Supernatural Transformation: Change Your Heart Into God’s Heart (11 page)

“I grew up and started to frequent nightclubs and to use alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine. I also sold drugs. I would use drugs to fall asleep, hoping I would never wake up. By the time I turned twenty, I had already experienced what someone ten years older than I might have, and I no longer wanted to live. Life was a great disappointment to me.

“One day, I went to
a church with my mother in exchange for receiving enough money to go out, but I stayed in the service. That night, I accepted the Lord into my heart—even though I wasn’t really keen on the idea—and then I went to a nightclub. While I smoked and drank, I heard a voice that said,
I’m sorry, Dámari, but you repeated the prayer. You are Mine, and you no longer belong in this place.
This voice continued to speak to me, and, slowly, I followed it. I got rid of my worldly music and clothes and began to tell my friends about God and to deny them if they denied God. My mother’s prayers of the past five years had been answered.

“On that day, seven years ago, I began to live. I went from being a suicidal and depressed drug addict who believed that she was an atheist to being a daughter of God. I stopped smoking, drinking, and cursing, and I began to respond to the voice of God and to have a relationship with Him. Before, I hadn’t believed in the church, in pastors, or in God, but now I serve in my church and love God and my pastors. I was even able to forgive my father and restore my relationship with him. Jesus Christ saved my life and gave me the opportunity to know Him and to guide others to know Him, also.”

6. Lawlessness

Another cause of hardheartedness is lawlessness. At the beginning of this chapter, we read in regard to the end times,
“Lawlessness will abound,
[and]
the love of many will grow cold”
(Matthew 24:12). In the original Greek, the word translated
“lawlessness”
means “illegality” and indicates “violation of law,” “transgression of the law,” “wickedness,” “iniquity,” or “unrighteousness.” It comes from another Greek word meaning “without law.”

Increasingly, our current generation demands to live without beneficial restrictions and laws. One tragic result of this development is that those who are victims of other people’s lawlessness end up hardening their own hearts. Here are some examples of scenarios that are occurring today:

• A wife doesn’t want to live within her marriage covenant, so she has an affair and divorces her husband. Her husband becomes bitter and suspicious, hardening his heart toward other people; he no longer feels he can trust anyone because the one who had been closest to him deserted him.
  

• A pastor chooses to reject integrity and to steal from his church’s tithes and offerings. As a result, people in his congregation or other believers who hear about the incident feel betrayed. In an attempt to protect themselves from further deception and loss, they harden their hearts toward the act of giving, choosing to withhold their finances from even legitimate kingdom purposes.
  

• A woman grows up in a family that is filled with lies and abuse. Consequently, she closes her heart to love, never marrying or bringing children into the world because she doesn’t want to create conditions in which her own children would potentially suffer the same experience.
  

• A father continually fails to correct his son when he misbehaves, eventually making excuses for the boy as he grows older and covering up his son’s lying and stealing. As a result, the child develops an attitude of entitlement and superiority. Hardening his heart, the son never learns to respect other people or to take responsibility for his actions, and he goes through life abusing and hurting others, living only for himself.
  

• A government takes advantage of its citizens over a long period of time, abusing the people’s rights and stealing from them. Therefore, the people’s hearts grow hard; they begin to resist their government and to rebel against authority of any kind.
  

We can see how lawlessness leads the heart to grow cold—and a cold heart can quickly become hardened.

Signs of a Hardened Heart

There are some unmistakable signs that a heart has lost sensitivity and is now hardened. Recognizing these signs will help us to search our own heart for indications of coldness and hardness. It will also enable us to identify people around us who need healing from hardheartedness.

1. A Hardened Heart Does Not Feel God’s Presence

In the Old Testament,
God appeared to Jacob in a dream, telling him that He would be with him and would bless him.
“Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the L
ord
is in this place, and I did not know it’”
(Genesis 28:16). Jacob’s reply is a reminder that we can be in a place where God’s presence manifests but not perceive it. This is an indication of a hardened heart such as Jesus’ disciples had when they didn’t understand who Jesus was, even though He lived in their midst and demonstrated His deity to them.

I have been in church services where God’s presence has manifested and most of the people there were touched (some cried, some received physical healing, some experienced spiritual transformation, and so forth), while others seemed to be cold or hard (they yawned or otherwise acted bored, as if nothing were taking place). Those whose heart is cold or hard are more aware of themselves than they are of God; they are conscious primarily of their own presence and thoughts. Yet, because of their lack of interest in spiritual matters, they miss out on the supernatural manifestation of the One who created them!

It is dangerous to be in a condition in which you are a greater reality to yourself than God is to you. The heart that doesn’t sense God’s presence is often hostile toward manifestations of His presence—resisting them and even rejecting them. When this happens to a once-active Christian, he begins to operate mechanically, without the involvement of God’s Spirit, because religiosity has invaded his inner being. The result is that there is no real life there. For example, a person may simply quote Scripture without exercising genuine faith. He may operate through formality and human rituals that do not demonstrate God’s supernatural power or have eternal value.

To transform the heart, the Word of God must be spoken from
an atmosphere in which God is present.

2. A Hardened Heart Does Not Allow Faith to Flow

“For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.…So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:10, 17). Faith is generated in the heart as we hear and receive God’s Word. Likewise, faith develops in the heart. And, as we have seen, whatever is in the heart will come out in what we say. (See Matthew 12:34.) We rarely speak any word by accident. Our words reveal aspects of our character and the state of our inner man.

Therefore, if the confessions of your mouth don’t express the faith that is in your heart, then your faith is not being allowed to flow. When this happens, a hardened heart is usually the cause. Review the areas of your life that are stagnant or corrupt and compare them to other areas of your life in which God is moving. Where faith flows, the words of your mouth will be full of God’s power, but where it doesn’t flow, your words will not align with His Word; they will not be a reflection of God’s own faith, and therefore they will lack power.

For the most part, the culture of the Western world was built on a foundation that emphasizes and relies on human intellect and reason. That culture does not understand how genuine faith operates or manifests. It regards faith from the viewpoint of the natural world; however, faith is supernatural. As we will discuss in chapter 6, the majority of those who live in Western society are culturally programmed through the educational process to suppress faith in the heart and to operate chiefly from the framework of their intellect. Although there is a proper place for the intellect, which God gave us to use for His glory, we need to return to wholehearted faith that isn’t framed by the intellect and doesn’t reason according to it alone.

Faith functions in keeping with God’s reasoning. As Paul wrote,
“
The foolishness of God is wiser than men” (1 Corinthians 1:25). When we allow faith to flow from our heart, we become unshakable and unstoppable in God’s purposes. For when our heart is set on God, our life will be transformed, regardless of any efforts by the enemy to prevent it.

Faith is not mere optimism; rather, as the Scriptures say, it is
“the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Therefore, our walk of faith is a supernatural one.

3. A Hardened Heart Moves from Commitment to “Wishful Thinking”

Another sign of a hardened heart is that a person will abandon his commitments, disconnecting himself from the projects he formerly participated in with other believers, with his family, with his colleagues, and so forth. His mind is full of desires, but they lead nowhere because hardheartedness has immobilized his will and nullified his motivation. The person loses his passion and is left only wishing for the fulfillment of things that “would be good to do” but never become a reality. He may think something like,
If God wants this to happen, He will
do it
,
or
If this vision is of God, it will come to pass; if not, that’s all right with me.

Many churches are filled with “wishful thinkers” whose hearts have become insensitive to faith and spiritual matters and who therefore never commit to serve others or pursue worthy projects. This is one reason why these churches do not grow or help to advance God’s kingdom. The members are open to the “idea” of a vision, but their heart is divorced from the sacrifice and work needed to build it. Consequently, there is often a great gap between what they say and what they do. They may make a correct confession according to the Word of God but then neglect to act on it in faith and in the power of the Holy Spirit. It is easy to speak words that correspond with faith, but if we don’t follow through with our words, we lack genuine conviction. Anything we say we believe in but don’t act on exposes a lack of integrity within us—we don’t really believe it in our heart.
“Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead”
(James 2:17).

A person’s integrity is measured not by his words but by
the extent to which he does what he says.

4. A Hardened Heart Rebels Against God

Rebellion against God is a clear sign of a hardened heart. However, it is possible for us to rebel against God without recognizing that we are doing so, because our intellect provides us with excuses to justify our rejection of certain commands or instructions He has given us. In addition, we talked earlier about how a person may manifest a spirit of indifference when he does not discern God’s presence. In such cases, the person usually does not become involved in fulfilling the church’s vision by serving others, spreading the gospel, or giving tithes and offerings to God. Sometimes, he simply doesn’t care! Even so, he may begin to criticize the church, its vision, and its leadership. When a believer rebels against God’s delegated authority, he is rebelling against God Himself.

Indifference and a critical spirit are signs of rebellion in a church.

Perhaps your pastor has recently preached a message that are you having trouble accepting. Think about that message carefully. Was it biblically based, and did it describe something that God has established for your own good? If so, why does it bother you? Some people will leave a church because the pastor preached on such topics as giving tithes and offerings, seeking holiness, making a wholehearted commitment to God, or the need for repentance of sin. The pastor didn’t do anything but preach what is written in the Word of God. Consequently, the people were not really offended by the pastor but with God and His commands.

However, since these people were not able to discern the presence of God in His Word, they blamed the pastor for preaching a negative or meddlesome message. Their heart had been hardened in some area or areas, preventing them from receiving the revelation of what was being preached. As a result, their heart was not stirred, and their will remained inactive, and they were kept from humbly submitting to God’s will. Because they were affronted by what the pastor said, they stopped going to the church. Such people will continue to rebel against God and His mandates in various areas of their lives unless they allow God to change their heart. The Scriptures say,
“Let us…not
[forsake]
the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day
[of the return of Christ]
approaching”
(Hebrews 10:24–25).

If someone makes a choice not to believe in God or to obey what He has said, he puts himself into a state of open rebellion against God that is the equivalent of standing before the Almighty and calling Him a liar to His face. That may sound harsh, but how many times have we, in effect, called God a “liar” by our disobedience and rebellion? A rebellious person will defend himself, and his inability to recognize or acknowledge his bad behavior is a sign of a hardened heart that doesn’t want to be forced to accept God’s will and the supremacy of His wisdom—much less surrender willingly to it.

We must realize that every act of rebellion has consequences. And the Scriptures warn us that
“the destruction of transgressors and of sinners shall be together, and those who forsake the L
ord
shall be consumed”
(Isaiah 1:28).