Hard Hearted Mercy

Jesus replied, "Moses permitted divorce only as a concession to your hard hearts, but it was not what God had originally intended.

Think about it, my heart can get so twisted and messed up that God’s original intention gets lost to the point where He chooses to make concessions for my hard heart. That blows my mind. There is the real possibility that my heart can become so hard toward God that He has to step back from his original intention, acknowledge the hardness of my heart, and lay out my life’s path to accommodate my heart’s refusal to submit to Him.

My first response is to ask, “Where are the hard, dead spots in my heart?” What do you intend for me that my heart, in sin, is so twisted up, that You have said, “Okay, here’s what we are going to change so you don’t totally and utterly destroy yourselves?”

For someone who’s pursuing after Jesus, seeking to live a life that is right, the idea that there may be something in my heart that is so entrenched, so hard, that Abba has to make allowances for it so I don’t utterly destroy myself is sobering to say the least. May the one who knows the beginning from the end continue to refine us until we become spotless and pure.