It’s a very risky thing to suppress the truth when the word of God comes to you.
If I don’t receive His word to me today, I might not be able to hear Him speak so well tomorrow. Heart-hardening = hearing loss.
He says, “Today if you hear My voice, do not harden your hearts” (Heb. 3:7-13), because we do not have the guarantee that we will even be able to hear His voice in a year or two if we keep refusing Him. “Today,” explains the author of Hebrews, “lest any of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (Heb. 3:13).
In C. S. Lewis’ The Magician’s Nephew, the first book of the Chronicles of Narnia, Aslan (a lion depicting Jesus) explains to a boy that his uncle cannot hear the truth anymore; he has repressed it for too long. Aslan says something like this to the boy: “When I talk with you, you hear My words. But when I talk to him, he only hears an animal roaring.”
We were made to have vibrant hearts that leap when we hear His voice! Sin hinders our ability to hear. We imagine we can cling to a little bitterness, foster a bit of envy, enjoy some immorality…and then later pick where we left off with God. But we have no such guarantee! Our hearing is hampered as we resist conviction, and we might not be able to hear Him at all if we continue to willfully sin. No wonder Paul says, “He has now reconciled you…to present you before Him holy and blameless…if indeed you continue in the faith…steadfast” (Col. 1:22-23).
One of my favorite IHOP choruses goes like this:
“Your love is not a concept, it’s a Burning Heart that demands a response
So take me past the language, and put deep in me a desire for abandonment.”
Love demands a response. Heart-hardening = hearing loss. My ability to hear Him is affected by my response to Him.
What kind of response is He looking for? Simply a real and humble one. I think He says to us, “Let go of all that pretending nonsense. Be real with Me. It’s the real you I died for.”
When I was 14 years old I began falling into some sin. Shaken by my desire to continue in it, I confided in one of my sisters, who gave me powerful advice. It radically rescued me out of the trap of the evil one. She said, “You need to pray for a hatred of this sin.”
That night I began praying that God would give me a hatred of the sin, and a couple of days later, I found myself refusing that sin. I could not continue in it because God was changing my heart.
We do not have to fight the war against sin alone. If we will open to Jesus, and ask Him to give us a hatred for sin, He will help us. He will fight jealously for us and with us.
I don’t ever want to stop hearing Him. I don’t want to harden my wounded heart with bitterness. I want to just open my bleeding heart to Him and let Him speak into it… then do whatever He says.