Last week, in Written on the Heart, Part 9, we came to understand that though our hearts have become “stony”, God has not changed. We need to ask God to soften them so He can write there.
Is there anything that could possible keep God from writing on our hearts?
The secret of citizenship is when the law of the country is written on the heart because obedience is not only a legal thing but also an attitude thing. The law and I need to be in harmony and harmony is there when my response to the law is truly from my heart.
So when our telephone connection was not behaving lawfully to its requirements, I had a problem. The telephone was being monitored and for the next two days we were told there would be many calls but we must not pick up the receiver to answer any of them and we must make no calls out.
When the phone rang, by the law written on my heart, I automatically reached out to answer. Then I remembered the warning and pulled my hand back. My problem was me because it was hard to just not do what I had always done and I had never ignored a call.
It was such a simple demand – and so hard.
The first day was the hardest but by the next day I had overcome my heart tugs. By evening I was immune to the ring tone and finally did not even hear the calls. My heart was thoroughly hardened!
Now I understood how Pharaoh “hardened his heart” against every message from God through Moses. At first Pharaoh reacted, then he rejected and finally he plotted to stop all calls. Pharaoh, “hardened his heart” (Exodus 8:15), and over and over, “he hardened his heart.”
Finally, when all Pharaoh’s lies and excuses were exhausted, God called his people out of Egypt but in an extraordinary twist of logic they also hardened their hearts!
They wanted to go back to Egypt, “Would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, where we sat by the flesh pots, and did eat bread to the full.” (Exodus 16:3).
Have you ever asked yourself “Why?”
Why would they want to go back when they had a God-promised future in front of them?
Think about what they had learned early in their lives as Children of Israel (Jacob.) They had learned self-discipline, particular eating habits, particular thought patterns and worship patterns of the God of Israel just as I had learned particular patterns in my relationship to my telephone connection.
However, like my telephone connection, those patterns and habit lines had been intercepted by a complete change of patterns and habits. In my case it was immediate, in theirs it was gradual. The “flesh-pots of Egypt,” full tummies and another culture of worship had been presented during some 300 hundred years of interaction with Egypt.
The difference was in stark contrast to patterns established by God for his Children and “temptation comes when anyone is lured and dragged away by his own desires, then desire conceives and gives birth to sin, and sin when it is full-grown breeds death.” (James 1:15).
The Children of Israel refused to listen and no way would they let God’s writing stay on their hearts. So with incredible insight, God took up the challenge and, instead of writing on dead hearts, he wrote his laws and his grace “on tables of stone written with the finger of God.” (Exodus 31:18).
Always remember that the grace of God is written where the law of God is written (See Exodus 20:6), and it is only “by grace” that we have salvation (See Romans 3:24). So grace and grace alone can melt our stony hearts to make a soft place for God to write. We must accept this grace so that our hearts can be softened and God can write there.
Elizabeth Price
(To access the entire “Written on the Heart” mini-series, please click here.)