Four Conditions Of The Heart

Four Conditions of the Heart

Isa 6:10 Make the heart of this people calloused;

make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes,

hear with their ears, understand with their hearts,

and turn and be healed."

ƒÜ What¡¦s Your Heart Condition?

Ć In 1998 459,841 people or one in every 5 deaths in America were attributed to Coronary Heart Disease. It is amazing what the Lord has allowed the medical field to learn about the condition and repair of hearts. It is very interesting to watch a Dr. take a vein from a persons leg and build a bypass around a blockage, to watch that person have their heart intentionally stopped, worked on, restarted, and see that person only a few days later go home with a new lease on life.

ƒÜ Helen Good Brenneman, well-known devotional writer, speaks of the need of kindness: "There was once a man who had a heart transplant but the operation was a total failure. For the man was a mean man and the heart was a kind heart. His body simply rejected it. The Bible tells us, however, of a heart transplant that was successful. ¡K Ezek 11:19-20 ’And I will give them a new heart and put a new spirit within them. I will take out the stony heart. I will take the stony heart out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh that they may walk in my statutes and keep my ordinances and obey them. And they shall be my people and I will be their God.’"

Ć The English word heart is used 840 times in the Old Testament alone. To say the least, God has a lot to say about the heart. Sometimes the word heart is used in reference to the blood pumping organ in our chest.

Ć Most of the time it is to speak of the seat or center of our emotions, sometimes to speak of our inner person-our spirit, sometimes to speak of our personality.

ƒÜ The widest thing in the universe is not space; it is the potential capacity of the human heart. Being made in the image of God, it is capable of almost unlimited extension in all directions. And one of the world’s greatest tragedies is that we allow our hearts to shrink until there is room in them for little beside ourselves. A.W. Tozar

4 conditions of the heart:

I. A HEART THAT IS HARD.

a. Ephesians 4:17-19 So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.

b. Three key words:

i. Darkened---To cover with darkness-usually intentionally

ii. Blindness---A hardened callous that covers the eyes

iii. Past Feeling-No longer feel pain because the callous numbs.

c. The continual ignoring of the conviction of the Holy Spirit will callous our heart so that we no longer feel the sting of that conviction.

i. As a believer

1. First time committing a sin versus the 100th time.

ii. As a lost person under conviction

1. I have seen people that knew they were lost that no longer felt the conviction of the Holy Spirit when they heard the Gospel presented.

d. Symptoms of a hard heart:

i. Rejecting the preaching and teaching of the Word

ii. Uncompassionate outlook like the Levi and Priest that passed the man who was beaten on the road to Jericho.

iii. An uncooperative spirit towards others who don¡¦t do things "my way" like the Pharisees attitude toward Christ.

When a believer considers how much God has forgiven him, he is able to extend pardon to others no matter what they have done. A Christian husband found this to be true when his wife, who had become an alcoholic, told him of an affair she had had with his best friend 10 years earlier. She said she experienced such feelings of guilt that the bottle was a means of escape. Anger and resentment began to sweep over him, for his wife’s drinking had embittered their children and nearly destroyed their home. He was also deeply hurt by the fact that his close friend had betrayed his trust. Then he remembered Jesus’ words, "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." As he thought of God’s mercy toward him, he prayed for grace to do the Christlike thing. Here is his description of what happened the next time he met the man who had caused him such heartache: "With a sob in my soul, I reached out my hand and gripped his, and for the first time in my life I knew what it was to forgive. I felt a tremendous sense of release as the unbearable weight of bitterness was lifted from my heart. This freedom enabled me to renew my love for my wife, and to overcome the barrier that had arisen between us. When I said to her, ’I forgive you and will accept you just as I did when I pledged to love and cherish you unto death,’ the healing process began its wonderful work."