Daily devotion – a hardened heart
Hebrews 3:7 Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says: “Today, if you will hear His voice, 8 Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, In the day of trial in the wilderness, 9 Where your fathers tested Me, tried Me, And saw My works forty years. 10 Therefore I was angry with that generation, And said, ‘They always go astray in their heart, And they have not known My ways.’ 11 So I swore in My wrath, ‘They shall not enter My rest.’ ”
The writer of Hebrews gives us a warning that we need to hear this year 2022. The Israelites refused to listen to God after having been set free from their slavery in Egypt. They sadly rebelled against God refusing to obey Him and to believe Him for the taking of the Promised Land.
We see here in this passage an Old Testament principle for New Testament Christians. God was angry because His chosen people did not know His ways – 10 Therefore I was angry with that generation, And said, ‘They always go astray in their heart, And they have not known My ways.’
God wants you to grow in your knowledge and obedience of Him. But because of Israel’s continued rebellion, they forfeited their inheritance.
I see many of our young people fading, drifting, flowing along with the trends and ways of the world. So few growing and developing passionately in the Lord. They have been given a blessed opportunity, they have time, they have the resources but there is a tragic complacency in their living.
Without the restraints of family, spouses, or other such responsibilities that come with marriage and raising a family, instead of utilising every chance to serve, to pray, to minister and to grow there just seems to be indifference and waste. Wasted young years and time they will never get back.
It’s a silent rebellion, a lack of knowing God’s ways, and what is slowly happening within, is hearts are hardening!
God at this pivotal moment in history, just prior to the Rapture of the Church, on the edge of the Great Tribulation, sees many are wasting their opportunities.
How sad to reach Heaven and be like the man who simply buried in the ground the resources God had given him to invest and grow on His behalf.
If you do not want to harden your heart you need regular exposure to God’s Word. It is the only thing with the power to keep your heart soft.
Those who rebelled and angered God in the wilderness disobeyed Him because of unbelief. They did NOT reach their destination, Canaan, because of their lack of faith.
Today, if you are drifting, wasting your God given life, bow down before Him who created you and repent before Him now. Call on Him to fill you fresh with His Holy Spirit, open your Bible, pray and serve the Lord with all your heart.
And you will find your heart softening, you will find your eyes seeing lost and lonely souls that Christ suffered and died for, and you will love them into His kingdom.
Or you will wander aimlessly, drifting here and there in relationships and in life and you will have wasted the very reason for your creation.