2008-09-24 - Hard Hearts

Proverbs 4:23, “Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life.”

There are some who will say that they can't understand the Gospel of salvation, but they know it well enough to know that it is foolishness. They are those who are very fond of finding an error in Ecclesiastes, or a page in Paul's writings. They make great attempts to find discoveries against their eternal interests. That is what they are doing. They are laboring hard to undo their very souls. They find inroads and look out for the very things that destroy hope. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only hope for our salvation, and how sad it is that many use their cleverness to destroy their only hope. They have hard hearts, and a hard heart is numb, insensitive, even anesthetized to what is best for them. We all know those who are steadfast, unmovable, and always abounding in the works of sin. Let these things never be true of us, and let us seek to love those who have only cold, dead, hard hearts into the kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. May He become their Savior also.

Those who have hard hearts can be respectable people. Bible-readers, and closet prayer warriors are not immune from hardness of heart. We may go to the church every Sunday morning, in the spirit of a Scribe or a Pharisee. But most who have hard hearts go unnoticed though life. I say this because they stay neutral to the things of faith. How many fit into this category. They are not bad people, but they are determined that they will know as little as possible about spiritual things. They never say a bad word about Christianity, and they seem to think that they will escape God's judgment if they keep a low spiritual profile. They forget that those who are not for Jesus are against Him, and they do not seem to realize that everyone falls into one of two camps: those who follow Christ and those who have rejected Him. There is no neutrality here. It will not do for anyone to live in a manner that seeks to be unobserved before the living God. One day, each and every one will stand before God and give an account for their lives and how we have lived. On that great day, it will do us no positive good to have lived our lives in a neutral mode respecting the things of God.

I am writing this today because hardness of heart creeps up on us. The man or woman with the hardest heart in the world - one day - was not that way. It comes upon us little by little. We grow cold here, or there, in some little thing, and it opens a window to let in all sorts of greater issues. We let the world get hold of us in a small measure, and so we are prayerless, and then find that it has been three months since we opened our Bible. This happens to all too many, and there are times when we need to admit our hard heart to the things of the Lord and apply the 1 John 1:9 principle. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” We need to do this. We need to come to terms, some of us, that our hearts have grown cold and hard to the very things of the Lord that we claim to be dear to us. Admitting our hearts are in need of an overhaul and refurbishment is not easy to do, but the advantages to us, when we have come to the Lord, or back to the Lord, for a new heart, is greater than the struggle it can take to get to that point.

Soli Deo Gloria,
T-

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