What does hardness of heart mean

Have you ever met someone who felt they were wronged and refused to forgive the offending party? Consider forgiveness withheld to be a blaring siren, warning of impending danger. Below are three Bible verses concerning forgiveness. Personalize, memorize, or pray them to help in the battle against a hardened heart due to unforgiveness.

But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. Luke , " So watch yourselves. Indifference can be an indicator of a hardened heart. Some folks find themselves shut down to God, the church, the Bible —even other people. God, in His goodness, allows for turnarounds.

He changes indifference into a fire that burns for the world to see. He can take the emotionless and cause praise to travel over our lips and joy to emanate from us. If we find ourselves or a loved one living with indifference, recognize the warning signs first. Then, talk with someone who will offer godly counsel.

Pray and be honest with God. He can handle it. God will hear. Pride often indicates a hardened heart. This form of self-protection can be bold or quiet. Ultimately, pride leads us to trust ourselves more than God. We might notice a refusal of His wisdom or the correction of others, too.

We need God. When we realize this and lean on Him versus ourselves, we find freedom and often a softened heart. For an example in the Bible, read through Daniel 5 , paying special attention to verse Jesus ministered to singles and the masses. He served many. Miracles happened. Lives were changed.

Can you imagine missing that opportunity? Oftentimes, a hardened heart will cause us to do just that. Several Bible verses describe missed miracles and ministering opportunities—and the grief a hardened heart brings Jesus. We can jump in and get involved once again.

The Bible contains many verses about the heart. Therefore great wrath came from Yahweh of Hosts. Yes, thank the Lord, a hardened heart can change! Every saved soul exemplifies this, as do the disciples. What about you? To fully understand what the Scriptures are intending, it is important to understand what the heart is both physically and then in the spiritual sense too. The heart is a hollow muscular organ that pumps blood throughout the blood vessels to various parts of the body by repeated, rhythmic contractions.

This sounds pretty simple and if I asked for your definition you might say that the heart is what keeps the blood moving and is the life source of the body. So, to state the obvious, when Scripture talks about the heart it is not only describing that muscle that is going thump, thump, thump in the body but is also describing out inner being that includes our emotions, our intellect and our moral make up.

So when the writers of Scripture talk about a hardened heart they are not obviously talking about the physical heart but a hardness of our inner soul that is resisting the will of Almighty God. Sin is ultimately the cause of a hard heart. Sin often leads to pride which leads to individuals that are more interested in trusting in their own self than in putting our trust in God. One clear passage about the combination of pride and the heart is in Obadiah 3.

Obadiah 3 says,. This passage is a picture of pride which means to elevate ourselves instead of elevating God leading to a hard heart. The pride evident here had led to deception which happens when we think that we do not need God but can handle things on our own.

Related reading: 5 Biblical Consequences of Sin. There are many examples of a hard heart throughout the pages of the Scriptures. Another glaring example of this is the story of David and Bathsheba. One interesting part of the story is that it becomes obvious that David does not even initially feel guilt or remorse for the sins that he has committed.

He has moved along with his life and has even taken Bathsheba for a wife and about a year passes before God sends Nathan the prophet to talk with David. This dialogue is written out for us in 2 Samuel 12 when Nathan comes to King David with a story for the wise King David to hear and rule on. Nathan tells David the story of a rich man that had taken everything from a poorer neighbor.

The rich man in the story ends up being King David and the poor man is Uriah the Hittite. David had been living with this sin for many months as we know that his illegitimate son had already been born and David had married Bathsheba but now David finally comes to see it for the sin that he committed. He finally repented 2 Samuel and asked forgiveness from God and we can see that confession in the great chapter of Psalm That is the way that Satan tries to bring us down too.

Maybe our stories are not as graphic as David and Bathsheba but Satan knows that unconfessed sin leads to broken communication with God. Share on facebook. Share on twitter. Share on linkedin. Share on email. Share on print. By: Sacha Alexandre Mendes. This is the first and most obvious characteristic perceived in a counselee with a hardened heart.

He does not obey God. However, disobeying is not exclusive to a hard-hearted counselee. Consider all the characteristics together to get a better understanding of a hardened heart. Immediately following the second plague, Pharaoh demonstrates the typical pattern of a hardened heart. After relief from tough circumstances, a counselee with a hardened heart does not change and insists in the same way. They are not looking for an inner change, but outer relief. A person with a hardened heart does not recognize the spiritual realities around him.

A hard-hearted person cannot see the way God is working in their situation, even though close family, relatives, and friends are telling him so.

Your counselee is looking for something. I risk saying that he is even looking for something from God of course, he looked for a biblical counselor. However, he is not willing to hear the whole counsel of God.

Pharaoh did not believe that the livestock of Israel would not die from the plague. He sent people to check in anticipation to see the failure of the Word of God. Counselees with a hardened heart expect the Word of God to fail. A hard-hearted counselee despises the warnings of Scripture as if the Word of God was not true. Usually, there is an overemphasis on the mercy of God, expecting His holy judgment to fail.

Halfway through the plagues, Pharaoh is miserable and yet is still hardened. Hard-hearted counselees will not soften despite severe pain. Expect to see your counselee under severe pain and still stubborn in his sin. Just like Saul 1 Sam. Is this the first step towards real change? It could be!