with certain things of the world and give them our love, while limiting the Lord only to certain areas of our inner being.
Anything that replaces God and asks for our worship is an idol; we need to be cleansed from the sin of idol worship, so that we may be clean and have His organic salvation applied to our being.
When the Lord Saves us or Revives us, He Renews our Heart and He Enlivens our Spirit
For the inward recovery of His people, God applies His organic salvation to them to give them a new heart and a new spirit (Ezek. 36:26) so that they may be deified to become a new creation, the New Jerusalem (see 2 Cor. 5:17; Rev. 21:2; Psa. 51:10; 78:8; 1 Pet. 3:4). Wow!
As He is recovering us, the Lord is organically saving us; He gives us a new heart and a new spirit – He even puts His Spirit into our spirit, so that we may become like Him, even become Him in life and nature. This is the new creation He’s longing for – the holy city, the New Jerusalem.
When we were in a fallen state or when we backslide from the Lord, our heart toward the Lord is stony and heart, and our spirit is deadened (see Eph. 2:1; 4:18).
When we backslide, we are not only outwardly unclean or filthy, but something happens to our heart and to our spirit: our heart becomes stony, hard, losing its feeling, and our spirit is lifeless.
When we backslide from the Lord we return to our fallen situation, having a stony, hard, cold, stubborn, and senseless heart, and having a spirit that is deadened, out of function, and lifeless. Oh Lord Jesus!
But when the Lord comes in to save us or revive us, He first renews our heart: He makes our stony heart a heart of flesh, a heart that is soft and loving toward Him (see 2 Cor. 3:3).
We cannot change our heart but rather, in our heart, we may even be rebellious and bitter toward the Lord; but the Lord comes in to woo us, court us, gain our heart, and then He changes our heart from a heart of stone to a heart of flesh.
He doesn’t just “fix us up” outwardly – He starts from within by giving us a soft heart. What a salvation that we were given a soft heart, a heart that has the ability to love the Lord!
Now we can love God with all of our heart, and if we feel that we don’t love Him, we need to remind the Lord of His covenant: He gave us a heart transplant, and now we have a soft heart, a heart that has the ability to love God!
Furthermore, when He saves us or revives us, the Lord enlivens and renews our spirit with His divine life (Col. 2:13).
On the one hand He gives us a new heart to love Him, and on the other, He revives our spirit so that we may contact Him, receive Him, and contain Him.
As a result of His inward recovery by life, we love the Lord and desire Him with our renewed heart, and we contact Him and receive Him by exercising our renewed spirit.
Thank You Lord for coming to inwardly recover us and apply Your organic salvation to us to give us a new heart and a new spirit! Thank You for removing our heart of stone and giving us a new heart of flesh to love You and enjoy You. Thank You for putting Your Spirit into our spirit to renew us and enliven us in spirit so that we may contact You, receive You, and contain You. Lord, we love You and desire You with our renewed heart! We contact You, receive You, and contain You by exercising our renewed spirit!
The Lord Gives us a New Heart to Love Him, a Soft and Pure Heart that Loves Him
The Lord gives us a new heart to love Him (see Mark. 12:30).
Our heart is our representative, our person in action; whenever we act, speak, and do something, we act by our heart. When we love our wife, it is our heart that loves her, and when we dislike something, our heart dislikes it. Our heart is our representative, the acting commissioner or ambassador, of our inner being.
Our heart represents us with regard to our inclination, affection, delight, and desire (see Matt. 15:8).
In Ezek. 36:26 the Lord promises to give us a new heart; this heart refers to a renewed heart, a heart that turns to God and seeks God in purity. God gives us a new heart because He wants us to incline toward Him, adore Him, desire Him, and love Him (1 Cor. 16:22; 2:9).
We need to exercise our heart to love the Lord, adore Him, and enjoy Him; we need to turn our heart to the Lord again and again throughout the day by telling Him, Lord Jesus, I love You! Our heart is not for loving anything or anyone else: nothing and no one else deserves our heart, only the Lord deserves it.
When it comes to loving the Lord, we should not hold back. We should have no reservation in loving the Lord, but love Him with total abandonment and in absoluteness. There’s no “tomorrow, Lord, I’ll love You” – but, If ever I loved Thee, Lord Jesus, it is NOW!
However, we all have to admit that, even though the Lord changed our heart and renewed it, we still have some problems with our heart, and therefore His life doesn’t flow freely. So we need to deal with our heart so that His life may flow in and out with no hindrance.
For us to maintain the newness of our heart, we must keep our heart turned to the Lord and seek purity, living Him with our whole heart (see Mark 12:30; 2 Cor. 3:16-18; Matt. 5:8; Prov. 4:20-23; Psa. 119:2, 11).
Our heart has four great problems: it is hard toward the Lord, it is not pure, it doesn’t love the Lord, and it is not at peace. Our will is hard toward Him, our mind and emotion are impure, our emotion is not loving, and our conscience is not at peace with Him. So we need to cooperate with the Lord to have a soft, pure, and loving hear that is at peace.
We need to have a soft heart toward the Lord: to be soft means that our will is submissive and yielding to the Lord, not stiff-necked and rebellious toward Him. As the Lord deals with our heart, He softens our hard, stony heart so that it becomes a soft heart of flesh. We need to love the Lord and open to Him, and as we exercise to love the Lord, our heart will be softened.
We need to have a pure heart toward the Lord: we need to set our mind on God and love Him solely. A pure heart is a heart that sets its mind specifically on God and in which the emotion is exceedingly pure and simple toward God.
We need to love the Lord, open to Him, and cooperate with Him to deal with our heat so that we set our mind only on Him, and we love and desire only God.
We need to have a heart that loves the Lord: a loving heart is a heart in which the emotion loves God, wants God, thirsts after God, yearns for God, and has strong affection toward God.
In ourselves we love only one person: ME; but as we turn our heart to the Lord, love Him, tell Him how much we need Him, our heart becomes loving toward Him. We need to exercise our heart to love the Lord.
We need to have a heart at peace with God: we need to have a heart in which the conscience has no offense (Acts 24:16), no condemnation, and no reproach.
How can we have such a conscience in our heart? It is by loving the Lord and opening to Him, and out of love dealing with any problem and offense in our heart, so that we may have a clear sky. Our heart needs to be at peace by loving the Lord.
Whenever our heart is turned to the Lord, the veil is removed, and we see the Lord face to face (2 Cor. 3:16-18). No matter what condition we are in right now, we need to turn our heart to Him. Nothing is worth not turning to the Lord.
We need to turn our heart to the Lord, love Him, and open to Him, and our love will remove the veil from our eye, burning it away; the result is that we will see the Lord face to face, and we will love Him with a soft heart, a pure heart, a loving heart, and a heart at peace.
Lord Jesus, we turn our heart to You. We love You, Lord: You deserve our heart! We love You with no reservation! Keep our heart turned to You to see You face to face and have the pure flow of the divine life in our being. Oh Lord, we want to just love You more and more so that our heart would be soft and pure toward You, loving You to the uttermost, and at peace before You. Amen, Lord, our whole heart is just for You. We love to tell You that we love You! May Your love within us burn in us, remove any hardness and problems, and cause us to love You more!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by brother Minoru C. for this week, and portions from, The Knowledge of Life, ch. 10 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of Ezekiel (1), msg. 12 (week 12), The Inward Recovery by Life for the Carrying Out of God’s Economy.
- Hymns on this topic:
# God created us His vessels / His expression to achieve; / Thus He made a heart to love Him / And a spirit to receive. / With our heart we have to love Him, / With our spirit Him possess / As our life, of Him partaking, / That Himself we may express. (Hymns #743)
# In dealings with the Lord as life / We need a proper heart, / That of His riches, in His grace, / We fully may take part. / We need a heart in all things pure, / With mind both sound and clear, / To understand His mind and heart / In trembling and in fear. (Hymns #744)
# O Jesus, Jesus, dearest Lord! / Forgive me if I say, / For very love, Thy sacred name / A thousand times a day. / O Jesus, Lord, with me abide; / I rest in Thee, whate’er betide; / Thy gracious smile is my reward; / I love, I love Thee, Lord! (Hymns #208)
About aGodMan
![And after six days Jesus took with [Him] Peter and James and John, and brought them up alone into a high mountain privately. And He was transfigured before them. Mark 9:2](https://i0.wp.com/agodman.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/And-after-six-days-Jesus-took-with-Him-Peter-and-James-and-John-and-brought-them-up.jpg?fit=178%2C100&ssl=1)
God in His salvation promises to give us a new heart….The new heart in Ezekiel 36:26 does not refer to another heart; it refers to a renewed heart. The first characteristic of this renewed heart is that it turns to God. The turning of our heart to God is a very healthy sign that He has renewed it.
The second characteristic of a renewed heart is that it seeks purity. First Timothy 1:5 speaks of love out of a pure heart. In 2 Timothy 2:22 Paul encourages Timothy to be “with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.”…According to the Bible, to have a pure heart is to have a heart with a single motive. Purity, therefore, is a matter of motive. If we do something with a double motive, our heart is not pure. (Life-study of 1 Thessalonians, pp. 182-184, by Witness Lee)
Amen,thank u Lord for renewing our heart evryday
Amen!
Lord give us a soft heart towards You , a heart that loves you to the uttermost, give us Love for You Lord!!!!
Cause us to love you more Lord Jesus!
Amen! O Lord touch our spirit and our heart today. In His recovery by life the Lord gives us a new heart (a heart that is soft and loving toward God) and a new spiri (a living spirit with His divine life). Ezekiel 36:26 I will also give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take away the heart of stone out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. Praise the Lord for a new heart and a new spirit to flee youthful lusts, and pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart! ( 2Tim.2:22)
O Lord give us a new heart and new spirit burning to seek you daily, Amen.
Amen Praise the Lord!
Oh Lord Jesus! We turn our hearts to You again and again. ❤️
Amen. Remove our veil, Lord! We want to see you with a pure heart.
PRAISE THE LORD
Wow!…Amen
“And you shall love the Lord your God from your whole heart and from your whole soul and from whole mind and from your whole strength.” (Mark 12:30). “Often we don’t feel very loving,but God will back up our speaking. …Faith goes first, feelings follow.” – I see that this is true to experience. Sometimes, I feel like an impostor saying this to the Lord.But the more I say it, the more it becomes real. The Lord is lovelier than ever! It is so good that God doesn’t ask us to feel loving. Rather, He says that we have received a“spirit of faith”in which we speak (2 Cor. 4:13). May we daily speak by faith our best love for the Lord Jesus, “
Amen Love for the Lord Jesus, like any living person, requires constant renewing or rekindling. We do need the continual reminderthat our love for the Lord needs to be watered, because it’s living. We need to dailytell the Lord from our heart that we need Him, depend on Him, open to Him and love Him with our best love. By speaking such words in the spirit of faith (2 Cor4:13) we we give the Lord the way to rekindle our best love for Him.