Hardened Hearts

Hebrews 3:7-15

“So, as the Holy Spirit says: “Today, if you hear his voice,  do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the wilderness, where your ancestors tested and tried me, though for forty years they saw what I did. That is why I was angry with that generation; I said, “Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.” So I declared on oath in my anger, They shall never enter my rest. See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end. As has just been said: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.”

Harden hearts produces a sinful and unbelieving heart that eventually turns away from God. This is a trick the enemy uses for those who have gone all in on God. The ones that have literally put God to the test. The ones that will only make it based off of God performing miracle after miracle. The ones who have taken every Word from God’s mouth seriously.

The devil will use disappointment as a seed that will eventually produce a hardened heart. This is the heart of one who still hears the voice of God every single day but even though it hears God it begins to harden ones heart.

Why would one develop a harden heart? Well it says in these verses that you “hear” God but it didn’t say anywhere that you “see” Him doing anything. When you are living by faith God will begin to speak to you on a daily basis but since God lives outside of time when He speaks today it could be for tomorrow or ten years from now. Hedging your life, which resides in time, on the character of a God who resides outside of time can cause many to develop a hardened heart.

When the devil uses that seed of disappointment to develop into a hardened heart he can then lead that heart astray. If you aren’t rooted in the ways of God and the character of God it will be super simple for the devil to slide in and redirect your hearts desires.

The greatest gage on whether you’ve allowed the devil to lead your heart astray is asking yourself or analyzing your situation and see if you can say that you are at rest.

God said in verse 11 those who have hardened their hearts will never enter my rest. It’s impossible to find rest in Him with a hardened heart. God calls these heart conditions sinful and unbelieving. This type is not allowed in His presence. It’s not just the big sins and the moral failures that God wants nothing to do with it’s also those hardened hearts of the radical faith filled Christians.

We are here to give you encouragement so that none may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. We are here to encourage you to hold on to your original convictions. Stay strong to the very end. Not your theological convictions. The conviction that are predicated on the character of God. The God that said do not worry, the God that said I WILL supply all your needs, the God that rained down manna, the God that split a sea, the God that says nothing is impossible for me. The conviction of that God is what we are encouraging you to hold on to!

So, TODAY, if and WHEN you hear His voice do not harden your hearts. Today is the day of deliverance. Today is the day where the Glory of God will cover the earth like the waters cover the deep. Today is the day! When you hear His voice today, cherish it, honor it, revere it, make a sacrifice to it – after all it is the God of all creation speaking to a mere mortal. What else can you ask for?