Friday Countdown to Sunday...the Calcified Heart

"This is the day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it."

Good morning everyone! It's Friday and Sunday's coming. I know for a lot of you Sunday means the end of the weekend and the next day you got to go back to work. So lets focus on today...Friday. And celebrate the beginning of a few days off for most of you. Praise the Lord!

While pastoring in Terre Haute, I knew a woman that was diagnosed with FOP (Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva). It's a cryptic disease that slowly, irreversibly turns its victim into a mass of solid bone. It hardens the soft tissues, like muscles and tendons, rendering an ossified suit of armor. As tragic as this disease is, Scripture describes one even worse. The calcification of the will.

Today, I just want encourage you from Hebrews to keep your heart soft and pliable, and not to "harden your hearts"(Hebrews 3:8, 15; 4:7). In the Old and News Testaments, there are many example of God's people hardening their hearts no matter what God did. God would send plagues, war, blessings, prophets to warn them, etc., but the result was often the same. God says to us in His word, "Today, if you will hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts." [Hebrews 4:7 NKJV] Notice, He says, "Today, if you will hear His voice..." In other words, don't wait until tomorrow or the next day...hear His voice now, today. What is implied is the necessity of hearing His voice. When we fail to hear Him...when we get so busy and we refuse to discipline ourselves to hear the voice of God the result is the hardening of the heart...spiritual stiffness...that immobilizes and eventually destroys you.

How do you keep your heart soft? The hearing and doing of God's Word. God's Spirit in the book of James says "Be hearers of the Word, and not doers only." (James 1:22) So hear His voice today...so your heart doesn't slowly calcify. It can happen...it does happen...it will happen if we don't obey His voice.

-Pastor