“The Heart of the Ungodly Is Hard.”

“The Heart of the Ungodly Is Hard.”

This is very meaningful! It indicates that something ungodly is in our heart as long as there is some hardness to be found there. Unfortunately, there is often something like that in the hearts of converted people. Jesus told even His chosen disciples that their hearts were hardened.

Every hard word deposits something hard in the heart, just as every act of mercilessness, every contradiction, every unused opportunity to ask for forgiveness or to forgive or to show compassion does. Also, every time you answer in a harsh tone of voice! In this way the heart can become increasingly harder. You can become increasingly partially hardened!

In this way more and more things come between you and God and between you and your neighbor; for example, between marriage partners, between parents and their children, between siblings, and between brothers and sisters in the Spirit.

Everywhere, there is a great need for a sincere melting together, because people have judged and criticized their neighbors for years to a greater or lesser extent. Many people have not hesitated to reproach in thought and word, without asking for forgiveness.

People have become so used to this scandalous behavior that they see nothing wrong with it; on the contrary, they have defended it, thinking that it was justified. What darkness! It is from the evil, and evil is never justified!

What superficiality! There is no excuse for anything like that. According to the time one should have understood it better.

As this hardness increases, it requires increasingly more for a hard heart and mind to soften. Therefore be quick to turn around! Begin immediately to humble yourself! Acknowledge and confess your sin, your hardness, and your glaring lack of gentleness! Be sincere in asking for forgiveness at home and abroad, wherever your hardness has been evident.

Your hardness manifests itself not only when you sin against your neighbor, but also every time you hear or read God’s Word without it leaving a deep impression on you with the result that you are gripped by it! If your heart had really been soft and tender, you could not have avoided being gripped by it! That is how living, interesting, useful, and glorious the Word is!!! However, it leaves very little or no impression, on more or less hardened hearts. It is therefore quite natural, and the main reason that many people read very little in the Bible, and even less in the Bible concordance.

The fact that it is so difficult to understand the spiritual meaning of the Word and of God’s actions and dealings is also the result of the heart being hard or hardened. We see this clearly in Mark 6:52 and 8:17. This truth is the answer to many questions and dilemmas.

When your heart is softened, how receptive it then is for all of God’s Word, and how easily you will then hear God’s voice, and how clearly you will then understand God’s intention with all kinds of things, and how inexpressibly happy you will then obviously become! What a glorious future!

There are very few completely hardened brothers or sisters, but there are not so few partially hardened brothers and sisters who are not even aware of it.

May all of them now become completely tender! Let it be so!