Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation. Hebrews 11:1
When was the last time you heard news that seemed too outrageous to be true? God says that anything is possible because He is God and there is none other. We know this is true until it gets personal. Then, unbelief plagues us all.
Humans can’t walk on the surface of the waters, yet Jesus did and Peter joined Him. The sea can’t be parted for people to pass through, yet the Israelites walked on it from one side to the other. A leper shouldn’t be able to dip seven times into a dirty river and come out disease free, yet Naaman saw his own flesh transformed. And finally, a dead man can’t walk out of a tomb alive, but Jesus did it!
Where has unbelief eaten away your faith? Where have you closed the eyes of your spirit? What have you accepted as normal that God wants to transform into something supernatural? The resurrection happened and the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is ours, God says.
What are we missing that we were destined to experience?
On Maundy Thursday, it’s good to reflect on what life would be like without Jesus. What would I be like if I’d never repented of my sin and lived the way I wanted to live?
What can anyone expect who doesn’t see his sin, repent, and ask God for pardon? I can’t help but think of that as I see Jacob reap what he sowed. Jacob took advantage of his father’s blindness to deceive him. But some time later, Laban took advantage of the cover of night to deceive Jacob. God instituted a sowing and reaping world and however I break God’s law against others, I will bear the consequences of another breaking God’s law against me.
Then Jacob told Laban, “Give me my wife that I may go into her, for my time is completed.” So Laban gathered together all the people of the place and made a feast. But in the evening, he took his daughter Leah and brought her to Jacob, and he went into her. Genesis 29:21-13
What’s absent from the story of Jacob is repentance. He didn’t own his sin of deceit against his father and brother. He didn’t confess it to his mother. Instead, he fled home to spare his life from the wrath of his brother. History was repeated.
It’s easy to say, “I’m sorry.” It’s harder still to really mean it. It’s difficult to comprehend what it took for Jesus to forgive my sin and take it away from me so it no longer defines my life. While there are some consequences of sin I endure by the grace God makes available to me, God has removed a vast amount of others. His mercy, once applied to my life, saved me from the ravages of past sins.
What sin are you running from? Fleeing without repenting guarantees nothing but the assurance that you will reap consequences wherever you land next. David exclaimed, “Where can I go from your presence?” That is a comfort for the repentant and a curse for the arrogant who believes he can outrun God’s spiritual laws.
No matter how many Good Fridays I celebrate, I will never understand the depths of your mercy. Amen
Journal Question: Think of the ways you describe your worst mistakes. “I can’t believe I did that! I’m so stupid.” Many think this is repentance. Is it possible that you have not asked God to help your heart feel what He feels about the offense you committed? Mercy follows true repentance.
What can be done to deal with the lies that dominate our thinking? Can we be set free from long-time captivity? The Apostle Paul weighs in.
The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:4-5
He refers to weapons that are at our disposal. They are not weapons the world uses ~ physical things we can hold in our hands. They are spiritual weapons, invisible yet effective, because they demolish thoughts that run contrary to the knowledge of God. ‘Demolish’ is not a lightweight concept either. It means to bring something down with violence. It’s what happens to a tall skyscraper when a demolition experts strategically places dynamite in just the right places and then pushes a button. The entire structure implodes to dust.
It’s important for me to understand what, exactly, implodes. Paul uses the words ‘arguments and pretensions.’ These come from the root word for logic, or mindsets. A mindset is the way each of us processes information. It’s the way we think, reason, and make conclusions. Mindsets are formed over a lifetime, over decades of experiences in a fallen world. We didn’t set out to think like Christ.
Have you come up against a person with a depressing mindset, a negative mindset, a paranoid mindset? You know that it is ironclad. Get in an argument with them and they can’t see the truth. They won’t budge no matter how many hours and days you try to reason with them. The only cure for a broken mindset is an application of the Word of God. It is sharp and powerful for exposure, conviction, and then demolition.
Oh, that I would always be willing to have my mind washed by the water of the Word, to be humble and realize that my ‘mindset’ needs to be offered to God as a clean slate. Jesus modeled this way of life. Though He was God and His thoughts were perfect, He still did not exercise equality with His Father, but sought God’s mindset in all things.
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. Philippians 2:5-6
Am I willing to lay down my points of view, my opinions, and my beliefs at the foot of the cross? Fragile egos should not get in the way of what needs demolishing in order to be re-fashioned God’s way.
Every single one of us have to fight a series of pet lies that emanate from our stories. We cling to them tenaciously because they feel so true. We believe the life patterns we’ve witnessed prove them to be true.
Though we embrace Christ, the One who is Truth, our mind is still fraught with tiny fortresses built upon the lies that control us. If I want to know which ones are specific to me, I can listen to my own self talk. I tell on myself all the time. Here are some common ones.
“My past will always plague me.”
“God forgives sins, yes, but not mine.”
“Everyone in my family says I’m a loser. They have to be right because they all agree.”
“I’ve prayed so long about this. God has done nothing so He can’t care about me.”
“Things won’t ever work out for me. Too much of my life has passed.”
Just like the power of inner vows, these lies put us on the railroad tracks to nowhere. We are stuck in their ruts until we are humble enough to realize that feelings don’t write truth and we don’t know more than God. When I cling to my lies, I’m insisting that God is wrong, that He is a liar. You might think that to be strong language. But when I disagree with what God says, and He is Truth, I believe His words to be untrue.
There is a passage in 2 Corinthians that perfectly describes what happens when we have beliefs that grate against God’s words. Tomorrow, we’ll explore the passage. The fabric of deception is critical for any believer to grasp. We must know what the lie is, where it came from, why I hold onto it with a tight fist, and how it adversely affects my life. Is there anything powerful enough to break the stronghold? Especially when it’s directed my life for decades? Yes!
Between now and tomorrow, see if you can name three lies that contradict what God says is true. It will be about Him, about you, or your future. Let’s set the stage for a new tomorrow. God is waiting, eagerly, to see lies broken and His people freed from the grips of deception.
Spoken with an evil intent, cursing words are words meant to inflict harm. When we hear them as an adult, we do better at sifting them through the grid of God’s Word. Though they momentarily wound us, we know that we should not own them. If we know Jesus well enough, we will know not to repay evil for evil and retort with cursing words of our own. We will know to forgive and bless, the very opposite of what we want to do. Our love for Jesus, and remembering how radically He forgave us, overrides our flesh.
The reason I have included cursing words as a blind spot, however, is because we heard the most destructive cursing words as children. They were insults delivered by parents, relatives and friends.
“You’re always in my way.”
“You were a surprise baby. We never wanted another child.”
“You are stupid.”
You’ll never be as successful as your brother.”
You can fill in the blanks now from personal experience, right? Because the nature of children is to believe what they are told, the words stick. They define our self-concept and we live out their predictions.
Cursing words will continue to impact us until we decide to quit owning them, forgive the ones who spoke them, and ask Jesus to wash the effects from our hearts and minds. Cursing words will quit harming us if we choose to believe God over the ones who spoke with cruelty. As children, we accumulated opinions, judgments, and biases that were not of the kingdom. We didn’t know that what proceeds out of the heart of imperfect people can be utter foolishness, leading us into darkness.
What comments, nicknames, or insults still define and torment you – to this day? Isn’t it time to shed the judgements, to believe what God says over what people said? Ask your divine Counselor to help you work through the hurt and then help you forgive. After you relinquish your right to make them pay, bask in the scriptures and ask Him to write the beautiful realities of your identity in Christ into the fabric of your heart.
Like a flitting sparrow or a fluttering swallow, an undeserved curse goes nowhere. Proverbs 26:2
Lord, one I care about deeply has a heart of stone. You see the walls they built long ago to protect themselves from a world that felt unsafe. Only you can scale the heights to reach them. Only You have the language to woo them in a way that feels non-threatening. The barriers they built have spanned a lifetime.
It is not your desire that anyone live in isolation. They need a new heart, one that You long to give them. You said,
“I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart. Ezekiel 26:36
Lead them to someone who will help them work through their brokenness, who will encourage them to grieve what they’ve never had, and who will offer to carry them to You to be their refuge. You are the one who replaces hearts of stone with hearts that beat, hearts that feel and embrace connection. Give them the faith to respond to Your invitation to dwell in safety. Show them that they need not protect themselves from You. No one who has ever trusted in You has ever been put to shame.
Break through the fog. Melt the ice. Reveal Yourself so that they may see Your glory and live. It is by the name of Jesus that I pray these things. Amen
Much has been said already about people who possess a heart of stone. What hasn’t been explained is how stoney hearts are formed in the first place.
Origins can go all the way back to pre-birth. We know that babies feel things in the womb. If he has heard his mother cry, contemplate abortion, and curse her circumstances, his view of himself and the world will be affected. Before he takes his first gasp of air, he already knows whether or not he is welcome. Instead of eagerly reaching out to bond with his mother, or father, he will hide in some kind of shell. He knows it is not safe to extend himself.
If a small child lives in a violent home, or witnesses repeated episodes of violence outside the home, these cause him to draw into himself. Trauma turns him inward. Trauma freezes development. Trauma isolates.
Living with harsh criticism also creates stony hearts. No child feels safe if he feels he can’t do anything right. He walks on eggshells, always trying to conform to whatever image will earn him approval and peace. He knows he can’t be himself, so he reigns in his thoughts and keeps conversations short. He matures into someone who feels it’s risky to be authentic.
The Gospel is beautiful to everyone who believes. But for those who grew up hiding from others, even more so. They realize that God loves them just as He created them and invites them to come out of the shadows, to shed the grave clothes and step into resurrection light. They are welcomed through adoption. Intimacy with the Father is risk-free. A new child of God breathes deeply of kingdom oxygen and realizes there are no more reasons to walk on eggshells. Perfect Love casts out fear.
Most likely, we are all in a relationship with someone who has a heart of stone. Their needs overwhelm us, their expectations are high even to the point of perfection. There are common characteristics among those who have hearts of stone.
They are incapable of receiving, and giving, love. They walled off their hearts early in life to self-protect. In so doing, they saved themselves from feeling the pain of other’s neglect and abuse. But the self-imposed walls also prevented them from receiving the love others attempted to give. It didn’t feel save to be loved and their reservoir of love still runs on empty.
Those with hearts of stone either won’t let you love them (and will be angry when you try to) or they will let you spend your love but they won’t really internalize it. Tomorrow, their needs will be just as great. Remember this ~ No one can give away what they haven’t first possessed for themselves.
In the middle of a Prayer Mapping Event, a senior woman approached me with tears in her eyes. “I’ve been married for 68 years,” she said. “I’ve tried everything to love my husband over the years but he remains cold. I thought it was all my fault but today, I realize that he has a heart of stone.”
2. They are draining because love doesn’t stick. We call such people ‘bottomless pits.’ It’s like pouring water into a glass with no floor in it. Instead of filling up the container, the liquid drains out all over the floor. If you’re the person who spends time and energy pouring love into them, it won’t take long to feel like it’s a futile endeavor. Every day, you’re forced to acknowledge that everything you did yesterday had no lasting effect. (Only Jesus can cure a heart of stone and that will be the topic in a few chapters.)
Those with a heart of stone believe we should always be there when they need us, that we should make them the center of our world, that we should put our lives on hold until their needs are met. If the one with a heart of stone is an angry person, they won’t request this, they will demand it and make your life miserable if you refuse to give what they believe they are entitled to.
3. They are void of conscience, and therefore, they have no remorse when they have wronged you. God addressed this topic in the book of Isaiah as he described these kinds of people. “Were they ashamed because of what they’ve done? They were not ashamed at all. They didn’t even know how to blush.” Jeremiah 8:12 When you are wronged by someone with a heart of stone, they will be unmoved about the damage they have caused. The best you will get from them is a massive minimization of the offense. Destructive words will be categorized as a joke, or mild insult. You will be labeled ‘too sensitive.’
If you love someone who has never been remorseful for their actions, it may be helpful to consider the reason why. It won’t make the hurt disappear but it will bring some understanding as to the ‘why’ of their absent apology.
Mollie, one of our golden retrievers, came to us at 4 years old with a rough story. Put out in a woman’s backyard, rarely brought in and poorly fed, she was a victim of the heat, cold, and severe weather. Though we certainly spoiled her in every possible way while she was alive, she was needy. She constantly begged for food and pawed someone for attention. Though she came to us a bit withdrawn, once she got a taste of love, she couldn’t get enough. She watched us eat our meal as she sat eye level with the table, her ears perked up, waiting for a morsel of something. She was so hard to resist and we would fall for pitiful eyes. I’d say to Ron, “Just give her one piece so she’s satisfied.” I should have known better. Once she had a bite, the pestering got worse.
People are a lot like that. All of us grow up with imperfect relationships. Those with happier childhoods don’t seem to live with that gaping hole in their heart but if you come from profound deprivation, you are aware of a bottomless pit no one can fill. The more you’ve been hurt, the higher the expectations you have of the people in your life. Why? Probably because the stakes are high. You don’t want to be hurt again so you feel the need to make the test for love and sincerity steep! If you have not found your home in Jesus, you experience needs that feel monumental. You might think that one gesture of love, one compliment, one affirmation will make a dent in making your heart feeling fuller. But nothing satisfies because the void is God-shaped. Other’s compassion can easily morph into an unhealthy attachment.
Are you in an unsatisfying relationship? Perhaps you’d admit that the other person has often come through for you, but they just don’t do it often enough or well enough. What has been meaningful in the past is blurred by your ongoing need for more. You want more proof, deeper proof, that you are important and that their love is true. The unfortunate thing is that the more you need, the more the other person backs up. Anger and distrust are soon to follow.
High expectations are met in the love of Christ, but let me qualify. He has already proven His love. He came to me when I was His enemy. He died for my crimes as if He committed them Himself. He’s given me His heart and nature and shares His eternal inheritance. This love exceeds all expectations. So, I have to be careful that, in my immaturity, I don’t come to God with a list of demands. “If you love me, then You’ll do ‘this.’” His love is already perfect. Picking up my cross is not the same as God withholding. He is not a Father of deprivation but of extravagance.
I must ask God to help me come out from my hiding places, the stony places where I self-protect, and to help me meet Him by faith in all my places of deprivation. It won’t happen in an instant. It will be a journey where I grieve what I didn’t have, press into what He promises, and re-write the expectations of my heart with the Word and the presence of the Spirit. He does make all things new ~ even what we fear has been long dead.
When something bad happens once, we pray it won’t happen again.Let that bad thing become repetitive and we’ll try to figure out what we have to do to stop the cycle.This is where inner vows are formed.“I swear I will never have children and bring them into this awful world.”Or, “I swear I’m going to take care of myself and make a lot of money.”
These inner vows come in all shapes and sizes and have a way of controlling our lives.We follow tracks that align with our vows, and the choices are always outside of trusting God to lead us.We become enslaved to our own words and will remain in captivity to them until we decide to switch tracks and renounce the vows.
We also make blood oaths as children, mingling our blood with our best friend and pleading allegiance. We also swear (make an oath) when we join many organizations; civil groups such as Eastern Star, Masonic Temple, Shriners, sororities and fraternities, etc. All are joined through an initiation process where oaths are taken. Innocent people say the words and fail to see the seriousness of the vows. To swear allegiance to anyone on penalty of death and/or bodily harm is to become a prisoner to them. At the time, this person can just believe they are speaking frivolous words to join a club. Like a game. But Jesus disagreed.
By your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.” Matthew 12:37
He also said, You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn. Matthew 5:33
My father was in the Masonic Order as a young man, but after meeting Jesus, he was convicted of the vows he had taken to join the order. Bravely, he spoke up at the next meeting and biblically defended his choice to renounce his vows and leave the group. It cost him some friendships, but he gained a freedom that we, as his family, grew to appreciate. Through him, we learned that our choices affect not only us but also those who come after us.
Daughters of promise 