THE CURE FOR A HARDENED HEART

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In Christ, Mark

The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Blessed is the one who always trembles before God, but whoever hardens their heart falls into trouble.

Proverbs 28:14

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Have you ever had a hardened heart?

I know I have and it was one of the most miserable times of my life.

I had gone through a very difficult situation of infidelity as my first wife had an affair with my next neighbor. I never saw it coming and remember how hurt I was initially and then just angry and resentful afterwards. Those bitter emotions lasted for years and with each passing day, my heart became harder and harder. I was full of outrage and hatred for what she had done to me and how her actions impacted the relationships with my children who now had to live through the rest of their years tolerating brokenness in their home lives. And the longer I loathed what had happened, the more I was poisoning myself from the inside out.

So what broke through the darkness of that experience and softened my heart to a place where forgiveness, pardon, mercy, grace, and yes, love reigned supreme, displacing the fury and rage that had been dominant for so long?

As you may have guessed already, it was simply the Lord.

You see, I was not walking in the Lord during those early years after I left home and joined the Navy. I was running my own program and it was more about my will being done than anything else. Like so many people who live more for the world than the One who created it and everything in it, I was self centered and focused more on my goals and my successes more than anything else, even more than loving my wife as I should have. I couldn’t see it then but in glorifying myself, I was not placing my love and attention where it should have been and so my wife went to find it from someone else.

It took a long time for me to understand all that because it took awhile for me to realize that the main problem in my life wasn’t all the negative experiences I had gone through and their associated fallouts. No, the real problem was that I wasn’t living my life for the Lord, seeking to magnify and glorify Him with all I did. It took me meeting my wife Grace for that to happen.

If you have read my writing for some time, you know all about my wife, Grace, who is simply amazing. She was the one who said, “If we are going to have a relationship, the Lord has to be first in our lives.” I told her I agreed but the truth of the matter is that I was scared to death. It had been so long since I had been in church or even read my Bible that I was worried how the Lord felt about me. I decided I had to humbly come back to Him like the Prodigal Son Jesus spoke of in His parable and hope He would receive me back.

Friends, that was the first step toward healing and reconciliation for me and my hardened heart. For when I came back to the Lord in humility, acknowledging Him as the Lord and Master of my life, then and only then could I fully receive His pardon and His mercy and His grace and His incredible love. And once I received it from Him, guess what?

It was easy to pass it on to someone else, like the wife who had betrayed me.

You know, something amazing happened when I extended the same level of forgiveness as the Lord had granted me. I changed forever. Bitterness gave way to compassion, anger gave way to caring, and resentment gave way to resolution. The poison that had sickened me from the inside out was purged, not by any action of my own but rather by the healing power of the Holy Spirit that restored my soul to where it needed to be.

So what does this have to do with the scriptures?

Look at the 14th verse of the 28th Chapter of Proverbs:

Blessed is the one who always trembles before God, but whoever hardens their heart falls into trouble.

My life story is a testimony to the truth of the word of the Lord.

When I allowed my heart to harden, my feelings and emotions were nothing but wicked and sinful. With the Lord not in the picture, Satan was having his way and leading me down the path of trouble through the destructive feelings that manifested themselves inside my heart. It was only when I went back to the Lord with trembling and humble remorse for all the years I had walked apart from Him, that I received the many blessings that only He can bring, treasures from heaven that filled my heart, mind, and soul.

I don’t know what condition your heart is in today but if it is hardened, I urge you to go to the only One who can cure it and go there today. For the Lord is waiting for you to come before Him humbly, asking for Him to soften your heart and use you as an instrument of His astonishing, astounding, and remarkable forgiveness, compassion, mercy, and love. Don’t delay seeking and finding it.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.

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