For He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. Today, if you would hear His voice, do not harden your hearts. Psalm 95:7-8.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God (אלהים) says:
If you get stuck in a place and won’t move on you can lose your destiny and miss My Son.
Then the LORD said to Moses, “Why are you crying out to Me? Tell the sons of Israel to go forward. As for you, lift up your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, and the sons of Israel shall go through the midst of the sea on dry land.” Exodus 14:15-16.
When you get stuck in a place you refuse grace. Watch it that you do not get so stuck in ritual you lose the meaning of love. Abraham simply followed Me. I called him your father in the faith and My friend. He was always ready to hear My Word and move with it. When I spoke he was ready and delighted to hear. Mary did whatever I said and treasured it in her heart as favor upon her. She was grateful for My Word and sang of My wonders. David rejoiced in Me and ran with My Word, or should I say sang and danced with My Word? He put the Ark of the Covenant in a tent near his palace with no veil and worshipped before Me and put singers before Me 24/7 singing his beautiful psalms of prayer and praise. And his talents brought out the talents of the singers so they composed psalms too. He raised a tabernacle of praise and no one reprimanded him.
What was the difference between them and the religious leaders of Jesus’ time on earth? They had no relationship with Me.
I know you, that you do not have the love of God in yourselves. I have come in My Father’s name, and you do not receive Me; if another comes in his own name, you will receive him. John 5:42-43.
If you get stuck in a place and won’t move on you can lose your destiny and miss My Son. When you get stuck in a place you refuse grace. Watch it that you do not get so stuck in ritual you lose the meaning of love.
If you recall, Jesus exposed the religious leaders as praying to themselves in pride, putting tradition ahead of My love and violating My Word by their religious traditions, making the Shabbat a day of no compassion and a burden when it was meant to be a sacred and festive day, made to be a sign of that I was their sanctifier, showing our oneness in Covenant love.
No man is infallible that you should believe their word over Mine. I am the only God with the One whom I sent Jesus Christ. We are one. I am your King, your Lawgiver and your Judge, and that is all three branches of government in One everlasting Covenant of love. Don’t get so stuck in what you determine is how to serve Me that you miss Jesus called the people of Israel as sheep without a shepherd and yet they had many religious leaders at that time. There are none so blind as those who will not see when I show up, and even worse, who shut Me out.
When you are bound up in manmade rituals that are called divine you have no love and are very critical of those who do not keep them as you do.
“Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’ Luke 18:10-12.
If today you hear My voice harden not your hearts. Jesus, as I am, for seeing Him you are seeing Me, was very slow to anger, He was filled with compassion. But hard hearts did grieve Him. Why? There was nothing He could do with them.
And He said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save a life or to kill?” But they kept silent. After looking around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and immediately began conspiring with the Herodians against Him, as to how they might destroy Him. Mark 3:4-6.
I promised that one day I would bring you back to Me from where you had strayed and separated yourselves from love and take out your stony hearts and give you sensitive hearts that would hear My voice and I would put My Spirit in you and you would keep My commandments from the inside out. And in Jesus that day has come. But there are many who are still hardening their hearts against Me, even those who declare they love and follow Me. Take heed how you walk and make sure it is not you.
Watch out when you think you know more about Me and are better than everyone else, even than Jesus. The Pharisees and chief priests and scribes sentenced Him, the author of life, to death and felt justified in doing so. Watch yourself lest you fall.
In the parable of the sower that My Son told, worst of all was the hard ground of the pathway which could not even receive the seed. The devil stole it immediately. And Jesus was not just speaking of the ungodly who know nothing about Me here but the religious ones who got stuck in human tradition above My Word, which leads to pride in your “holy” yet burdensome practices that you think assure you of pleasing Me. And here is where pride sneaks in.
Traditional rituals require no faith. I write that the Israelites who refused to enter the promised land with Me had hard hearts of unbelief.
Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called “Today,” so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end, while it is said, “Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as when they provoked Me.” For who provoked Him when they had heard? Indeed, did not all those who came out of Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was He angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief. Hebrews 3:12-19.
And yet they were believers in Me and not pagans to whom these words were addressed.
Believer or unbeliever it makes no difference at all once you have hardened your heart you will certainly miss My Call.
Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me. Revelation 3:20.
What is a hardened heart? Examine your heart with these.
First, a hardened heart is one that has tuned Me out and will not hear My voice. They are not My sheep, they do not follow Me.
The Jews then gathered around Him, and were saying to Him, “How long will You keep us in suspense? If You are the Christ, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe; the works that I do in My Father’s name, these testify of Me. But you do not believe because you are not of My sheep. My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” John 10:24-30.
When Solomon desired to follow Me and know wisdom in his position of king he asked Me to give him a heart that hears. And I gave him that.
All the earth was seeking the presence of Solomon, to hear his wisdom which God had put in his heart. 1 Kings 10:24.
But later pride crept in and the flesh and his heart turned away from Me and he went after other gods and hardened his heart to My voice which had so desired to hear in his youth.
For when Solomon was old, his wives turned his heart away after other gods; and his heart was not wholly devoted to the LORD his God, as the heart of David his father had been. For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians and after Milcom the detestable idol of the Ammonites. Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, and did not follow the LORD fully, as David his father had done. Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the detestable idol of Moab, on the mountain which is east of Jerusalem, and for Molech the detestable idol of the sons of Ammon. Thus also he did for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods. Now the LORD was angry with Solomon because his heart was turned away from the LORD, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice, and had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods; but he did not observe what the LORD had commanded. So the LORD said to Solomon, “Because you have done this, and you have not kept My covenant and My statutes, which I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you, and will give it to your servant. Nevertheless I will not do it in your days for the sake of your father David, but I will tear it out of the hand of your son. However, I will not tear away all the kingdom, but I will give one tribe to your son for the sake of My servant David and for the sake of Jerusalem which I have chosen.” 2 Kings 11:4-13.
His hardened heart was the downfall of My nation that had flourished under David who was a man after My own heart. It never was the same again. It lost ten tribes to Me and two, Dan and Ephraim, permanently for those two tribes led the apostacy to the Baals. Revelation 7:5-8. Hard hearts cause loss of souls and not just one but thousands upon thousands. Look what the Pharisees and Priests did to the people of Israel in leading them to reject Jesus, which is rejecting Me, and choosing Ceasar as their king.
Now it was the day of preparation for the Passover; it was about the sixth hour. And he said to the Jews, “Behold, your King!” So they cried out, “Away with Him, away with Him, crucify Him!” Pilate said to them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar.” John 19:14-15.
And about forty years later, the general who was to be the next Caesar came in and destroyed Jerusalem. Wrong choices have consequences. Be careful what Master you open your heart to. You cannot serve two masters, your heart can only go with one. It will harden to the other.
“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Matthew 6:24.
Above all guard your heart for from it flow the issues of life. Treasure and keep My Word in your heart so that you may not sin against Me.
Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called “Today,” so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end. Hebrews 3:12-14.
When My Word finds no place in you, you are killing My life within you, just as Adam did.
I know that you are Abraham’s descendants; yet you seek to kill Me, because My word has no place in you. John 8:37.
A hardened heart is a heart of doubt and unbelief. A hardened heart does not mix faith with My promises and thus will not go forward with Me to do the life of good deeds I planned for you before you were formed in your mother’s womb. Instead of trusting My good plans and magnificent promises to them, the Israelites chose to say that I had lied to them and would kill them in the promised land by the sword of their enemies. Where they got that idea after all the wonders I had done to rescue them from the slavery of Egypt I do not know but that is what kept them out of the wonderful destiny I had for them. They lost it all by doubt and unbelief and continued to keep their hardened hearts to Me throughout that years they wandered in the desert though I continued to feed and care for them. But they were the ones who chose to wander those forty years rather than complete the wonderful plans I had for them and they blamed Me for their bad choices.
A proud heart is a hardened heart. Pride is an ugly thing and it will cause you to fall. Humility brings riches and honor but pride fences itself in and drives good things away. Pride resists My goodness to establish its own, which it cannot successfully do. I resist the proud because they resist Me and try to take My place in their own and other people’s lives. Pride must establish itself as the top and superior one with no acknowledgment of anyone else’s help.
A hardened heart walks according to the flesh and not according to the spirit. It looks at the temporal and not the eternal. It is easily offended, angered, and will not let go of these things but grows bitter roots that will poison their lives and the lives of those over whom they have influence. I cannot dwell in a hardened heart.
And finally hardened hearts are those that have separated themselves from Me and reject My presence. They do not want a relationship with Me and have only abuse and scornful words to throw at Me. They question My actions and judge Me with no understanding. The do not pray and stay disconnected with Me. This is the way Adam behaved to Me after he separated Himself from Me and took the devil as his master. You will never see him speaking with or acknowledging Me again. The last words he spoke to Me were of blame and accusation for his own sin.
The man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.” Genesis 3:12.
I love you. Is your heart open to Me? If today you hear My voice harden not your heart.