Hebrews 3:7-11
“Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice, Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness: When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in [their] heart; and they have not known my ways.”
The word ‘harden’ means, ‘to make hard, to render obstinate, stubborn.’ When I was a boy growing up in central Texas, I would take off my shoes at my aunt’s house and run around outside in bare feet. As long as I was around the yard, the shoes would stay off. At first, my feet were tender and I walked carefully like there were legos everywhere on the ground. But by the end of the summer the soles of my feet had thick calluses and I was even able to walk on gravel like I had shoes on.
This is what it means, ‘Harden not your hearts.” When you fall into sin, at first your heart is tender and the conscience is reminding you that you are wrong and need to restore your fellowship with God through confession (1 John 1:9). But if you don’t, as God continues to convict of sin, and you continually reject His conviction, your heart becomes hard to the influence of the Word and His Holy Spirit.
Before long, your heart is quite hard and the conviction of the Holy Spirit does not ‘sting’ like it once did in the beginning.
This justifies your heart to go on in sin and eventually you face the consequences of your hardness. Unfortunately, many teens (and adults) do not walk as carefully around sin as we should and when we fall we stay in it too long. The shackles of our sin are on us and we are bound. Sin leads us down a path with devastating consequences.
Let’s you and I stay tender to God’s conviction.
Let’s allow God’s Word to point out where we are straying and let’s not be ‘stubborn’ and stay in disobedience. Ask yourself - what areas are ‘hard’ or where are you developing ‘thick skin’ against sin in your life? Confess them and stay tender.
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