Bible
Study: Jeremiah 7, 23 to 28. Luke 11, 14 to 23.
A person
whose heart is hardened is one who is beyond persuasion. There is nothing you
would tell him or her that will can change their convictions. Even when you
perform a miracle in their presence, they will not believe. Their minds are
made up already. Preaching to such persons is like trying to pass water through
a brick wall. This was exactly the experience of Jesus in today’s Gospel
passage.
Before their
very eyes, Jesus cast out a demon from a dumb man and suddenly the man started
talking again, yet instead of them to believe in Jesus, they said he was acting
through the power of Beelzebub. In other words, they were accusing Jesus of
being the devil himself.
Jeremiah was
also faced with such. In his best effort to warn the people of Israel of the
impending exile, he was totally frustrated by their hardness of heart. “But
they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked in their own counsels and
the stubbornness of their evil hearts, and went backward and not forward.” Jeremiah
7, 24.
What kind
of heart do you have? Are you still convinced that God loves and cares for you
dearly despite your present challenges in life? Do you still believe in
miracles or are you convinced that there is surely an explanation for
everything? Have you reached a point when nothing touches your heart anymore? Have
you experienced scandal in the past such that you no longer believe there are still
authentic ministers of God out there? Have you stopped going to Church or
stopped praying entirely? These are signs of a hardened heart.
To have
such a heart is to doubt everything about God. It is coming to Church to worship
with suspicion, criticism and anger. Nothing of God’s words gets to you,
instead you dissect and analyse the preacher himself, you see everyone in
church as an hypocrite and you go home further determined to remain in your old
ways.
The only
way out of a hardened heart is to start believing God again as you did when you
were a child, still innocent and fragile. No wonder Jesus recommends that we
must be childlike if we must ever enter the kingdom of God. (Read Luke 18, 17
and Mark 10, 15.)
Let us
Pray:
Lord
Jesus, open my heart to receive you once again. Take out of it the bitterness
of the past that I may not doubt you ever again. Amen.
God bless
you. Good morning. Be Happy. Live Positive. Have Faith. It is well with you.
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