Supernatural Transformation: Change Your Heart Into God’s Heart (9 page)

Consider the meaning of the Greek word translated
“hardness of heart”
in Mark 16:14, which reads,
“
Later [Jesus] appeared to the eleven as they sat at the table; and He rebuked their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they did not believe those who had seen Him after He had risen.” This Greek term especially indicates “destitution of spiritual perception.” We would not necessarily think of Jesus’ disciples as having “hardness of heart,” except, perhaps, for Judas Iscariot. The other disciples obviously made mistakes, lacked faith, and failed to understand Jesus’ teachings at times. But hardness of heart?

Yet note again the implication of the Greek term for “hardheartedness”: “
destitution
of spiritual perception.” To be “destitute” is a serious condition. The word indicates a lack of spiritual discernment or sensitivity, a deficiency of understanding in relation to spiritual truth. This deficiency blocks our knowledge of the true nature of God and Jesus, limits our intimacy with God, prevents His purposes from being fulfilled in our life, and causes us to neglect or disobey His commands.

The fulfillment of the greatest commandment of all—to love God with our whole being, and to love other people as ourselves (see, for example, Mark 12:29–31)—is hindered by hardness of heart, because a lack of spiritual perception will distance our heart from God and other people. Ask yourself: “Is my heart soft and yielded to God?” “Where might my spiritual perception be blocked due to a hardness of heart?”

Love Grown Cold

I believe we are living in a season in which God is bringing “acceleration” to every area of our life, as well as a movement of miracles, signs, and wonders never before seen. By
acceleration
, I refer to a more rapid transition to greater levels of faith and a faster heart transformation that enables us to function in higher dimensions of the supernatural realm. I believe that the two movements of the glory of God—the former glory (represented by the miracles of the Old Testament) and the latter glory (represented by the miracles Jesus predicted would occur in the church)—are coming together in a dual manifestation. However, I also believe that we are living in the times Christ spoke about when He prophesied that wickedness would increase:
“And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold”
(Matthew 24:12).

The concept of love “growing cold” refers to a hardened heart—and this is a sign of the end times. As we noted earlier, when God created human beings, He gave them a heart after His own heart; but when they disobeyed God, their heart was corrupted, and humans became filled with sins—including pride, immorality, a lust for power, and so forth—the same sins we see reflected in our society today. To a certain degree, this end-time coldness is the reason why some people are no longer sensitive to genuine love—in their heart, they lack empathy for other people’s physical, emotional, or spiritual pain. They are not attuned to God, His Word, or His will.

Recovering the Heart

Yet the new birth in Christ enables us to recover—through supernatural transformation—the heart that the first human beings lost. Spiritually, God views us through the righteousness of the resurrected Jesus. However, as we have seen, the transformation of our inner being is also a progressive, daily process that includes all areas of our life.

Since we live in the midst of a fallen world, where sin operates and corruption destroys, we must watch over our heart to keep it from slowly growing cold and becoming hard from exposure to the false perspectives and negative attitudes of people around us, or as we react to the troubles and crises occurring on earth—from economic declines to natural disasters. We must allow God to soften the areas of our inner being that are still hard due to the effects of our sinful nature and the wrong attitudes we’ve accepted and allowed to become entrenched in our heart over the years.

God Will Circumcise Our Heart

Our heavenly Father has given us these great and life-changing promises:

And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.
(Deuteronomy 30:6)

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
(Ezekiel 36:26)

Spiritual “circumcision,” whose meaning we will explore in this chapter, takes away the barriers between God and us (and between us and other people) so that we may love the Lord with our whole being. God will give us a
“heart of flesh”
in exchange for a
“heart of stone,”
and then we will
“live”
—in a true and full sense.

The Condition of a Hardened Heart

Above, we looked at the instance following Jesus’ resurrection when He rebuked His disciples for their hardheartedness in disbelieving those who had seen Him alive after His death on the cross and subsequent burial. There is also a previous reference in the Scriptures to the disciples’ hardness of heart. In Mark 6:52, we read, “For they had not understood about the loaves, because their heart was hardened.”

Here is the background to that statement: Christ had just performed the great miracle of multiplying five small loaves of bread and two fish, so that there was more than enough food to feed the five-thousand-plus people who had gathered from surrounding cities, listening eagerly for a number of hours to Jesus’ teachings and receiving healing. (See also Matthew 14:14.) Yet, even after the disciples had seen these demonstrations of supernatural provision by Jesus, they continued to be spiritually blind regarding who He was and how He would provide for them—as demonstrated by what occurred next.

Jesus had sent His disciples ahead of Him by boat to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, while He stayed behind so He could pray in solitude. During the night, the disciples encountered a strong wind, and they struggled as they rowed against it. Then, Jesus came to them, walking on the water. When He entered the boat with them, the wind stopped.
“
[The disciples] were greatly amazed in themselves beyond measure, and marveled. For they had not understood about the loaves, because their heart was hardened” (Mark 6:51–52). In this verse, the Greek word for
“hardened”
is apparently derived from the name of a kind of stone. The term literally means “to petrify”; figuratively, it means “to render stupid or callous,” “to blind,” or “to harden.”

Corruptive “Leaven”

Not long after the incident on the Sea of Galilee, Jesus again miraculously multiplied food and fed four thousand people. (See Mark 8:1–9.) Seemingly, the disciples still had not gained spiritual perception about Jesus’ deity based on His massive provision for the multitudes. And Jesus soon
“
charged [the disciples], saying, ‘Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees…’” (Mark 8:15). What was this
“leaven of the Pharisees”
?

In the physical world,
leaven
is “a substance (as yeast) used to produce fermentation in dough or a liquid.” When yeast is mixed with dough, it permeates the batter. Jesus’ statement would likely have reminded His listeners of the annual Jewish Feast of Unleavened Bread, which God had ordained the Israelites to celebrate, as a reminder that they should remove sin (represented by the leaven) from their lives. (See, for example, Exodus 12:17–20.)

What form of sin was Jesus referring to in regard to the Pharisees? The book of Matthew records,
“Then
[the disciples]
understood that He did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of
the
doctrine
of the Pharisees and Sadducees”
(Matthew 16:12). On another occasion, Jesus told His disciples,
“Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is
hypocrisy
”
(Luke 12:1). In effect, the “leaven” Jesus was referring to was the hypocrisy of the religion practiced by the Pharisees, which corrupts the integrity of the heart. For further insight into this corruptive “leaven,” let us read what the apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthian believers:

Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump [“unleavened batch”
niv2011
], since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
(1 Corinthians 5:7–8)

So, in various places in the Bible, leaven symbolizes false teachings, hypocrisy, malice, and wickedness—erroneous ideas and sinful attitudes and actions that have the potential to spread to large numbers of people, just as yeast spreads throughout a batch of dough.

Twice, the disciples had witnessed the multiplication of bread and fish by Jesus, and they had personally distributed the “miracle” food to thousands of people. However, I believe their hearts had been so hardened by “religious” and cultural perspectives and attitudes that they lacked spiritual perception of the supernatural events unfolding right in front of them. The religious leaven prevented their eyes from being open to spiritual truths about God the Father and God the Son. It is my view that a great portion of the church is in the same condition today. Any believer who doesn’t continually seek the transformation of his heart, and who isn’t ready to receive the new things God is doing during these last days, is at risk of falling into the same state.

The hardened heart does not see, hear, or perceive the
spiritual realm or spiritual matters.

“Stiff-necked” People

In the Old Testament, the Israelites often manifested hardened hearts, and they were referred to at various times as a
“stiff-necked people.”
For example,
“The L
ord
said to Moses, ‘I have seen this people, and indeed it is a stiff-necked people!’”
(Exodus 32:9). Perhaps God wrote the Ten Commandments on stone tablets because His people had hardened their hearts to the point that they weren’t able to perceive His presence or discern His will. Furthermore, due to bad “leaven” in their lives, they failed to recognize who God really was and what He desired for them, and they turned their hearts away from obeying Him.

God has always desired to write His commandments on the hearts of His people, because it is the only way they can truly love and obey Him. Sadly, at about the same time God was writing the Ten Commandments on the stone tablets with His own finger in the presence of Moses on Mount Sinai (see Exodus 31:18), the people of Israel were rejecting God and worshipping a golden calf that they had asked Aaron, God’s high priest, to create. (See Exodus 32.) In essence, they were refusing what God Himself had written, or ordained, for them. Even today, many people reject the true Word of God for a religion of their own making.

In the New Testament, when Stephen gave his address in the power of the Holy Spirit to the Jewish leaders of the Sanhedrin, he said,
“You
stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you”
(Acts 7:51). And God can say the same regarding many of the people in the church today. They have hardened their heart toward Him, demonstrating an independent spirit, rebelliousness, and disobedience to His precepts. Consequently, they have “grieved” the Holy Spirit. (See Ephesians 4:30.)

In the Western church, many people do not seek a manifestation of God’s supernatural revelation or His supernatural works. Some people are indifferent toward the idea of experiencing the power of God’s Spirit, while others reject the legitimacy of the idea outright. Many believers simply want to hear God’s Word preached and to practice certain customs and traditions associated with going to church, so that they may remain comfortable and entertained. They don’t really want the manifest presence of God in their midst, and they don’t want to make the necessary personal sacrifice of dying to their sinful nature in order to grow closer to God.

Religion is ultimately birthed from hardness of heart,
and it produces even more hardheartedness in people.

In many ways, this generation’s faith is exercised by the mind alone. It is not exercised by the heart, which has become hardened and therefore does not produce life. A hardened heart is the reason why some people can hurt others without even realizing it; or, if they do realize it, they fail to care. How many people are hurting their loved ones, friends, and associates because their own heart has been hardened? We see parents and children, husbands and wives, pastors and church members, employers and employees, and so on, all hurting one another.

What Causes the Heart to Harden?

Hardness of heart is symptomatic of the corrupt sinful nature that human beings inherited due to the fall of humanity. Again, such hardness separates us from God and causes us to become fixed in mind-sets and attitudes that are contrary to the grace, life, and power of the Holy Spirit. The following are some ways in which hardness of heart manifests in people’s lives.

1. Repeatedly Committing Sin

The writer of the book of Hebrews said, “But exhort one another daily, while it is called ‘Today,’ lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin” (Hebrews 3:13). As I’ve studied the Scriptures, I’ve compiled and developed various definitions of sin, such as “to miss the mark,” “to disobey God,” “to offend the Lord,” and “to violate God’s law.” Each time we sin, something of God in us weakens or dies. And when we commit a particular sin repeatedly, without repentance, we open the door of our heart to the enemy, allowing the devil to introduce some leaven of corruption, which causes our heart to become hardened.