“I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.”
—Ezekiel 36:27

Although Ezekiel was an Old Testament prophet, this verse is speaking of a new covenant reality. God is saying that in the new covenant, which was fulfilled in Messiah Jesus, God would cause us to walk in His ways.

God is at work in me and in you “both to will and to do for His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13, NKJV). This means that God’s Spirit is moving in our lives, imparting His divine nature to us so we develop a natural affinity to love what God loves and to do what He does. In other words, He is causing us to walk in the ways of His Spirit. Our desire to please God, our passion to share the gospel, our heart to know Him on a deeper level— these are not desires we are creating ourselves; rather, God is creating them in us.

Hebrews 12:2 tells us that Jesus is the author and the finisher of our faith. Our faith began with God revealing Himself to us, drawing us to Himself, and then causing us to be born again by His Spirit. It was a supernatural work. John wrote that those who are born again “were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13). In other words, when you are born again, you are born of God’s Spirit because of something supernatural that God did.

In the same way God caused you to be born again through nothing you did or produced, He is continually imparting His nature to you. That nature goes to work in your life and transforms you, and progressively you find yourself walking in God’s ways because of His divine activity in your life.

Beloved, God is the awesome beginning and end of your faith. You can trust Him who is faithful to complete in you what He began.

Father God, thank You for putting Your Spirit within me and causing me to walk in Your ways. I thank You that my righteousness does not depend on me and that You even work in me a desire to do Your will. Thank You, Father, for making me a partaker of Your divine nature and transforming me by the power of Your Spirit.

Rabbi Kirt A. Schneider, Rivers of Revelation (Lake Mary, FL: Charisma House, 2020), Used by permission.