What kind of person comes to your mind when you think of a person with a hard heart? Do you think of a mean person who mistreats little puppies? A mean person with no consideration for man nor beast is no doubt a hard hearted person, but I’m going to tell you something the devil doesn’t want you to know: a sweet little grandmother can have a hard heart. A preacher in the pulpit can have a hard heart. People can have a hard heart without those closest to them even realizing it. But God knows about it, and if you have a hard heart, He wants you to recognize it and repent of it.
How does a person become hardened of heart? It usually happens so gradually that you don’t even realize that it has happened to you, until you have a full-blown case of it.
REBELL AGAINST WHAT GOD TELLS YOU TO DO
Your heart will be hardened when you determine to continue on your own way in spite of what you know about the word of God. Hebrews 4:12 says, “For the word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword...” The significance of a sword having two edges is that is able to cut both ways. The application of that in regard to the subject of a hardened heart, is that the word of God is always effecting you one way or another. It’s either drawing you in and softening you up, or it is cauterizing you and hardening you against its truth. Now, which one it is doing is dependant upon how you are receiving it. We are warned again and again, in the Bible, not to be a hearer only, but a doer of the word. In other words, we are to apply what we hear to our life.
In Exodus, chapters 8-10, the Bible tells about Pharaoh hearing a message from God, saying he would do it, then not doing it. The Bible says that he hardened his heart and did not hearken unto the voice of the Lord. His heart was hardened when he decided that he would do something else besides that which God instructed him to do.
Maybe you come to church and hear a message of tithing, and you know it’s God’s word, yet you continue not to tithe. Guess what happens to your heart? So, your heart can become hardened when you rebell against the word of God.
REFUSE TO ACKNOWLEDGE WHAT GOD HAS ALREADY DONE
In Mark 6:45-52, there is the account of Jesus sending his disciples across the Sea of Galilee. They ran into some hard wind, and in the night Jesus came walking to them on the water. Verses 51-52 say that when He came up into the boat with them, “...they were amazed and marveled, for they had not understood about the loaves, because their hearts were hardened.” The implication is that they should not have been amazed, and they should not have marveled at this miracle, because they had already seen 5,000 people fed with a boy’s sack lunch, and after everybody ate, there were 12 baskets full of fragments taken up! They had the evidence that miracle working power was at Jesus’ disposal, but because they had not understood it, their hearts were hardened. That word, “understood,” is “considered” in the KJV. They had not put their minds on it enough to put it together, to understand the application of it. We are told to meditate on God’s word. Psalm 1, for instance, promises great blessing to the person who does it, saying, “...everything he does shall prosper.” But, here in Mark 6, we see that if we don’t do it, our hearts will become hardened.
RELY ON THE NATURAL WITH GREATER CONFIDENCE THAN THE SUPERNATURAL.
Jesus had been pouring a lot of teaching into these disciples concerning the power of the word of God. He had taught them that the word is a powerful seed, and when planted in faith, it will bring forth a great crop. He rebuked them in the latter part of Mark 4, because they became afraid in a storm. If they had perceived His teaching about the power of the word, they could have spoken to storm, themselves. Later, in Mark 11:23, He would tell them that they could speak to mountains and move them by faith. Now, Mark 6:48 says, “Then He saw them straining at rowing, for the wind was against them...” The Bible doesn’t say it in so many words, but when you read this, you just know that they weren’t exercising the authority Jesus had given them, but instead they were just rowing as hard as they could.
I am confident that we miss out on many miracles, because we have become conditioned to depend on the natural with more confidence than we do the supernatural. A few weeks ago, my the doctors told my mother that she either had a blood clot or a malignancy, and she needed to come the following week and have some test to determine which it was. Now, this is the same woman who wouldn’t lay down when the devil tried to steal my hearing. She called for the elders of her church to come and anoint her with oil and pray for her, according to James 5:14. When she went to the doctor, he said, “Well it turns out that it’s just a calcium build up, nothing to be alarmed about.” Maybe that’s all it ever was, but it might just be that something supernatural took place.
I’m a volunteer Chaplin for hospice. I’m either a very bad Chaplin, or a very good one, one or the other. The standard procedure would be to try and help people accept that they are about to die and to make peace with it. I really don’t have it in me to do that, unless it’s evident that dying is what they want to do. I pray for their healing, and I’ve had several who got to do so much better that they came off the hospice program!
THE RESULT OF A HARDENED HEART
Now, what is the result of a hardened heart? We can glean a couple of the results from this passage, in Mark 6.
First, if your heart is hardened, you will not be able to perceive Spiritual truth, nearly as well. A hardened heart becomes insensitive to the voice of God, either through the hearing of the word, or His direct speaking to your spirit. Many people do not realize that God is always speaking, but the problem is, they can’t hear. Radio broadcasts are going out 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, but most of the time, I am not hearing them. Do you know why? I don’t have my radio on and tuned to their station. When your heart is hardened you are not in position to hear His voice.
If your heart is hardened and you do not hear His voice, you will not be sensitive to the opportunities that are all around you. I believe God sees to it that a Larus is laid at our gate every day, in one way or another. When you reach out and help people, you will be taken advantage of, but you have to remember that you are doing it for God, more than you are doing it for the individual. Jesus said, “When you did it to the least of these, you did it unto Me.”
THE REMEDY
When you recognize that your heart has become hardened, you’ve got the battle half won. As a pastor, I’m in the Bible every day. I don’t just read a few lines and set it aside, I dig in it. But, I have to tell you, there have been a number of times, in my ministry, that I have come to realize that I was studying the Bible to get messages to give to a congregation, and my heart had become hardened, even while studying the Bible. The Lord has shown me that I must study the Bible for my own edification, and out of the overflow of that, He will give me what He wants me to say to others. That may not make sense to you, but it makes all the difference in the world to me.
When you see that your heart has become hardened, repent of the things you have done, or failed to do, that have gotten you into that situation. Commit yourself to faithfully doing what God has told you to do, being grateful for what He’s already done for you, and depending on His supernatural power to bless your natural efforts.
If you are not saved, you do not need your heart softened, you need a spiritual heart transplant. Listen to the words of Ezekiel 36:26: “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.”
