From stone to flesh

“My heart was hard, but now I have a new heart.”

Doug Hensley’s description of the change in his life mirrors that of Scripture.

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.” (Ezekiel 26:36-37)

It’s not difficult to see how Doug came to have a heart of stone.

First, it was broken. His childhood memories consist largely of abuse, neglect and trying hard to be good. Then on Christmas Eve 1983, his mom, stepdad and sister were killed in a car accident. He was 18, ill-equipped and utterly alone.

Having graduated from high school with a 3.8 GPA, he started his freshman year of college with a good scholarship but quickly found that “being good” wasn’t working for him anymore. He tore up his leg in a skiing accident and gave up on school, joined a motorcycle gang and started dealing drugs, weapons and stolen goods. It was a violent life, and Doug ended up in prison for three years. He got out, got married and, once again, did pretty well for about 10 years until the pain of his past caught up with him.

Doug started drinking, lost one job after another, got divorced, and sold everything he owned just to survive. Destitute, Doug asked his daughter to drop him off at the Mission. That’s when healing began.

The Holman Bible Dictionary defines the heart as “the center of the physical, mental and spiritual life of humans.” Clarke’s online commentary on Ezekiel 26:36 describes the difference between a heart of stone and a heart of flesh. A heart of stone is “cold, hard, impenetrable, unyielding, frozen to good, slow to listen and credit the words of God, unaffected by heavenly things, dead of spiritual life.” The heart of flesh is “one that can feel and enjoy, feel love toward God and all men and be a proper habitation for the living God.”

Doug’s change of heart started with a vision he had shortly after arriving at the Union Gospel Mission. “This angel, beautiful and glowing, was reaching down to hand me a flower. I reached out to grab it, and as soon as I did, I woke up.” After that, nothing was ever the same again.

“There’s been a lot of healing. I’m finally able to see things clearly. I can deal with the past. I can see all the mistakes I made. It’s given me the chance to forgive and grieve and not be upset about what happened in the past. I approach life differently.”

Clarke’s commentary says that God’s promise of a new heart is a promise to “change the whole of your infected nature and give you new appetites, new passions; or, at least, the old ones purified and refined.”

Doug said that’s exactly what happened to him. “It’s changed my whole way of thinking. I’m not worried about what other people think. I’m not dependent on other people to meet my needs. I can see from the other side – what other people are feeling and what they need.”

Recently, Doug finished the fourth phase of the Mission’s recovery program. He is reunited with his wife and children and has started a new job.

Doug’s heart was broken a long time ago. Over time, it became hard, but God intervened. He softened and melted what had become like stone.

~ Barbara Comito, staff writer