Let us Guard our hearts from Hardening!

“Yet Pharaoh's heart became hard and he would not listen to them, just as the LORD had said. Then the LORD said to Moses, "Pharaoh's heart is unyielding; he refuses to let the people go.” (Exodus 7:13-14).

I am scare. I am scare to see myself being deteriorated when the Lord exposes all my hidden sins in front of everybody. But I am more scare to see myself refusing to repent my sins like King David and making excuses like King Saul and still wanting to be honored before his people (1 Sam. 15:21, 30). How can a man be so proud of himself that he does not listen to God’s rebuke, refuses to repent his sins and makes excuses of his disobedience? How could King Saul say he didn’t destroy “sheep and cattle from the plunder, the best of what was devoted to God, in order to sacrifice them to the Lord”(v.21)? How could he make such excuse after he disobeyed God’s command? How come we don’t see any indication of King Saul’s repentance? It is because of hardening of heart.

When our hearts are hardened, we become deaf. When our hearts are hardened, we cannot hear God’s words pointing out our sins. We cannot even hear our fellow brothers’ rebuke. Nay, we don’t want to listen to them. Our hardened hearts refuse to listen to God’s voice. Rather, our hardened hearts listen to voice of our sinful nature and keep on committing sins against God. And we keep committing sins not only secretly but not openly because we have become very bold in sinning. Now we got very use to keep on sinning in a way that we have become a slave of sin. You see, our hardened hearts make us slaves of sin in a way that we are being dragged by chain of sin. But a problem is that people around as do not notice that our hearts are hardened. The bigger problem is we don’t even realize that our hearts are that hardened. What must we do?

We must guard our hearts from being hardened. We must always be alerted and examine our hearts with the Word of God. For the Word of God is the sword of the Spirit (Eph. 6:17) that “penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (Heb. 4:12). And when we find out that we do not want hear God’s rebuke and/or fellow brothers’ rebuke, then we must aware and acknowledge that our hearts are hardened. Also, we must breaking up our unplowed hearts (Hos. 10:12) with the Word of God that is like fire and hammer (Jer. 23:29). We must melt our cold hearts and break up my hardened hearts thoroughly with the living and active Word of God (Heb. 4:12). Our hearts must be broken thoroughly with His Word so that we may listen to His Word and be obedient to Him. We must repent our sins. We must shed tears of repentance with His Word, the sword of the Spirit, pierces our hearts. Like mixing wheat flour and water together in kneading, we must mix the Word of God with tears of prayer in order to avoid our hearts being hardened. May God protect our hearts!

As I commit myself to guard my heart from becoming hardened,


Pastor James Kim