Keeping a soft heart

Yesterday we saw how God wants to give us a soft heart of flesh, responsive to him. Hard stubborn hearts of stone are closed to God and the things he is doing.

A good example of this is that after Jesus was raised from the dead he came to the disciples who were struggling to believe he had been resurrected and ‘he rebuked them for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to believe those who had seen him after he had risen’ Mark 16: 14. Before his crucifixion, Jesus had told the disciples many times that he would be put to death but that on the third day he would rise from the dead.  Now some of their own friends told them they had seen the risen Lord but still they refused to believe. The disciples had stubbornly hardened their hearts to the truth and Jesus rebuked them for this.

There will often be things we do not understand about God.  Let’s face it if we understood God completely he wouldn’t be God.  However stubbornly refusing to believe something may be of God is unbelief and unbelief is the killer of faith.  It is faith that pleases God (Hebrews 11:6) and he hates unbelief because it robs the believer of what he is doing. 

All down the centuries God has been doing amazing things that may not be in the Bible but that does not mean they are not God inspired.  Today things such as gold teeth, gold dust, jewels appearing and cent coins sticking to walls are all happening increasingly but none of them are in the Bible.  Stubbornly refusing to believe they are of God means we may miss out on a blessing and the wonder of God being God. 

All the stories of God’s miraculous workings seem unbelievable whether it is feeding 5000 men plus women and children with 5 loaves of bread and 2 small fish or Jesus walking on the water or calming the storm.  If we only believe what we can see and understand God becomes rather small not Almighty.

On the other hand we must not be gullible and believe everything that is happening is of God but nor do we need to fear that which we cannot understand.  Instead we need to turn to the Bible and let the Holy Spirit help us understand or assure us of His workings. We may need to look at principles such as ‘God only gives good gifts to his children’ to help us rather than specific examples.

Let us seek to not only let the Holy Spirit give us a new heart of flesh but to maintain it by trusting him to help us when things seem unbelievable.  Let us guard our hearts against unbelief and keep an open, trusting attitude to our Father who loves us so much.