Mark Affleck

Maybe Christmas Can UnHarden Many Hearts

December 5, 2019
Spiritual Growth

This just in from our global online tribe: “What does it mean to open your heart to the things of God that I keep hearing about during the Christmas season?”

You are right—the Christmas season is a time when we hear a lot about hearts. Good hearts. Open hearts. Loving hearts. And HARDENED hearts.
  
I will focus here on the HARDENED HEART since your question is about how to “open your heart to the things of God.”
  
How does a spiritually blind person see God?
  
Of course our eyes and ability to process information play a role. They produce the ability to see and hear God’s Word and wonder in life.
  
But that natural sight is NOT enough to see and experience the full measure of God’s glory.
  
Something more than the use of our natural senses must come into play. This is where the HEART and the HOLY SPIRIT enter the scene.
  
The apostle Paul put it like this to the people of Ephesus: “The eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know.”
  
The heart has eyes!
  
The ability to know God and his will for our life is in all of us as a TEMPLATE like we find in the digital world.
  
That template is specially designed by God to reveal his glory when we decide to populate it with God’s truths.
  
God’s template in our heart never fails to perform. It we don’t see his glory with the eyes of our heart, it is ON US and our hardened heart—NOT God (Ephesians 4:18).
  
Failure to see God with our heart comes out of a selfish nature that hardens our heart and keeps God at a distance.
  
I ask God to open the eyes of my heart to his love and grace and glory.
  
WHAT ABOUT YOU?
  
Is your heart able to see the full measure of God’s glory?
  
 “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people…” Ephesians 1:18
  

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