Hard-Hearted

eDevotion

Encouragement for your daily walk with God

The condition of your heart will determine how you hear from God. Soft-hearted Christ followers hear His voice and yield to Him in obedience. Hard-hearted Christ followers resist His warnings and instructions. Does this surprise you? When God speaks, Christ followers have different reactions. It all depends on your heart.

A hard-heart does not happen over night. It is a slow process. Because of that, danger signs may not be readily recognized. But you can rest assured that where a hard-heart exists, it will be accompanied by excuses and rationalization.

I encourage you to prayerfully consider the following characteristics of a hard-heart:

•  Insensitivity or resistance to what the Lord says

•  Refusal to put yourself under His authority

•  Disobedience to what you know God is instructing you to do

•  Justification of sinful conduct

•  Resistance to the reproof of others

•  Preoccupation with the things of this world 

•  Little interest in spiritual matters

•  Absence of private devotion 

•  Avoidance of corporate worship 

You can change the condition of your heart, if you want to. A hard-heart does not have to remain hard and brittle. Ask God to give you a new heart and the desire to know Him. The psalmist did that very thing, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Restore to me the joy of Your salvation and uphold me by Your generous Spirit” [Psalm 51:10, 12],

And remember this, God specialized in “open heart surgery” [Jeremiah 24:7], and making all things new [2 Corinthians 5:17].

That is why the Holy Spirit says, “Today when you hear His voice, don’t harden your hearts as Israel did when they rebelled, when they tested Me in the wilderness. There your ancestors tested and tried My patience, even though they saw My miracles for forty years. Hebrews 3:7-9 [New Living Translation - NLT]