Resistance Gives Way To Repentance

You stubborn people! You are heathen at heart and deaf to the truth. Must you forever resist the Holy Spirit? That’s what your ancestors did, and so do you! Acts 7:51

STEPHEN STOOD BEFORE the high priest surrounded by people who were well aware of the facts of their Jewish history. But Stephen started at the beginning, tracing his people’s repeated rejection of God’s law and his prophets, and finally their crucifixion of the Messiah. And they didn’t appreciate it at all. “They put their hands over their ears and began shouting. They rushed at him and dragged him out of the city and began to stone him” (Acts 7:57-58).

Perhaps the hardest, coldest heart surrounding Stephen that day was that of a young man named Saul who “was eager to kill the Lord’s followers” (Acts 9:1). He was there, resisting the Holy Spirit along with the rest of the crowd. But Saul’s resistance would not get the final word in his life. The day would come when his blind eyes would be opened and he could no longer refuse the Holy Spirit. It was God’s intention for Saul to become his “chosen instrument to take [his] message to the Gentiles and to kings, as well as to the people of Israel” (Acts 9:15). Saul later explained that, “God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6, ESV).

The Spirit is able to overcome blinding resistance and rebellion. That is how you were drawn to Christ, and that is how your children will be drawn to Christ. God draws us to him externally by bringing us into contact with Christ in the Word. And he does so internally by overcoming our rebellion so we can see Christ for who he really is.

As parents, our job is to make the Word known and to display Christ and his work on the cross as clearly as we can while we pray that God will do his humbling, teaching, resistance-overcoming work in our children’s lives.

Lord, as I think about the people who heard your Word at Pentecost and were cut to the heart, and then think of these people who heard your Word and remained “heathen at heart and deaf to the truth,” I realize that it is your Spirit who cuts through resistance and convicts of sin. So, Lord, I ask you to send your Spirit to cut through any resistance that may remain in ________. Soften any stubbornness; heal any deafness that keeps ________ from embracing and following you.