Heart Hardening

10.30.11

Mark 6.52 52 ...for they had not understood about the loaves; their hearts were hardened. NIV

Really. Can you blame them? I mean for their hardened hearts. They had just witnessed something that didn’t add up and they couldn’t understand. Who feeds five thousand people with five biscuits and two small fish? Who drives a legion of demons out of a weirdo to then see him dressed, acting normally, and in his right mind? Who goes into a dead girl’s room and calls her back to life? Who walks on water? Who is it that one need only touch the hem of His garment and she would be relieved of her malady of twelve years? And their hearts were hardened – go figure, they couldn’t understand and their minds just couldn’t take it all in…

That’s the power of God! God does things in our lives and we can’t believe Him for it. He doesn’t do what we want Him to do and we cry out and grumble at Him for it. Who is God? WHO ARE WE!? Such is the condition of the human heart. But really, I can’t blame the disciples for their incredulousness – they had just witnessed some pretty heavy stuff.

These days I am asking God for things. We prayed and asked Him for an affordable house to move into and today we are going to meet with the landlords to go over the paperwork and sign the lease. We prayed and asked Him for a job for me that would meet our financial needs and help us to get out of debt: and He provided that. I have been working at that job for two months now. I have been asking for success at my job and I’ve been finding it all along the way. God does miraculous things for us and sometimes we can’t mentally handle it.

It might be because our hearts are harder than we know. It might be because we think somehow we deserve God’s punishment and not His blessing. It might be because God does things to us and for us that are outside of our arrogant expectation of what would, could, or should happen. It requires just as much faith to receive from God as it does to believe from God. Even Heaven itself is going to require faith.

To get rid of heart-hardness requires also that we think better about God and about ourselves. God deserves our highest thoughts and the unshakable confidence on our part that He is going to take care of us – even in the weirdest ways on the most mysterious days. That’s God.  And it is also going to require that when we pray and ask God for whatever, that we ask and then accept that He’s heard, and will act in accordance with His perfect will and our best interest. That belief includes His every yes, no, or wait. Whatever His answer we must courageously accept that it is perfectly right for us.

And we must learn to let God be God. He isn’t us and we isn’t Him. We must let God do and trust that whatever He does is because He infinitely, eternally, and unshakably loves us. Belief in God is knowing that He is for us and not against us. Belief in God is knowing that He can work in and through our lives despite our worst efforts so that His perfect plan will be worked out.

Heart hardening in the beginning is natural but it must, as we learn to live with Him, begin to diminish because God has in store for us good things that are way beyond what we can ask or even imagine. We must ask big, expect big, and then grow big in our faith and reliance upon Him! Amen? When that happens heart-hardening becomes a thing of the past.