Hard Heart?

ထြက္ေျမာက္ရာက်မ္း ၇း ၁- ၁၃
ဖါေရာမင္း၏ နွလံုးကို ခိုိင္မာေစ၍ အဂုတၱဳျပည္၌ ငါ၏နိမိတ္လကၡဏာ အံ့ဘြယ္ေသာ အမႈတို႕ကို မ်ားျပားေစမည္။ သို႕ေသာ္လည္း ဖါေရာမင္းသည္ သင္တို႕စကားကို နားမေထာင္ဘဲေနလိမ့္မည္။

The heart is an amazing organ. It continuously pumps oxygen and nutrient-rich blood throughout our bodies to sustain life. This fist-size powerhouse beats 100,000 times per day and moves more than 7,500 liters of blood per day. The spiritual heart is an amazing piece of work as well. It can be soft to the touch of God, and it can also be rock-hard to His voice.

The Bible gives at least four symptoms of a hard heart:

• When a person strongly counters an action that God desires. God desired freedom for His people, but Pharaoh kept them in bondage in Egypt. No less than 10 times does the Bible say that Pharaoh hardened his heart and would not let God’s people go (Exodus 7:13,22, 8:19).

• When a person has a critical attitude toward God and His work. In Exodus 17:1-7, God’s people complained to, and argued against, God and His leadership. They did not trust that the God who freed them was the same God who would feed them.

• When people are uncaring toward other people (Deut. 15:7-8). James (2:15-16) and John (1 John 3:17) reminded their audiences that real faith looks outward to see and meet the practical needs of others.

• When there is a lack of understanding of God’s work in the world. Instead of the religious leaders rejoicing over God’s work through Jesus when He healed the man with the deformed hand, they criticized Him for healing on the Sabbath (Mark 3:1-6).

If you know someone with a hard heart, pray that God will come in and replace that person’s misguided ways with His grace. Pray also that God will continue to soften your own heart. He can take a hard heart and make it warm and open to His life-bringing wisdom.

Marvin Williams