Don't Let Your Heart Harden

Hello and welcome to Dark Roast and Devotions, where we talk about what I consider at least the two most important things we need to make it in this world. Coffee and Jesus. In this episode, we will listen to a Zoom Bible study that was entitled "Don't Let Your Heart Be Hardened," where we learn how to protect our new heart given to us by God. Last week we had a Bible study on basically needing to teach your heart to follow what's good. We can't just live on autopilot. We can't just assume that every emotion, every failing is a direct leaving from the Lord. We can intend for good things, but that doesn't mean your heart understands good things. You have to teach it. You have to show it. So, that scripture says, "The good treasure of the heart can proceed good things." Now, the evil treasure of the heart, proceed evil things. Just paraphrasing that a little bit. But basically, it's the idea is that whatever's in there is coming out, but why is it there? How can you have a treasure chest that's full if you didn't fill it with something, right? So you need to fill your heart with good. So good is what comes out. And Matthew 6.21, we also read last week, "It's a pretty prominent scripture now for me when I discuss the subject." It says, "For what your treasure is, there your heart will be also." It doesn't say where your heart is, there your treasure will be. It says, "For what your treasure is, there your heart will be." This is a fundamental understanding that we need to have, that your heart is not a leading muscle. It doesn't lead you. Your heart follows. It responds. Your emotions are responses to your senses and what you understand and knowledge you have. And so if you treasure something, you'll invest into it and your heart will want more of that. That's why we get so caught up in things. Well, wonder, "Well, why can't I do the right thing? I do the spend time doing this. It's a waste of time. Why do I do that?" Well, because you've trained your heart, that's what you want. It's your heart wants more of that. And so to start with, even though you don't really want that at right now, because you want to do right, you have to train your heart to redirect. And to now begin to want this other thing more than what you used to do. And as you do this, as you progress with this, you teach your heart to treasure the right things. Okay? So that's what we went over mostly last week. Now this week, I want to discuss not hardening your heart because one of the side effects of not teaching your heart the right thing, we get our heart set on things that we shouldn't, or we get our heart caught up in things that we shouldn't. And the end result of that, and by shouldn't, I don't necessarily mean just sin. We can get caught up in maybe we want to do something for the Lord, the Lord and ask us to do. You spend all your time, effort, and energy focused on this thing and all of a sudden, it doesn't work out and it keeps not working out and it keeps not working out, right? Eventually, you're going to have to realize, well, maybe it's not that God wants this, it's just that I want this so much. And what will happen is if you're following in the for the wrong thing or you're going in the wrong direction, you'll have so many failures, you'll have so many problems that you'll begin to harden your heart towards the Lord, thinking the Lord keeps doing this to you. Lord keeps causing this problem over and over. So if we are not in the right mindsets, if we don't have the right understanding as we face our life, we can set ourselves up to harden our hearts. And then we harden our hearts is when we begin to reject the Lord. And we're going to go over that in just a moment and see where that happened in Scripture. But the first Scripture for this that I want to talk about is he, we're going to start in Hebrews chapter 3. Now we're going to read verses 6 through 13 when we're finished, but not quite all at one time, but Hebrews 3 and 6. It says, "But Christ as a son over his own house, whose house we are, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end." So we're part of his house if we hold fast. The confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end. You cannot be wishy-washy. You cannot decide, you know, you can't be all super zealous for the Lord today, but because you don't have understanding, you don't have really anything to base your concepts on, because you don't understand Scripture enough, you'll be tossed to and fro with life's problems. All of a sudden today you're great, but then when life throws something at you tomorrow, you're all upside down and upset and mad and fussing and carrying on and questioning God and saying, "Why, you know, God, why are you doing this to me?" Right, we get so imbalanced because we don't understand Scripture, which is what tells us about God, right? The Scripture reveals who God is. So if the more we understand Scripture, the more we can understand God, the more we understand God, the better we respond to things so that we don't call into question a part of God that we shouldn't. And that's what they did in the wilderness, okay? We're going to see that in just a moment. It gets into that as a reference. But in the wilderness, what did they keep doing that made God so angry? It was their murmuring. But what was the murmuring? The murmuring was basically calling God out. They were saying, "You brought us out here to kill us." Well, if that's true, then that means that God is a very inhumane and vindictive individual. He just simply wanted to do this to hurt people for the fun of it. He wanted to bring them out there, make them suffer and then kill them, like torture people. That's what a psychopath does. A psychopath enjoys torturing and tormenting and then taking the life of things, right? When you hear serial killers, you hear their background off and starts with animals and then turns to humans. This is the kind of individual they were saying God was. I would imagine, yeah, that would make me really angry too as somebody was putting me in that light. So they were painting God in that kind of light which calls all of him into question. When we first start out, we can have ignorance on our side. Maybe we don't fully understand things. You surely don't want to get your theology from Facebook. Oh my goodness, it's the stuff that's on there that puts God into this really inaccurate image. You want to be very careful with those kinds of things, but you don't know if you don't understand scripture fully, you won't know. But as you get older, as you hear scripture, as you're supposed to be learning scripture, if you don't actually apply the scripture and change the way that you see God, then you'll now be guilty of basically slander against God as you begin to proclaim all these things about God. And you're just being mean to me and why won't you fix this and why won't you do this? Now we have problems that come up. I get that life can be confusing. Life can be difficult. And sometimes as we're trying to process all of that, it doesn't always come out so nice and neat, but we need to be careful what we actually accept. Because sometimes you'll say something immediately go, I don't know why I said that. I don't actually believe that. But in the moment the pain brought out just frustration and you just expressed that frustration, but you immediately realize what that, but that's not true at all. That's not founded in any kind of truth. And so you backtrack, right? And then you go back to scripture and you rest on scripture. That's normal. That's going to happen. As you settle in, make sure you settle into God's Word. But when the error comes is when you settle into your frustration and think you are correct, that your judgment of God is correct in this slanderous accusations. And when we speak that way, when we set ourselves up, we run the risk or I should say rather by that point, you're already hardening your heart. That's the reason you express those hard things to God is because you're already hardening your heart. You're already mad. You're already beginning to sink into your problems. And instead of going to God for help, you begin to place Him as the source of your problems. We need to be very careful that we protect our heart and we protect our heart by understanding. That's how you protect your heart. You know the right things. You know the right scriptures. You know the right promises, the truths of God. Again, the scripture in Hosea says, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." We need to have the understanding so that our hearts will. accept the right things and we'll settle on the right things. Then we won't harden our hearts. Now, what they did, we'll read on here in verse 7 on if he brews three and seven. Wherefore, as the Holy Ghost says, and this is actually a quote from Psalms, which is pretty cool to say that it quoted the Holy Ghost when someone wrote it. But it just shows it was inspired by the Lord, right? I just thought that was a neat little sideline there. But it says today if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts as in the provocation in the day of temptation and the wilderness. When your father's tempted me, proved me and saw my works 40 years, they again, they didn't have ignorance anymore. They saw God provide and work. And they still tempted him by murmuring, by fusing because they hardened their hearts. Their difficulties in their situation caused their hearts to harden because they blamed the God for the hardships. Wherefore, I was grieved with that generation and said they do air always air in their heart. Apparently they didn't have any good thing going on in their heart at that point. And they have not known my ways. They watched him work, but they didn't know his ways. While why would it say that they had not known my ways, isn't talking about they didn't know how to live right. They didn't know God. They didn't know how he was as a individual. They didn't know his way of doing things. He didn't, so they began to falsely accuse him. Or rather, I should say, they just began to accuse him of sin, of corruptness. They began to accuse him of things that would be anti-holiness or anti-godliness. And they painted him into a very vile individual. You have to realize, sometimes when we say things, we don't always understand the reach of those things. You may just be thinking, you know, well, this person just, they said this and this and they must have meant this. You've got to be careful when you begin to proclaim they must have meant X, whatever it is. Because if you follow that through, they meant to hurt me. Or they said such and such, which was not true. You're, you're implying that they lied. You're calling them a liar. You're calling them a manipulator to be a liar. It means that there's corruption in their heart. And it means that they are basically going into sin, right? They're sinning. So to say somebody is intentionally doing that is not the same as saying they said this, but that actually wasn't accurate. You're implying they did not have accurate information or maybe they said something and they didn't realize it wasn't correct. That's a totally different problem from saying, yeah, well, they lied when they said that. Well, now you're calling them a liar versus saying, well, they just misunderstood. Right? And that's two totally separate characteristics that's two totally separate persons that you're calling out in that. Now, the end result was they shared something that was not true. But why did they do it? Right? So in the end result with us, we're facing a problem. We're facing a hardship. We're facing pain. Why are we facing it? For us to say, well, God's doing this on purpose just to make me suffer. God doesn't seem to care that I'm suffering. God doesn't seem to, he's not concerned with me apparently because he won't fix this. God won't heal me. God won't take care of this apparently because I'm still here. What are you doing up there? Lord, why do I keep having to face this? That's a totally separate approach from Lord. I don't understand why I'm still facing this. Lord, I've helped me to understand what's going on. Right? One of those is just simply asking for information of knowledge. The other one is accusing God of being inappropriate. So we need to be careful how we project ourselves and settle on truth. Okay. So it says in this, it talked about wherefore I was grieved with that generation and said they do all way air in their heart and they have not known my ways. So I swear in my wrath, they shall not enter into my rest. Take heed, brethren. Now this is continuing on now addressing the people he was writing to here. Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily while it is so while it's called today, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. Sin or the deceitfulness of sin hardens your heart, right? Speaking lies about God that isn't true but in frustration you say them and you accept them will harden your heart. When your heart is hardened, now you have an evil heart of unbelief because you don't believe God. God said he would protect you. God said he would take care of you. God said that he'd be with you. But you're implying he's not doing those things. God's doing this on purpose. God doesn't care. When we imply those concepts, we're basically saying the opposite of what God promised in his word. Therefore we don't believe it. We have a heart full of unbelief now and he's warning brethren. He says take heed, take heed, brethren or Christians. Fellow members, lest there be any of you. So you're not immune to this just because you're saved, sanctified, Holy Ghost, failed, member, all that stuff. None of that causes you to be immune to this potential problem. We've seen too many people that were on fire for God. They face something they accepted. Apparently the wrong understandings. They set themselves up. They begin to go in the wrong direction with what they understood or believed which caused them to now have unbelief. We have to be so careful when it comes to what we accept. The reasons why things are happening. We need to be careful when we begin to. You know, again, there's nothing wrong with asking the Lord. Lord, you know, why am I going through this or Lord? You want me to understand and you possibly likely I should say won't get an answer for a little bit. That's where the faith comes in, right? You just have to fall back on knowing God doing something for a purpose. For me, it's sometimes God will give me just basically subtle small things. You know, when I prayed about moving, when I prayed about what's next, about what we're supposed to do. The last thing I have felt the Lord put on my heart was just simply trust me. That's it. I don't have any direction still. But that still gives me something to understand. Okay, well, I'm failed. Right. I haven't missed anything. But I have no idea still what's next. And so by faith, I continue on knowing that whatever's next will be good. Right. Now, an evil heart of unbelief would be what come from me beginning to get hard towards the Lord and say, never mind Lord. I don't even want to do this anymore. I'm just going to stay put. Right. That would be when we get a hard heart. Basically, we begin to reject the Lord. That's the hard part of it. Like the, the, the hardness of the heart or the part that is hard. Quote unquote, it would be a wall like you're rejecting God. You're never mind. You know what? This isn't, no, I'm not doing this. I don't care what you say. I'm not doing this. That is a hard heart. You're no longer tender towards the Lord. You're no longer soft towards the prompting of the Lord. Therefore, the Lord cannot prompt you to do anything. This is what a hard heart looks like. And you can be a faithful church member and have a hard heart. I'm not going to say that you can live right with one. That's between you and the Lord. I can't judge your heart. But what I can do is say that unrighteous actions indicate an unrighteous heart. So, you know, do what that as you will. But the point is is you can have a hard heart and it comes from unbelief. It comes from you not believing God is still doing for good. And you lean into that and it hardens your heart and now you struggle. And it's a very odd place to be because on one hand, you know you're supposed to believe God. And if anybody asks you the correct answer is yes. Of course you believe the Lord. But in your heart, in your actions, in your life, you don't live that way. You don't respond that way. I don't want to Put theocracy in the in an incorrect light. I do believe we all need to pray and be Be sensitive to the Lord and be be Be careful But I've seen in the old assembly minutes so many times the Lord warned people to listen and to obey and submit to those over you I am afraid that too often we cover a hard heart with The excuse yes, but sometimes though they're wrong Sometimes those over us are wrong Well, I'll admit for sure that can happen. I mean, yeah, we've seen it happen. We've heard of it happening I would just simply say please be careful with that Please be careful with leaning into that Because I have seen where it's used more as an excuse to only listen to something if you agree with it versus a submission and It creates a hard heart because you'll know it does when the person is put into a position to where basically They're being asked to do something they don't like it What's the outcome? Right, I've been in that situation. It's not fun. I was asked to to take care of some business that was not at all my responsibility After it all was said and done it was revealed It was not my responsibility the the the one asking me that was over me came back to me and said I'm sorry You're correct. This was not you were not the one that was supposed to take care or deal with this problem but in the moment I Was being asked to take care of something And I submitted I was not happy I did not like it and put me in a really weird spot But I I knew at the end of it that I didn't want to have a bad heart in the situation so I Submitted and I did what was asked to me and God honored and worked the whole thing out and after right after that Literally minutes I received the call and was total, you know what I'm you were correct I'm sorry. This was not you were not supposed to be the one to have to deal with that You can't tell me that that wasn't a test. I mean That was it had happened so quickly But I feel like that was God just saying okay. What are you gonna do? Well, you know what are you gonna what are you going to? Do what you've been asked to do or you're just gonna put a wall there? No So be very careful that that's the struggle that I have with you know I get it. We don't want to lean too far one way or the other because it can be a little bit Well, we just want to be careful. We want the Lord to always have his way of course But just be careful with that. It can be used too much to justify our own desire Claiming that well, that's not God's will therefore I don't have to submit to this It's just a dangerous when that becomes your your go-to so just be careful It finishes by the way in this scripture here in Hebrews but exhort one another daily while it is called today Let's do any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin and the first part is the main thing I want to read the focus on real quick But exhort one another daily while it is called today in other words don't wait Don't wait till it's too late because I've seen this too. I've been dealing with a member. I thought the member was softer in their heart than they were I thought I had time And it turns out the whole time they were leading me on they had already made up their mind They were already going to walk away I didn't know that I mean I did work with them. I prayed with them But perhaps I could have worked with them a little more consistently or maybe I could have pushed a little harder At the beginning Because once somebody settles into this hardened heart This is where the scripture says that a brother offended Is easier one or harder one than a strong city When somebody settled into this They are it's like concrete that has set if concrete hasn't set yet You technically have time. It's a mess, but you can get it out You can clean it up. You can level it back out or whatever whatever way you want to word that But if you if you dump concrete, you know around a certain spot and oops. This is the wrong spot if it's wet It's not you you have time right you can get it out Once it dries It will be a lot of work to get it out You'll have to beat and frame and tear it up and beat it up and everything else just to break it up in the pieces that you can move so When you have a hardened heart That's the condition so if you can get things cleared up before it hardens This is there's a lot of scripture that relates to this concept About don't let the Sun go down your wrath. Why because it'll produce a hardened heart Don't if your brother is a fit if you know if you have a definitive brother go to him privately Do that quickly right so we don't need to sit on things and wait and wait and wait and wait because you don't know When the heart becomes hardened you don't you don't you only have so much time to work on somebody's heart So be careful we want to pray for wisdom and wait on the Lord But if we wait too long because we don't have understanding where we aren't really praying Then we could potentially lose them all together. So be careful with this same for yourself If you wait too long to fix it if you wait too long to pray it through If you sit on something guess what that's how bitterness turns into a seed in your heart a root of bitterness It springs up and becomes unforgiveness That's how it happens Something comes up and you don't respond to it quickly enough It will harden or in this case the root the little seed will take root and grow It's a whole lot easier just to pick a seed up and throw it away and I have to uproot something If you've ever dealt with these bushes even these crazy bushes that people have on front of their houses We had to remove a bunch from my grandma's in town And even using a pickup truck It wouldn't just yank it out you had to really work at it and some of them you had to use a shovel and Things and it acts to break the roots because even a small bush that is those roots can be tough And that's exactly how it is with us if we let things sit too long We think it's no big deal But yet we can't seem to get rid of it because it's a lot the roots are going deeper Or a metal concrete example it's hardened And you didn't realize how hard it can get And so We need to be careful and protect our hearts you protect your heart by accepting the right information For instance, if you think somebody's doing some somebody has hurt you or done something that bothers you You protect your heart by verbalizing Well, they must not have minted this way Or you know that they they must have minted In some way to they must have thought it would be good to do this or they must have thought this was the right thing to do You're not trying to justify their actions for them to just get away with offending you you're trying to protect you From hardening your heart towards them That's what you're doing initially Then you can go fact finding and and if you feel like you need to confront them and Discuss the situation and will that that falls into the next scripture but the very first thing you need to do is protect your heart From being hardened and you do that through knowledge And if you need to know what knowledge to have go read about what love does right? It's Think if no evil doesn't want itself isn't puffed up right all these things you read what that supposed to be how that responds And you'll realize that's the way you should respond let that be your response it will if you're prayed up It's going to be a natural response But if you don't have the knowledge To realize that is what you need to accept You will begin to accept things that you shouldn't which allows unbelief or False things to come in and then you harden your heart. Oh, they meant to do that to me Or the Lord sure is being mean to me Right We have to be very careful and it's what we understand that we allow to settle in our hearts Remember what you put in the good you got to put good in if you want good to be what comes out and I have another section here a scripture. I don't know how far into this I will get but you have to you have to keep things in the right place and respond the right way just as we're talking about right and We read about Job now. There's a reference here to Job, but there's a specific reference. I want to point out Job went through a lot and and As he taught you know everybody talked all these guys talked and they sound like they're knowledgeable But I did a quick google search about Basically summing up. What is it that his friends did that were so bad and basically they made God out to be a very rigid, lifeless judge that always instantly rewarded the righteous and always punish the wicked immediately corrupt essentially as what the end result would be. And they were basically saying, well, Job, you've got to have sinned because this is how God works. God, God punishes sinners. And if we're not careful, we can come into that same mindset and assume, well, you know, God's punishing this person because they sinned. We need to be careful. We don't know. We don't know. We can't speak on behalf of God unless we know biblically or unless God has spoken to us. And I would be very careful on the first of that because a lot of people speak thinking they are speaking Bible and they're not. But they questioned, they said things about God that were not good. Job, he was questioning why it was happening. Job wasn't necessarily agreeing with this, he didn't agree with his friends. But he did come back and say, Lord, why is this happening? I wish I was never here. I don't understand. You know, he he starts to share his knowledge. And God has to come behind and fix that. So what we see is somebody who thinks that they understand. And therefore their questions are basically, I don't agree with you, God. Why are you doing this? And so the result was near the end, God began to basically say, were you there when I created this, were you there when this? Try to control the viathin. Try to do this, try to do this. And by the time God was finished, Job humbled himself before the Lord. He realized that what he was his questions, his his what he thought he knew he didn't know. And we pick up, we're going to read a few scriptures here near the end of of a job. It's Job 42 verse one says, then Job answered the Lord and said, I know that thou can't do everything. This is when Job finally was like, all right, I'm in the wrong. I'm sorry. Okay. So this is how he starts. I know that thou can't do everything. And that no thought can be withholding from the God knows all our thoughts, right? Who is he that hide its counsel without knowledge? Therefore have I uttered that I understood not? He was speaking without understanding. In the moment he thought he had understanding, which is why he spoke. Now he realizes he was not speaking right. Things too wonderful for me, which I knew not. Here I besiege thee and I will speak. I will demand of thee and declare thou unto me. I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear. I've heard about you. I've heard of the years, I've heard of stories. I've heard of references. Right? That's what he's saying. Then he goes, but now mine I see it thee. In other words, Job was saying, I've heard, but now I can see I understand you have you've brought me understanding. Right? He's opened up to him. Now it's no longer just I've heard of God being faithful. It's like now he's experienced the faith of God would be the equivalent. We can preach about faith all day, but then when we've experienced it, it changes the way that we are. We no longer preach it as a theory. We preach it as something that is that we've been through something that we've experienced. It changes, right? So that's what happened here. Wherefore, I've heard myself and repent, endust and ashes. So basically, Job's, Job admitted I was foolish. I did not know anything. I am, you know, and then he humbles himself. He basis himself before the Lord. And it was so after that, the that after the Lord had spoken these words unto Job. Of course, this is Job's reply because the last couple of chapters were the Lord speaking to him. The Lord said to Elifaz, the Timonite, my wrath is kindled against the you, Mr. Elifaz, and against the I two friends. Now listen to this. For you have not spoken of me the thing that is right as my servant Job has. It didn't say that you didn't speak to me right. He says you didn't speak about me right. They were slanderous. They spoke of God in a way that offended God, right? Therefore take unto you now seven Bullocks and seven Rams and go to my servant Job and offer up for yourselves a burn offering. What in the world? It wasn't just that, hey, you mispoke about me. That's not really how I am. God said, you slandered me. You called me out and called me wicked. You have to now repent for this sin. God called it sin. That's why they had to sacrifice. It says, "My servant Job shall pray for you. For him will I accept." Oh, they couldn't fix it on their own. They needed a mediator. At least I deal with you after your folly and that you have not spoken of me the thing which is right like my servant Job. You see Job, Job spoke out of turn. You could say Job spoke and he made declarations and things declaring that he understood it in question. But then these guys, these guys actually called out things and declared God a certain way that he was not. There's a difference. So, and it says that they went and did as a Lord commanded. This is the Lord accepted Job. And the Lord turned the captivity of Job when he prayed for his friends. Also, the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. What I wanted to pull out of this was specifically the reference to how they spoke about God incorrectly. They spoke about God in a way that was slanderous and defiling. And now if you read through it, it doesn't sound that way. And I think that's partly because we're so accustomed to modern Christianity sounding like that. We forget that or you don't realize just how damaging some of these concepts are that the modern Christian world proclaim about God. And so, we have to be very careful what we say about God. We have to be very careful what we believe about God because these guys were speaking because it was in their heart. They believed it to be true. And so, we have to make sure again, what are you putting in your heart? It needs to be lining up with the word of God to be true. You'll speak about God correctly when you understand him correctly, which comes from understanding his word. If you want to know about God, go to his word. If you genuinely want to know, he will show you in his time. It won't all come at one time. But you can see and you can learn. So, when we become hard-hearted, we will speak hard things that tear that people down or that tear God down. They did this against God in the wilderness with that phrase like, "He brought us out here to kill us." That's the kind of thing that made God so upset. It was assassination of his character. It wasn't just them saying, "Hey, we're really hungry. We're really thirsty." They went so far as to basically say, "God has done this to them on purpose just to basically toy with them and kill them." So, let us be careful what we allow to settle in our hearts about the Lord, about one another, about the church, about whatever it may be there. It's kind of plugged that in. Be careful what you accept to be true and think about it because if it's causing you to have a hard heart towards God or towards the church or towards something else, you need to take a step back. You need to be very careful. It's one thing for you to be upset and concerned. Maybe you see something happening in the church that's bothering you. You don't like it that somebody's being mistreated or a situation is not working out the way that it really should without getting into details. There's some other stuff I was talking to somebody about today that would fall into the same category to where it can cause you to become disheartened. Now, we have to be careful because if we'd fall into that too much, we could have a hard heart towards leadership or towards the church or towards individuals. We can't go that far. But if we can at least pull back and you can have concern over the situation without coming down against individuals personally. You can be concerned that this is happening but then come back and say, "Well, they must not understand." Or they must mean well, but maybe the priorities aren't quite right. They think they're in, they have the right priorities, but maybe they don't or maybe they think this is the way they're supposed to be about this situation. But if they could only learn that it doesn't work or that this isn't correct, right? And it very well So likely is a lack of understanding, because otherwise what do you have to conclude? Oh, well, they intentionally are doing this to be mean. They're intentionally doing this to manipulate or they're intentionally being deceptive or whatever. That's your two avenues you have to pick. When something isn't quite right, when something is wrong, it's either misinformation of some kind. Either you don't understand or they don't understand. Some things missing or they're intentionally doing this to cause harm. Some people are that way, but you need to be super careful that you don't let your heart settle on that towards people that you don't know that for fact. And even if you do, be careful that you don't form hatred against them, but rather you just protect yourself, right? So anyway, without getting into that, just be careful with how you let your heart settle when you learn of things or see things that don't seem quite right. Guard your heart because if you form a hard heart, well, it becomes heart. And the whole, well, why does the scripture say when you receive a new heart, your old heart was a stony heart, it was hard. It's gotten rid of and your new heart is a fleshly heart, meaning soft. Like have you ever held a stone in your hand and you never held a piece of meat like, you know, like a steak or the happening cooked or something like that? It's kind of squishy, impliable and flopped. You know, the steak will, you can move it around a stone, nothing, not a bit, and ain't budging not one ounce. You can't do a single thing with it, right? That's the representation here of us when we get saved, we were hardened and now we're not. The problem that can happen is you can begin to harden back again. And so that's where we must guard our hearts and not allow things to get into calcify or harden us, but keeps us tender towards the Lord, tender towards his spirit, sensitive to his spirit is what I like to say, which means that you recognize when the spirit says something or prompts you or moves you. And so be careful, stay preyed up. Don't settle on something when you know my favorite verse, if something's going on, you go to the Lord in prayer and you pray until that exchange happens, or that burden lifts and you get peace in place, right? Philippians 4, 6 and 7. That is a life-changing scripture for me to understand that I go to prayer, God takes away the suffering and the heart and puts peace in place of it. I mean, that's life-changing for me because it's something that happens regularly enough in life to where if we don't do that, guess what happened? You get a hard heart. It goes that direction. You can't have it on both sides. You can't do your own thing in life and leave God out of it and have an experience with God all the time. You have, it's one or the other. But if you have an experience with God all the time, you're going to realize you're not holding on to these things and you don't have your heart. It just doesn't, it can't get hard. It doesn't have a chance to get hard because you're throwing away all this stuff too fast, too often in prayer and through the word so that you always settle on the truth. Amen. Thank you for listening. This was taken from a Zoom Bible study on Don't Let Your Heart Harden. Pray that you are able to apply the word to your heart and get closer to God. May your day be blessed and your coffee strong.