A New Heart!

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.

Ezekiel 36:26

Have you ever needed this kind of heart transplant?  Rebellion towards God in any form hardens the heart and left in an unrepentant state, the heart can become as hard as stone.  We typically think of unbelievers having hardness of hearts when, in fact, this malady can come into the life of a Christian as well.  

In Mark 8: 17-19, Jesus addressed the hardness of the disciples hearts that they doubted how He would supply the need even though He had recently fed thousands with little apparent supply.  Hardness of the heart causes failure at a spiritual level...failure to see what God is doing in your midst, failure to hear the prompting of His Spirit calling, challenging or correcting you.  We begin to forget what God has done before when our hearts get hard.  We will even notice that our understanding of His Word and and prayer life begins to suffer.  

Hardness of the heart is serious...and there are insidious sins that creep into our lives if we are not attentive--doubt, distorting God's Word, disobedience, greed, going our own way without God's counsel, bitterness, jealousy...you've seen the lists.  The good news is...God stands at the ready to give us new hearts and new spirits when we come to Him for renewal. 

 To illustrate this verse, I chose a simple design of flowers and rather than stamping in black I stamped with VersaMark embossing ink then heat set metallic gold embossing powder.  I just wanted something sparkly on the page.  The background is 3 colors of watercolor paints splattered on the page leaving the focal passage unpainted. 

The flowers are from the Sweet 'n Sassy Stamps set, Whimsy Bouquet by Rebecca Rios...a favorite designer of mine. I did the lettering by hand...getting better but need way more practice. 

Thanks for stopping by!