Keeping A Soft Heart

Keeping a Soft Heart

Today when you hear his voice, don’t harden your hearts as Israel did when they rebelled, when they tested me in the wilderness . . . You must warn each other every day, while it is still “today,” so that none of you will be deceived by sin and hardened against God.

Hebrews 3:8, 13

The hearts of these people are hardened, and their ears cannot hear, and they have closed their eyes—so their eyes cannot see, and their ears cannot hear, and their hearts cannot understand, and they cannot turn to me and let me heal them.

Matthew 13:15

When you have a spot of skin—maybe on your hand or foot—that gets rubbed over and over, the skin gets thick and hard, creating a callous. After the callous develops, you don’t feel the rubbing so much anymore because of the hardness that has formed.

The same thing can happen to our hearts. God speaks to us through a sermon we hear, a passage of Scripture we read, or something a friend shares with us, and our hearts are pricked. Maybe they get pricked and pricked. Sometimes our hearts have been pricked so many times and we’ve ignored it so long that we don’t even feel the prick anymore. We’ve built up a callous to conviction. Our hearts have become hard.

Have you found yourself ignoring the prompting of the Holy Spirit, hoping that feeling of conviction will just go away? It will with time . . . but that’s not a good thing. If you keep ignoring it, your heart will become hard and you won’t feel the prick anymore. And when you realize that has happened, it will be the saddest day of your life. Don’t let your heart become hard by ignoring it when the Holy Spirit convicts you of sin in your life.

DISCUSSION STARTERS

When have you had a callous or seen someone else with a callous before? What caused it to form?

Why should we feel glad when we feel convicted of a sin in our lives?

How can we make sure our hearts stay soft toward God?