Ezekiel 36:26 (NET1) I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh.
2 Corinthians 3:3 (NIV) You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
2 Corinthians 5:17 (NIV) Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
A sentence in one of the books [I was reading on osteoporosis prevention] struck me most: "Like all living tissue, bone is constantly being broken down and reformed." The words seemed to apply not only to our bodies but to the perpetual Christian emphasis on brokenness. Repent! Confess! Acknowledge your sinfulness! I grow tired of this continual retracing of steps, impatient for the beckoning road ahead. But it was the word living that leaped out at me. It's living tissue that is continually torn down and rebuilt. As long as my relationship to God is alive, this biological fact seems to suggest the tearing-down process will be part of it. The confession of sin, the admission of guilt, will go hand in hand with renewal... There can be no growth without pruning, no rebirth without death. Elesha Hodge
Today's Best Illustrations – Volumes 1-4, (Carol Stream, IL: Christianity Today, 1997), WORDsearch CROSS e-book, Under: "REGENERATION".
