A Hardened Heart

Satan’s strategy to make Christians fall asleep spiritually is to alienate our hearts from God. His plan is to cause our love for God to grow cold. One of the ways he does this is to get our eyes off pleasing God and doing His will and get them on ourselves. Satan knows that if he can succeed in getting you to let other things take first place in your life, he gains a strong foothold.

Satan’s strategy is to cause you to become so involved with providing for the needs of your family that you have little or no time left for the things of God that are necessary to strengthen your spiritual life. The only true foundation for your house — your life — is to build on the solid rock.

Many Christians feel that a hardened heart could never happen to them, but Paul warned the Church, not the unbeliever, “…if ye will hear his voice, Harden not your hearts…” (Hebrews 3:7 8). A hardened heart does not harken to the will of God, and is closed to the Holy Spirit. A hardened heart cannot be penetrated by the love and grace of God. A hardened heart feels no compassion for lost souls and thinks only of selfish things.

To avoid a hardened heart, Christians must understand what the Bible teaches that causes such a condition:

But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. (Hebrews 3:13)

Many Christians today are in the process of hardening their hearts through sin and unbelief, therefore they are unable to see the fulfillment of God’s covenant promises in their lives.

Like hardening of the arteries, hardening of the heart does not happen overnight. It happens gradually through a progression of sinful steps. To protect against this hardening process, each day you must examine yourself to see if you have allowed Satan to get a foothold in your life through sin and gradual unbelief.

Before you say it cannot happen to you, remember that the men who were closest to Jesus, those who sat under His teaching, who saw with their own eyes the blind eyes opened, the deaf ears unstopped, still battled unbelief and hardness in their hearts.

Satan’s strategy is subtle. By keeping you so busy that you have no time alone with God, you gradually become unable to hear God’s voice with clarity. Because you do not recognize His voice with the certainty you once did, you then fail to respond and act when you do hear it. As a result of this gradual spiritual dying process, when you ask God to heal your body and supply your needs, you no longer really expect to receive fulfillment because your heart has become hardened through unbelief.