30 Days with the Word – January 29

30 Days with THE WORD
January 29, 2021

John 1:1-2, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. He (the Word) was in the beginning with God (NKJV).’

Hebrews 3:7-13, ‘So, as the Holy Spirit says: “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the wilderness, where your ancestors tested and tried me, though for forty years they saw what I did. That is why I was angry with that generation; I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.’ So I declared an oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter My rest.’” See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness (NIV).’

Have you ever had a hard heart? I have. Perhaps that’s why this passage grips me. I remember not being pliable, flexible. I was unusable. I was adorned in a terrible attitude and negativity was unfiltered and fluid.

I also have had people in my life who housed hardened hearts. So tragic how relationships often cannot survive a hardened storm. Webster says ‘unyielding’ and it also means to be calloused and impenetrable. I think there can be a lot of decisions we make that keep us wandering in that wilderness we talked about yesterday due to stony apathy. Just like the Israelites who out of rebellion and stubbornness wasted an entire lifetime drifting like strays and alienated from the best God had for them all along had they not hardened their hearts and their ears to His ways. We can waste a lot of time in limbo, and sometimes, it can even cost us forever.

Daughter, I have had this vivid picture in my head many times during these thirty days we have been wandering through the Word. I see the heart of my Father, chiseled with the pain my insolence has caused Him. It has become significant to me that He has loved His children greatly, and we, in our ignorance and selfishness, have, in return, hurt Him. The visual of my Father weeping over my choices, much like I have wept of things that my children stumbled over or befell them, is causing me to relinquish my grasp to Him. I hope it in some ways has helped you also to see the love of your Father for you.