Eze 11:19 And I will give them one heart and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh and will give them a heart of flesh:
Eze 36:26 A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh and I will give you a heart of flesh.
Eze 36:27 And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and ye shall keep my judgments and do them.
What do these verses mean to you? As with virtually all the Scriptures there is depth and texture and multiple truths contained within a few words.
Notice the "cause you" to walk in God's statutes, no hint of any free will here or anything we can claim to do on our very own. If it is good it comes from Him.
When we first felt that "pull" from the Lord or the "dragging" process did it seem that there was some revolutionary change you were experiencing? I mean did you feel like things were somehow turned upside down, the comfort level we/you had grown accustomed to dissipate?
After coming to the real Good News of the Gospel have you felt more empathy toward others? I know at one time most people I ran across held no real value to me, unless they were a relative, or an old friend or someone who had something I wanted, people were pretty much non entities to me. I know this sounds cold, but it is true.
Even though I always liked animals as I grew into my teens and adulthood I did not hold them in the highest regard either unless of course they were my own pets.
A few years before I "stumbled" onto Bible Truths I started noticing a change in my perception of people, I started to see reasons to empathize with just about everyone I had contact with, for some reason their dashed hopes or realizations and even the successes they enjoyed became important or at least made an impact, I thought I was going soft in the head.
This started even extending to animals, I seemed to become cognizant or sensitive to what the conditions or environment of the cats, dogs, birds, even wild life experience, now I knew I was going soft in the head.
Reading these verses it struck me that the changes in my "stony heart" began a couple years before the Lord blessed me with access to the Spiritual Truths He revealed to Ray, now I can see that at least in my case He began the transformation of my "heart of stone" in preparation for His gift of spiritual eyes as well.
The narrow path we are on is primarily a One on one walk with the Lord, each of our experiences are unique and designed for the very purpose He is creating us for, no two earthly things are exactly the same I am sure the same applies to the spiritual.
His Peace to you,
Joe