Ezekiel 36:26-27 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 an heart of flesh: 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.

Real change is what God does to you and in you. That is something that you cannot do for yourself. You cannot decide this sounds right and claim it by force of will. No amount of willful knowledge will result in a change that is acceptable to God. It does not work that way.

God demands in all His Holiness, Love, Mercy, Grace and Justice that our rebellion must end and that we surrender our will to His. We must accept Jesus Christ as Lord before He will becomes our Savior.

We spoke about the broken heart and the contrite mind. That is the position in which surrender can happen, but it does not mean it does happen. At that point you have to surrender your own will and subject yourself to the will of God.

All the promises are contingent on surrender. Have you surrendered? If the answer to that is yes, then allow me to ask the next difficult question. Do you still make the decisions?

I would venture that the majority of earnest Christians answer that question yes. There is a difference between making decision and making choices. God gave us free will to make choices but those choices are contingent upon knowing God’s will for our lives.

Psalm 27:4 One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in his temple.

Psalm 63:1 O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is;

Isaiah 61:1-3 The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn; To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified.

I have said to you that Jesus is the door and that faith is the key. Now put your key in the door, unlock the door, and be set free.

Here in Isaiah 61 are the promises of the gospel of salvation. Humility, a broken heart, a preaching of the gospel, being set free, the unlocking of the prison door and most importantly a transformation. Comfort, beauty, joy, praise, righteousness and the Lord Jesus Christ being planted in your heart so that you might demonstrate His glory to a lost and dying world.

I rewrote the parable of the talents in order to demonstrate that placing your faith in Jesus Christ changes you. It also showed how placing your faith in anything else will not save you.

We all change and grow, becoming more than what we were as a child. Did that change come about by trial and error? Did you learn from your mistakes? Did you learn by gaining knowledge, discovering success from being smarter than the next guy and being promoted by performance? This is not the change I am speaking about. Those changes do not identify you as a Kingdom of God resident. There is no entry into eternal life in willful change.

Ezekiel 36:26-27 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 an heart of flesh: 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.