When it comes to living for Christ nothing is as important as your heart. I see so many people who are serving Christ but they are as mean as you get. Is this what Jesus said should happen? If you don’t believe the way they do then they criticize you for your personal beliefs.
I am not talking here about people who are concerned about someone’s behavior, I am talking about some Christians who take it further than that. They make it personal by name calling. They say they are doing it in Christ’s name but that is just baloney. They are doing it in pride’s name. Nothing more and nothing less.
Most people are either the prodigal son or the brother of the son. Most people would never want to be called the prodigal son but I beg to differ. See before I turned my life to Christ, that was me all over. I was everything and more of the prodigal son.
Some Christians are trying to be the brother who is doing everything perfect. Here is the problem with that. They are trying to be so perfect that their heart becomes cold just like the brother.
Here is a quick version of the story from wiki:
The Prodigal Son, also known as Two Sons, Lost Son and Prodigal Father is one of the parables of Jesus. It appears in only one of the Canonical gospels of the New Testament. According to the Gospel of Luke (Luke 15:11-32), a father, in response to his demands, gives the younger of his two sons his inheritance before he dies. The younger son, after wasting his fortune (the word ‘prodigal’ means ‘wastefully extravagant’), repents and returns home, where the father holds a feast to celebrate his return. The older son refuses to participate, stating that in all the time the son has worked for the father, he did not even give him a goat to celebrate with his friends. His father reminds the older son that everything the father has is the older son’s, but that they should still celebrate the return of the younger son as he has come back to them.
So again is your heart right? Are you the one who turned your back on God to then repent and come back to him or are you the one who resents how other Christians live once they return because you have lived that way all your life? Do you resent that people who have bad pasts but then turn things around get all of the attention and you get just a little?
If that is you then you NEED to repent NOW!!! Don’t keep this baggage on you. Not allowing your heart to be pure will kill you. It will take you down roads that you do not want to go. The destination of a hard heart is one of a life of misery.
I know a lot of people who have let their heart harden and it is a sad state of being. When you talk to them you can feel their pain. You can feel deep down in their soul that they just don’t care anymore. They don’t trust anyone anymore because they have been hurt way too many times.
When you get to that point, it is tough to pull out of it. Only God can heal that. There is nothing or no one else that can heal that state of mind. The key is not to get to that point and if you do then get out of it as quickly as possible.
So what are you going to do? Are you going to allow your heart to keep getting harder or are you going to open your heart to Christ and allow him to work miracles in it? It is your choice and you have to choose. Do you want a life of misery or a life of freedom?
The bondage that a hard heart has on you is hard to break. This bondage can kill you. Have you ever heard someone say she died of a broken heart? We all have heard that before and some people don’t believe that but that is how powerful your heart is. If you take care of your heart and keep it open to God the world can be yours but if you close your heart to everything nothing will be yours. You will just exist.
Ask God to come back into your life. Ask him to take the pain you have away. Ask him to give you the courage to trust again and the freedom that an open heart allows. Ask him to help change your attitude towards life.
Be Inspired or Be Left Behind!
Chris Benton