Monthly Archives: August 2017

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How is Your Heart?

Proverbs 28:14 (Jubilee Bible 2000), “Blessed is the man that fears God always, but he that hardens his heart shall fall into evil.”

A hard heart is a very dangerous thing. A heart that is hard does not hear the voice of God, it is not teachable or humble and quite frequently it is full of pride. We harden our hearts or allow them to get hard for all different reasons. The most common one is that we are afraid of getting hurt. It’s a self protection mechanism, part of our fallen human nature.

The only problem is that we are only harming ourselves not helping. What we foolishly see as protection actually keeps the One away who wants to protect us. In fact the Comforter can’t even comfort us and heal those past hurts. A hard heart becomes like a stainless steel container that houses bitterness, anger, unforgiveness, and all kinds of ugly junk. If you let it stay hard long enough, it becomes incapable of love.

Have you ever seen the experiment where someone dips a soft petaled rose into liquid nitrogen? They then dash it onto a table top and what happens? It shatters into a million little rose colored shards.

“It’s the hard things that break; soft things don’t break. It was an epiphany I had today and I just wonder why it took me so very, very long to see it! You can waste so many years of your life trying to become something hard in order not to break; but it’s the soft things that can’t break! The hard things are the ones that shatter into a million pieces!” – C. JoyBell

Ok, so maybe you realize your heart is hard, or on its way to diamond plated, what do you do?

First repent. Ask God to forgive you for the sin of self preservation, for putting yourself first, for doubting that He could or would heal you and protect you.

Next, soak it in the word. Look up scriptures about how much He loves you and how important it is for our hearts to be soft, teachable, pliable, and humble. Memorize them if you have to. Tell someone about it so that they can encourage you and hold you accountable.

Years ago a friend of mine and I agreed, after a conversation about the condition (hardness) of our hearts, to occasionally ask each other, “How is your heart?” I can’t tell you how much that helped me. We actually ended up not asking very often, but the thought that she might kept me searching my heart and asking God to help me keep it soft. The outcome was that for a while, some things really hurt! But the good news was that it only proved that my heart was tender again. So when I loved, I really loved!

How is your heart today, my friend?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Forget About It!

Forget About It!

I love Psalm 103 (well I love a lot of scriptures), however this one has so much to say about what God has already done for us. Some of these things are: “His lovingkindness is forever to those who fear Him,” He knows we are dust so He doesn’t flip out when we mess up, He has the compassion of a Father towards us, “He is slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness,” He renews my strength like the eagle, performs righteous deeds, “He has redeemed your life from the pit,” “Pardons all my iniquities and heals all my diseases,” and here is the verse we are talking about today:

Psalm 103:12 (NASB), “ As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us.”

East will never meet West. So apparently our sins are gone, gone, gone. He says so. If we have truly repented, turned from our wicked ways, He removes that sin. Again, it’s gone.

Isaiah43:25 (NIV), “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.”

Our sin is gone, it’s blotted out, removed, gone, and here’s the important part, He remembers them no more. Did you get that? He chooses to forget about them all. Anytime you try to remind Him of how ugly you used to be, His answer is, “I don’t remember that.”

A great man said it this way,

“Until God can change or lie, he never will bring to mind again the sin of that man whom he hath pardoned.” Charles Spurgeon

So…

Quit holding your past mistakes over your head, quit holding others sin over theirs. You need to do what God did/does. I have heard people say, “I forgave, but I just can’t forget about it.” Well, that’s what the Holy Spirit is for. He’ll help you forget and whenever you think about that sin, yours or theirs, rebuke that memory, and choose to think of something else. Remind yourself of these scriptures.

And…

Forget about it!