Ezekiel 11:18-25: in context

In the midst of exile and judgment, God gives a promise of inward renewal. He speaks of a day when he will gather his people and cleanse them, and then makes a promise about their hearts: I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within them. I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my ordinances. God promises to do for them what they could not do for themselves: to take away the hard heart and give a soft, responsive one.

The promise of a heart transplant, from stone to flesh, addresses a problem we cannot solve ourselves. A heart of stone is hard, unfeeling, unresponsive to God, resistant to his will; and it is precisely such a heart that the people had, and that sin produces in us. We cannot soften our own hearts; hardness is not something we can simply choose our way out of. And so God promises to do it: I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh. He himself will remove the hardness and give a heart that is soft, tender, responsive to him, able to love and obey him as the stony heart could not. What we cannot do for ourselves, God promises to do. This is a hope for the hard-hearted, and we are all, in our sin, hard-hearted to some degree. We find in ourselves a resistance to God, a coldness, a hardness that will not soften however we try; we cannot make ourselves tender, loving, responsive by our own effort. And the good news of this promise is that God gives a new heart. Our hardness is not the final word, for God can take away the heart of stone and give a heart of flesh, softening what we could not soften, working in us the tenderness and responsiveness we could not produce. Create in me a clean heart, O God, the psalmist prays; and God is the one who creates it, who gives the new, soft heart. This frees us from despair over our own hardness. When we find in ourselves a heart of stone, cold and resistant to God, unable to love or obey him as we know we should, we need not conclude that this is simply how we are and must remain. God gives a heart of flesh; he softens the hard heart; he works in us the responsiveness we cannot generate ourselves. This is his promise and his work. And it calls us to ask him for it, to bring our hardness to the God who alone can soften it, praying that he would take away the heart of stone and give a heart of flesh. God writes his law, Paul says, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts, hearts made soft to receive it. Our hardness is not beyond his reach; the God who promised a heart of flesh gives it still, softening the stony heart of those who cannot soften their own, and working in them the tender, responsive heart that loves and obeys him.

When I find in myself a heart of stone, cold and resistant to God, hardness I cannot soften however I try, do I conclude that this is simply how I am and must remain, or can God's promise to take away the stony heart and give a heart of flesh give me hope that my hardness is not the final word, moving me to bring it to the God who alone can soften it, asking him to work in me the tender, responsive heart I cannot produce myself?