Heart of Stone

And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart. - Ezekiel 36:26

I cannot express how much I love this band right now. Their lyrics speak to me on a level I haven't felt in a very long time. Aaron Stone, the lead singer and main writer for My Epic, has somehow tapped into my deepest thoughts and penned them to paper. It is eerie how similar I feel or have felt in the past with his words.

As with Ghost Story, this next song I am featuring is so poignant and pious, I dare you to listen to it and not be moved. With that, here is "Curse".

Have you ever thought about what it would have been like to be there the day Jesus was taken, the day He was beaten, the day He was mocked, the day He was murdered? What would you have done? Peter, denied that he even knew Jesus in order to avoid being persecuted. Would you have been a Peter? Would you have stood on the sidelines? It's easy, today, to look back and say we would have rushed to Jesus' side, that we would have been with Him till the end...

"I always thought that I would have fought had I been alive I would have stayed to the end, wept at Your feet, and died by Your side"

…if that's the way you feel, then what are you doing today? Our God is not physically being persecuted, but He is being persecuted by those around us, by our society, by even the way we live. What are you doing about it? Are you rushing to His defense? Are you standing up? Are you hiding in the shadows hoping their wrath doesn't fall on you?

"yet again they beat You down and tear You Limb from limb but I keep my peace and my distance how can I claim to love You when here Your body lies strewn

I dwell amongst the pieces and never feel moved to grieve as my own, the state of it and give more than just passive dissent"

I am definitely not condemning anyone, because God knows, I am guilty of this too. I am human, I get scared. The thing is, I didn't start out that way, I had full intentions of living a selfless life, living for my King, and proclaiming Him everywhere. As I got older, I learned how to define God - to make Him mean what I wanted Him to mean - whether that be a God who is only there when I need Him, or when I want something. In doing so I became numb. I began to feel nothing at all.

That didn't stop me from going through the motions though. I go to church, I sing worship, and I tell God "Be there when I want you to be, but leave me alone when I don't need you."

"I swore at the start, "oh heart of my heart", we're one in the same but then I kept You confined, and clearly defined, and now I don't feel a thing"

"we wash our hands then raise them up in remembrance 'bless You Lord, leave us be, rest in peace'" In my obstinate posture, I must remember these words: "You're not a memory we celebrate You're not a martyr that we venerate and God forgive us if the church forgets

You are not a corpse and we're not a movement You're alive and we're the flesh You'll wear till the worlds end"

God is alive today, He is real and He is moving and working. In this world, we are His flesh to the lost, the broken, the hurting. Just as Jesus was resurrected, we can be too. He can take our callous hearts of stone, stratified by years of pain, scars, hurt, and rejection and make them new again. There is hope and it beats to the sound of our God's heart beating inside our own chest.

My prayer is this:

"Resurrect these hearts of stone to beat with Yours again, for greater works, as we walk as one in Your likeness so that men can behold and believe "