Harden Not Your Heart...

Dear children - I am watching a dear friend writhe in the jaws of "the end of sin"! As he gasps for breathe like a fish laying helpless on the bank. This is the "end" of many years of enjoying a good "smoke"! Every pack of cigarettes had a warning label - but the present pleasure always over-rode the "end" result. Now the fruit of that sin has reached its cruel recompense. He  was NOT prepared to pay the costs. His lungs have been so damaged by the hardening effects of years of "indulging" that they are only functioning at 30% capacity. If you want to experience what it is like - out a straw in your mouth a breathe through it all day.

 

What we do so naturally without even thinking about it, he is currently fighting to do in a miserable state of exhaustion. But his damaged lungs just can't get the oxygen out of the air. The little sacs called "alveoli" absorb oxygen and transfer it to the capillaries - but his "indulgence" has taken its toll on their ability; hence, the entire body is suffering from the effort it now takes to get the minimum O2.

Sin will do the same type of hardening to our spiritual capacity. The more we "indulge" the flesh and sin, the harder it is for our inner man to absorb the life of the breath of God's Spirit. Sin scars our spiritual respiratory system as we indulge the flesh, our heart becomes hard and we can develop a terminal case of hardening of the heart. In his case, the gradual affect of the hardening continued unabated - and now the full weight of his decision has caught up with him.

 

"Today IF you hear His voice DO NOT HARDEN your heart" - the affects may not be felt for some time - but the wages of sin is death - sometimes a slow and painful one!

The above is a personal text to our own children, but gives a word picture, worthy of considering. ~Dm