Recognizing a Hardened Heart

There are many people who read books and articles or hear sermons about a hardened heart and immediately start thinking about everyone else in their life, because there is no way they could be talking about them. However, that kind of thinking is a sign of a hardened heart. If we refuse to see the need for healing or growth, our hearts have become hardened by pride.

If we allow our hearts to continue this way, our lives will be unproductive and we’ll be frustrated. The first step in solving this problem is recognizing that there is a problem. We have to realize that we have a hardened heart towards God in one way or another.

We don’t need to condemn ourselves for this. We just need to know if it’s true about us and allow God to work in our lives to fix the problem.

How do we know if we have a hardened heart or not?

One of the best ways to find out is by asking God. He promises to give us wisdom for every area of our lives. He’ll show us where we have shut Him out and help us soften our hearts.

There are ways that we can see where our hearts are hardened in our day-to-day lives. One indicator of a hardened heart is if we need constant validation from everyone around us.

If we always need other people to tell us how good we are, what a great job we’re doing, etc., then we have placed our confidence in man and not in God. What we’re saying is, “God, I know the Bible says that you love me and that I’m righteous in Christ, but I don’t totally believe it, so I’m going to continue to seek love and approval elsewhere.”

This is a spirit of fear and insecurity. We are afraid of the idea that what God says about us isn’t actually true, and it makes us insecure around people. So we have to constantly make sure that we’re on good terms with them.

God created us to get everything we need from Him. If He says that we are loved and approved of, that should be more than enough. When we go around seeking

approval from everyone else, it means that we aren’t putting our faith in our heavenly Father; we’re putting it in man, and we have a hardened heart.

How do we fix this problem?

Through the power and word of God.

The Bible tells us in 2 Timothy 1:7 “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”

The spirit of fear that makes us insecure and timid around people is not from God. That means we don’t have to accept it. We have to resist the need to seek out the approval of man.

The first step is how we talk to ourselves. We need to tell ourselves that we are the righteousness of God in Christ. We don’t just need to do this once a day. We need to do this every time we sense feelings of inadequacy creeping into our minds. Confessing the word of God will cause us to overcome the spirit of fear.

We also need to make a conscious effort to stop asking everyone what they think about every aspect of our lives. We don’t need everyone’s opinion about our

outfit, our hair, our choices, etc. We should seek the wisdom of God and the counsel of strong, godly people and let everyone else’s opinions fall where they may.

When we do these two things, we’ll see our hearts soften towards God. The voice of God will be clearer because it won’t be drowned out by everyone else’s voice. We’ll be more confident because our approval will come from our absolutely loving heavenly Father and
not the fickle opinions of man.

This is just one way to tell if our hearts are hardened. We’ll look at more signs of a hardened heart and how to move past them in the weeks to come.

Keeping a soft heart

The people we’re around the most have the easiest access to our hearts, whether we know it or not. Our coworkers, friends and, obviously, our spouses have the ability to speak directly to our hearts. Hopefully this is a good thing in all of our lives. We need people who can speak the Word and life into us when we lose sight of who we are in Christ.

There are people who do the opposite though. Some people speak negativity and doubt and, because they are close to us, or we respect them, we allow those words into our hearts.

This is so important because we will become like the people who have the most influential voices in our lives. If these people are angry, negative, self-absorbed and filled with doubt, then we shouldn’t be surprised when our behavior becomes a reflection of theirs.

One thing we must know about this truth is that even if we spend our time filling our hearts with the word of God and worshiping Him, we can still have a hard heart because of our relationships.

1 Corinthians 15:33 says, “Do not be deceived: ‘Evil company corrupts good habits.’”

We can spend time cultivating good spiritual disciplines and keeping a sensitive heart toward God just to have it undone by the worldly-minded people around us.

Sometimes we can fight against this by simply removing these people from our lives. This might sound harsh, but if certain people are constantly trying to move our focus away from our heavenly father to the negative circumstances around us, then we don’t need their voices in our lives.

However, sometimes we can’t just walk away from certain relationships. If your spouse is a negative person, then you obviously can’t remove him or her from your life. In these circumstances you have to learn to strengthen yourself in the Lord the way King David did in 1 Samuel 30:6.

Everyone around David was distressed and angry, and they decided to turn their anger to David. Instead of giving in to their anger and believing what everyone was saying about him, David encouraged himself with the words of God.

This is what we should do when the people that are closest to us only seem to speak death. Instead of allowing those words to penetrate our hearts and influence our lives, we simply need to speak the word of God to ourselves. This will keep our hearts from becoming hard towards our heavenly father. It will also help keep our hearts from becoming hard towards the people around us.

Righteousness pt 11

It might seem odd to say this, but most of us don’t give much thought to our thoughts. I know we can have thoughts that don’t have any real significance: like what we’re going to have for lunch. However, I want to talk about the deep thoughts of our hearts. These are the thoughts that will influence the direction of our lives.

We might not think that our lives are the result of our thoughts, but Proverbs 23:7a says “For as he (a person) thinks within himself (his heart), so he is.” Our thoughts determine who we are. So, we can say with certainty that the current state of our lives is a direct reflection of what we think about ourselves and others.

Now that we know this, we should think about the direction our lives will go if the majority of our thoughts are negative, especially our thoughts about ourselves. Not all of us talk to ourselves out loud, but we do in our own minds.

What are we saying about us to us? Do our inner voices sound something like this: “This is as good as it’s ever going to get.” “Nothing ever goes my way.”?

Or is it more serious than that? There are stories about people who deal with depression and anxiety whose constant thoughts are, “I am nothing and will always be nothing.” “I’ve messed my whole life up beyond repair.” These thoughts play like a song on repeat in their heads all day, every day.

There are some of us who live with thoughts like this, and it shapes our whole lives. We never rise above them. It’s like living under a dark cloud where it seems no light can penetrate.

The grace of God can break through that darkness. We are saved and made righteous by grace, and by now we know that righteousness is right-standing with God. It means we are accepted and loved by God.

While the world and the negative people in it have probably treated us like a throwaway and told us that we’re insignificant, God steps in and calls us accepted and precious in His sight. If we have the Creator of the Universe saying that we are important, it probably means that we’re important, right?

This should drastically change the way we think about ourselves. Believing in and meditating on our righteousness in Christ is adopting God’s thoughts about us.

Isaiah 55:8-9 says “‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.’”

We will begin to experience the higher life God has for us when we start to think the higher thoughts He thinks about us.

It’s as simple as this: when we have negative thoughts about ourselves we should say, “I am the righteousness of God in Christ. I am accepted and loved by God.” Say it out loud. When we do this, we are lining up our opinion about ourselves with God’s opinion about us. Try it. I promise it will change your life.