Heart Disease

“Come,
let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the LORD our Maker; for he is
our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care. Today,
if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you
did that day at Massah in the desert…”

(Psalm
95:6-8)

In
1999, doctors inserted a stent into my Left Anterior Descending artery,
also known as LAD.  Stents are used to
open up blocked arteries in patients with cardiovascular disease.  The procedure went very well, and I was
hoping this would be the last.  Yet, it
was not to be.   This past September, cardiovascular disease
once more reared its ugly head, and I was rushed to the Oklahoma Heart
Hospital.   And once again, God was with me, as my doctor
completed a triple bypass after 5 hours of surgery. 

Medical
professionals estimate there are approximately 80 million people in the US with
some form of heart disease, and 720,000 die every year as a result.  Yet, there is something just as lethal threatening
your spiritual life.  It’s a blockage in
your vital relationship with God that the Bible calls “hardheartedness.”  Psalm
95:7, 8 says, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.”

My
heart is hardened when I stick my fingers in my ears and refuse to respond to God’s
promptings to change a specific area in my life.  It happens when He wants me to thank Him for
something, but I’m silent.  I’m
hardhearted when the Lord presses in closer to show me a bigger plan for
my life, but I push Him away.  “No further, God. You’re just asking too much
right now.”  In a word, we harden
our hearts not when we sin, but when we won’t let God deal with us about our
sin.

We
all have little tricks to justify our lack of response to God. One common way
is procrastination, “tomorrow, God.”
 Yet, if God could do in our lives all
the things that we’ve already surrendered to Him, our lives would be on fire. Is this true for you? Are
you still battling with God about something you gave over to Him years ago?

You
may ask, “How do I know if I’m in
trouble?”  What does a hard heart feel
like? That’s the scary part. It may be painful in the early stages, when
God is convicting you of what He wants to change. And then slowly, even undetectable,
you stop feeling anything prompted by the Lord—hardheartedness has set in.

If
you’re like me, you’re ready for the remedy. It’s simply this: Today, do something about your heart. Right now, open your Bible to Psalm
95:6-8 and read it.  We never want to be
far from the reality that the condition of our heart is our responsibility.