Morning Moments

The other day I say a small article regarding the Hardening of the Heart that I found very interesting and which I hope to convey to you who read this blog today.  But let me first say that every life is filled with challenges and that no one is exempt,  they may come in the form of finance, friendships, social, physical, emotional, educational, or a hundred or ways.  They may be a combination of these things, but be sure they will come sooner or later.  The test in these matters is a test of the heart, to make us more tender or more tough.  Understand this, that some of us are a bit too hard of heart and need to be tendered, but on the other hand some of us are a bit too tender and need a little toughening up.

In any case the danger is in becoming hard hearted or calloused to the point of being insensitive to God.  I was thinking yesterday about Jesus in regards to this matter.  Could He not have walked this earth providing a comfortable living for every family on earth?  Could He not have give the twelve the wisdom to honestly and productively produced businesses that could have eliminated poverty in that day?  Why do we see no record of masses being healed of deadly diseases rather than jus a few here and there?  Why are there not more accounts of the resurrection of the dead who would turn around and die of something else later?

So and so's child was in a wreck and lived and we say "God is so Good!"  Someone else'schild was in a wreck and was killed, what do we say they?  Can we no say the same thime?  Has God become "not good?"

These are just a few experiences REAL CHRISTIANS face.  My point is that some get better from them and some get bitter because of them.  Some seen to never get past the grieving or the grumbling, or the gripping about these things.  This is why the thing I am about to show you interests me most.  The answer cannot, "just because we are all different".  It most be more than that!

"Hardness is like a callous or like the tough bone fibers that bridge a fracture.  Spiritually hardening begins with self-sufficiency, security in one's self, and self satisfaction.  The real danger is that at some point, repeated resistance to God will yield an actual inability to respond, which the Bible describes as a hardened heart.  Insensitivity indicates advanced hardening,  here are some of the warning signs:

1.  Disobeying - Pharaoh's disobedience led to a hardened heart - Ex 4:21
2.  Wealth and prosperity can lead us to think we own instead of steward them - Deut 8:6-14
3.  Rebellion and becoming disconnected with God in suffering - Psa 95:8
4.  Rejecting a deserved rebuke - Prov 29:1
5.  Refusing to listen - Zechariah 11:7-13
6.  Failing to respond - Matt 13:11-15

These are just a few of the things that can lead us to harden our hearts toward God.  When God sent Nathan to rebuke King David for his sins, David accepted the rebuke and repented and became a man after God's own heart.  God said "Do not harden your Hearts as in the day of provocation".