When the Lord awakens you in the middle of the night with a persistent word that is repeated over and over to your spirit ears, rather than trying to fall asleep which I could not, one had better get up and seek the Lord for His confirmation and intention. I heard the words again and again,

“HARDEN NOT YOUR HEARTS – HARDEN NOT YOUR HEARTS – HARDEN NOT YOUR HEARTS.”

The nigh unto audible voice persisted in repetitious clarity and firmness. I know that I know that the Lord’s imperative was and is upon me to write this message, and I am convinced that it is meant for someone, but just who I am not sure. (I personally have and am heeding the warning for myself.) Ours is to obey, even though we are not always sure of the reason why. But this I know, that I will not be able to sleep if I do not obey the Lord and follow through on His word. May the Holy Spirit send it where and to whom He intends it. It shall realize the purpose of God.

It is my firm belief that when God gives us a word, it will always be based upon and rooted in THE WORD OF GOD. None of the new revelation baloney that adds to Scripture! None of this wingy-dingy stuff that sends people into neurotic orbits of their own imagination and fabricated religion! Hear it:

“IF IT IS NOT TOTALLY BASED UPON AND ROOTED

IN THE WORD OF GOD, IT IS NOT A

WORD FROM GOD.”

If it is not clearly and substantively in Scripture, dump it!

THE MAD MERIBAH MOB

The Lord enforced the words by impressing me with two Scriptures that I share with you now. First, Psalm 95:8,

“Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as in the day

of Massah in the wilderness.”

“When your fathers tested Me, though they had seen

My work,”

“For forty years I loathed that generation, and said they

are a people who err in their heart, and they

do not know my ways.”

“Therefore I swore in My anger, truly they shall not

enter into My rest.”

Meribah is the place as you may recall where the hearts of God’s people hardened against God and His appointed leader Moses. They berated Moses for sloppy work and for getting them between a rock and a dry spot. There was no water and the people threatened to stone Moses if he didn’t correct the situation.

Listen now, they were not just hard-hearted people, but they were HARDENED AGAINST. Their hearts were hardened against God, His ways, and His leadership personified in Moses. They are the the people who are always opposed no matter what you do. They gave the original meaning to the couplet – THE OPPOSITION. They wanted in their hardness to hit Moses hard with stones until he was dead. They were filled with anger and rage and were hard pressed to show it.

Meribah means “Strife-Contention.” Hard hearts can turn any setting into a HARD ROCK HELL. It really does not make any difference who you are, when you are in leadership, you will make enemies. It goes with the territory which can be dangerous if you are on rocky ground.

There is some bad history associated with the name Meribah. So bad, that God says that He loathed that generation of people. They were hard-nosed, hard-hearted people for whom God had a special contempt. Strong words which really meant that He couldn’t stand their guts. They were a bad bunch of dudes and dudesses, the MAD MERIBAH MOB.

God was extremely angry at them and loathsome toward them. He singles them out as THAT GENERATION. Do you feel the negative vibes? There is something about hard- hearted, resistant, opposing type people that really raises God’s ire. God did not long to sit down with them at church suppers, with feelings of warmth and togetherness that turn the whole setting into a temple of love. Not quite!

So much did He loathe that generation, that He vowed that none of them would enter into HIS REST. This is a warning to all of the generations of readers of Psalm 95 not to be like them, for it means this:

“EVEN AS GOD DESTROYED HARD-HEARTED PEOPLE IN

THE WILDERNESS AND DENIED THEM ENTRANCE

INTO THE PROMISED LAND (GOD’S REST), SO

HE WILL DESTROY ALL HARD-HEARTED

PEOPLE AND EXCLUDE THEM FROM

PERPETUAL REST WITH HIMSELF

IN HEAVEN.”

And what is more, when God SWORE this as an oath, it means that what He swore is beyond alteration. It is irrevocable and unchangeable and forever binding. Listen now:

“IF ANYONE PERSISTS IN PLAYING HARD BALL (HARD HEART)

WITH GOD, GOD WILL PLAY HARD BALL

(HARD HEART) WITH HIM.”

STONY-HEARTED HUMANITY

The second Scripture that God called to my mind is found in Ezekiel 36:26-28,

“Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new

spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of

stone from your flesh, and give you a

heart of flesh.”

And I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to

walk in my statutes, and you will be careful to

observe My ordinances.”

“And you will live in the land that I will give to your

forefathers; so you will be My people and

I will be your God.”

You see, the Bible teaches throughout that all men by nature are cold-stone-hearted toward God. Some men may have gall stones, but all men head for head have hearts of stone when it comes to God. That is a hard truth to accept and a hard lesson to learn. Romans 8:7 puts it even more pointedly, namely that:

“ALL MEN BY NATURE ARE HOSTILE TO GOD.”

It really means to HATE GOD. No love lost there, because men by nature are born not just not liking God, but hating God. Hard as nails and dead set against God. You can’t get blood out of a turnip, and you can’t get cotton balls out of stones.

When a mother gives birth to a child, she is really passing a stone. The rock group named THE ROLLING STONES is far more symbolic than THE ROLLING STONERS themselves ever imagined. All of us by nature as we move about this earth are rolling stones. No one by nature is PILLOW-HEADED and SOFT-HEARTED. Everyone by nature is ROCK-HEADED and HARD-HEARTED against God.

Therefore, man is hardened against God and hardened against God’s people! God is not playing with words for some kind of shock value here. How could we ever forget King Pharaoh of Egypt who had hardening of the spiritual arteries and the spiritual  heart walls? We remember the words of Exodus 8:32,

“But Pharaoh hardened his heart this time also, and

did not let the people go.”

Did you notice – THIS TIME ALSO! No matter what God said or did, Pharaoh’s only reaction was to harden His heart against God and His people more and more. In fact, so hard did Pharaoh’s heart become that God could not soften him up even a little with ten devastating plagues. The true story blows my mind every time I read it. God hammered Pharaoh again and again, but the hammer blows never fazed him or penetrated his cement-hardened heart in the least. Didn’t even leave a dent! They just made his heart harder!

However, lest we get hung up on Pharaoh, the Lord tells us here in Ezekiel that these are the hard, cold, facts of the human condition universally – spiritually and morally. Pharaoh was not a rare exception sorry to say. God cannot get through to stony-hearted humanity as they are. Does that surprise you? As a matter of fact, not much of anything can penetrate the stone, cold heart of mankind. It is like shooting peas off a brick wall.

We read some very like revealing words in this regard in Zechariah 7:12,

“And they made their hearts like flint so that they could

not hear the law and the words which the Lord of

hosts had sent by His Spirit through the former

prophets, therefore great wrath came from

the Lord of hosts.”

You do know what FLINT is, don’t you? It is a massive super hard kind of quartz that can be used to strike fire against steel. Totally unyielding! God is talking here about THE ORIGINAL FLINTSTONES. This is not referring to the world, but to the people of God who hardened their hearts like flint against God and His laws and His Words spoken by the prophets. It is simply illustrative of how hard the human heart can become against the Lord God.

I was reminded of that very thing Sunday morning in church with a beautiful but very human family of a father, mother and their daughter and two sons who were sitting ahead of me and my wife. When the congregation stood up to praise the Lord, the entire family stood up except one of the sons. When mother motioned to him to stand, he defied her. She then became more intense and angry, and he resisted even harder. The lad was not walking in his mother’s commandments, he was sitting on them.

This mother-son duo went on for some time, until mother threatened him with father as her trump card. I could read her lips. He finally stood up but you could tell that he was sitting down on the inside. A microcosm of the human race!

RADICAL HEART TRANSPLANT SURGERY

So it is that the Holy Spirit through Ezekiel tells us that something far more radical is needed beyond pulverizing plagues and threatening daddies. And what might that be? It is really one of the strongest themes, if not the main and most hopeful theme of the prophecy of Ezekiel. We read about it in Ezekiel 11:19-20,

“And I shall give them one heart, and shall put a new

spirit within them. And I shall take the heart of

stone out of their flesh, and give them

a heart of flesh.”

“that they may walk in My statutes and keep my ordinances,

and do them. Then they will be My people, and

I shall be their God.”

And again we read about it in Ezekiel 36:26,

“Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit

within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from

your flesh, and give you a heart of flesh.”

Every man on earth needs to have the old, calloused, hardened heart removed by God, and then needs to have a brand new, soft, pliable, tender heart put in him by God. If you will, we all need a “Divine Heart Transplant,” and not just an old-heart renewal or restoration. God doesn’t refurbish cracked and hardened antiques, but installs the eternally new. Jesus Christ is not about polishing the old hardened relic, but He is about replacing the old with the brand new. Huge difference!

Hear it:

“THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IS ABOUT TAKE OUT – PUT IN. TAKING

OUT THE OLD AND PUTTING IN THE NEW. “

God Himself cannot deal with the old hard sinful heart of man. The closest the hard heart of man will come to God is in hard bargaining in hopes that God will do the most mellowing and yielding to hard-heart’s demands.

This is exactly why we read in II Corinthians 5:17,

“Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature,

the old things have passed away; behold, new

things have come.”

First, there is nothing casual or routine about heart transplants, whether physical or spiritual hearts. In either case, this is MAJOR and not MINOR SURGERY. Are we kidding ourselves? This is about as radical as it gets. The patient has to be cut wide open, emptied of his old, diseased heart, and then implanted with the new, healthy heart, and be sustained and kept alive during the critical exchange. In either case, they are out-and-in  miracles of God!

Second, heart transplants, whether physical or spiritual, are a matter of life and death. Physical and spiritual heart transplants are OBLIGATORY and not OPTIONAL. They are done not simply to try to improve the quality of the old life, but in fact to create and sustain a brand new life without which the person would die. You see, when there is a thickening and hardening of the heart muscles physically or spiritually, the compression factors – blood ejection and injection – are impaired and can kill the person via a heart attack – a massive coronary attack. These are do or die situations.

Third, when it comes to physical heart transplants, there are the few select specialists who are qualified to perform the surgery. When it comes to spiritual heart transplants, the field of qualified surgeons is very narrow. In fact, there is only One, and He is Jesus Christ. He so good at it, that He has never lost a patient due to surgical ineptness or new heart failure. Those who take care of their new hearts from Jesus Christ live forever. There are no limited-lifetime guarantees with God.

Fourth, we read about the spiritual heart in Proverbs 4:23 KJV,

“Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it

are the issues of life.”

Did you notice – all the issues of life come from the heart?

Now then, given the truth of Proverbs 4:23, here is the contrast:

“THE OLD, HARD, CALLOUSED, SINFUL HEART WILL BE ALWAYS

AFFECTIONING, MOTIVATING, DESIRING, INCLINING,

WILLING, AND THINKING EVERYTHING APART

FROM AND AGAINST GOD AND HIS WILL.”

The old, hard-set, anti-God heart can be whacked and even clobbered by God to go in the right direction, but it will feel nothing. Stone dead towards God!

But:

“THE NEW, SOFT, TENDER, RIGHTEOUS HEART WILL BE ALWAYS

AFFECTIONING, MOTIVATING, DESIRING, INCLINING,

WILLING, AND THINKING EVERYTHING WITH

AND FOR GOD AND HIS WILL.”

The new, soft-set, pro-God heart can simply be touched, nudged, and barely brushed by God to go in the right direction, and it will feel everything. Super-sensitive towards God!

Let’s take DESIRE as the for instance. We are not talking about whims and yens and mild leanings here. Desires of the heart are powerful and all-consuming. In the old, hard-set, anti-God heart:

“THE OLD HEART IS THE SPRING OF SINFUL DESIRES, AND

SINFUL DESIRES WILL SET HEAD, HANDS, AND FEET

INTO MOTION TO DO AND TO GET WHAT IT

WANTS, WHICH WILL ALWAYS BE THE

OPPOSITE OF GOD’S DESIRES.”

In the new, soft-set, pro-God heart:

“THE NEW HEART IS THE SPRING OF HOLY DESIRES, AND

HOLY DESIRES WILL SET HEAD, HANDS, AND FEET

INTO MOTION TO DO AND GET WHAT IT

WANTS, WHICH WILL ALWAYS BE

THE SAME AS GOD’S DESIRES.”

In either case:

“GODLY AND GODLESS DESIRES ARE LIKE GREAT FIRES

WHICH WILL BURN THROUGH ALL THE BARRIERS

BEFORE THEM LIKE STUBBLE.”

Now then briefly, let’s give as an example of DESIRES the realm of love and marriage. God said something powerful to Eve in Genesis 3:16 KJV,

“…and thy DESIRE shall be toward thy husband….”

This was spoken by God in the state of man’s sinlessness, when Adam and Eve’s hearts were tender toward God and holy with His desires. Those were the hearts that God put in them, and those hearts would be consumed with holy, faithful, singular desires for their one and only spouse. That is, desire for their mate and for no one else. The first marriage was created with one track hearts and minds, hearts and minds that were tender only to fidelity and monogamy.

But since sin entered the world, the hearts of spouses grow hard and calloused toward God and toward one another. You and I have sat through counseling sessions with adulterous and hard-hearted husbands and wives, and our words from the Sword of the Spirit – the Word of God have been blunted against their hard hearts and seared consciences like so much frivolous fluff. It seemed that the Sword of the Spirit bent while they didn’t feel its sharpness one little bit. Not only are they impenetrable but untouchable.

That is why we must never marry believers with unbelievers. The one is soft-hearted with God’s love and tenderness, and the other is stone-hearted with sin’s hate and hardness, and will crush the tender heart. That marriage is doomed from the start! I have seen this tragedy far too many times.

THE HARDENING OF RELIGIOUS HEARTS

Now we come more specifically to where God was leading me in the middle of the night. The word from God came as a strong warning, so much so, that I haven’t been able to sleep well or think about anything else since. He has subsequently impressed me with His intent and meaning when He continued to warn through these words:

“HARDEN NOT YOUR HEARTS – HARDEN NOT YOUR

HEARTS – HARDEN NOT YOUR HEARTS.”

When I think of this generation of Americans, I can only conclude that in their defiant hardening of their hearts against God, God loathes this generation of hard-hearted rebel Americans who have hard-set themselves against all that is of God and of His Christ. Make no mistake about it. God swears that they shall not enter into Heaven’s rest. The fate of the Pharaoh-like hard-hearted is set in cement.

But  God here is not first of all warning the world or America in Psalm 95:8, for the world’s heart has always been spiritually and morally hard as a rock and dead as a doornail. No holier-than-thou attitude intended here by me, for I with you was once where they are. But for the grace of God, my heart would still be calcified and petrified too.

When the Lord spoke the words of Psalm 95:8,

“Harden not your hearts….,”

He was speaking to His people. If you will, to the godly and not to the godless! To the religious and not to the irreligious! To the believing community and not to the world community of unbelief! To the churched and not to the unchurched!

I have been blown away and deeply grieved for some time now to strongly sense the following in the modern church transdenominationally. I have not in my lifetime ever seen what I see today in such frightening proportions. It is this:

“THE HEARTS OF THE MODERN RELIGIOUS ARE

BECOMING HARDENED TO HOLINESS.”

Unholy hardening! That is:

“ON A MASSIVE SCALE, THEIR HEARTS CAN NO

LONGER ACUTELY FEEL OR SENSE THE SIN

IN SINFULNESS OR THE SINFULNESS

OF SIN.”

When we deal today with the sins of divorce, adultery, fornication, abortion, homosexuality, and gay marriage, the sharp edge of the sinfulness of these sins is no longer being sensed and felt deep in the hearts of the contemporary religious community in vast numbers. It is bewildering!

When talking to a middle-aged churchgoer just the other day, he told me that he will surely be voting for Obama and his fellow democrats, for he said, “They will be taking care of the poor and the down and out.” I reminded him of Obama’s pro-abortion, pro-homosexuality, pro-gay marriage, pro-transsexual-transvestite agendas, and he said to me, “Those are all small and secondary side-issues.”

Exactly! The hardening of the church’s heart has been creeping steadily for some time now, and it was bound to happen:

“FROM SEEKER FRIENDLY AND SOFT SELL TO NOW

SIN-IGNORING RELIGION.”

This is taking place day after day in churches that number in the mega-thousands, and in churches that number a few hundred or less. Take the heat from the pulpit off from sin, then like the melted wax of a doused candle, sin awareness will cool and harden in the heart of the church.

Listen:

“THE SPIRITUAL AND MORAL PATH THROUGH THE

HEART OF THE CHURCH IS HARDENING.”

Why? Simply because as a path that is more and more walked upon and trodden down becomes harder and harder, so too, greater hardness of heart will always be the result in the church that leads people down a hardened path that ignores sins and avoids any deep sin conviction!

I am reminded of the church where recently the organist divorced her husband for no Biblical reason whatsoever. He was a fine man and husband, and she was falling out of love because she had fallen out of God Who is love, if in fact she ever did love God at all. She was not disciplined in any degree and was allowed to continue her ‘ministry of music’ without interruption or penalty whatsoever. He left the church and she stayed. The spiritual and moral path through the heart of that church was hardened and is hardening to this day.

I am reminded of the preacher very recently who said carte blanche to the church during a Sunday morning sermon, “If you have alcohol in your home that is perfectly okay. The drinking of alcohol is fine, just as long as it offends no one.” Cheers! Nothing about a little wine for the stomach’s sake. Nothing about beware when the contents of the cup turns red – fermentation. No such Biblical guidelines or warnings. The path leading to the hard liquor displays in Wal Mart is hardening from being traveled on by church parishioners. The spiritual and moral path through the heart of that church is hardening.

I am reminded of one denomination among several, that welcomes practicing gays into full membership, though they are supposedly informed that the church does not agree with their lifestyle. A friendly and cordial disagreement! I heard with my own ears a pastor of that fellowship commenting that we do not live in a black and white world, and therefore we must learn to love and to minister to all people in accordance with our graying society. The spiritual and moral path through the heart of the church is hardening.

I am reminded of the pastor who said recently in my hearing, “The Lord does not hate anyone, but loves everyone.” That is a boldfaced lie. There is nothing more violent on the face of the earth than the ongoing butchery of abortion in whatever trimester of pregnancy. We read in Psalm 11:5,

“The Lord tests the righteous and the wicked, and the

one that loves violence His soul hates.”

God hates the ones who love violence. The church must tell the viciously violent that they are enemies to God, strangers to Christ, haters of the Lord, and hated by Him. But that has been totally lost sight of in the greasy grace and sloppy agape churches which convey implicitly if not explicitly the message that:

“PEOPLE CAN LIVE LIKE GOD’S ENEMIES AND

STILL BE LOVED BY HIM AS HIS FRIENDS.”

The spiritual and moral path through the heart of the church is hardening.

What then ultimately happens in such hardening of church hearts is the following:

“WHEN HEAVEN AND ITS JOYS ARE PREACHED TO

THE HARD-HEARTED, THEY ARE NOT AT ALL

MET WITH HEAVENLY DESIRE.”

And:

“WHEN HELL AND ETERNAL MISERY ARE PREACHED

TO THE HARD-HEARTED, THEY ARE NOT AT

ALL MOVED WITH TERROR.”

Why? Because:

“RIGHT HERE AND NOW THEY ARE BEING TAUGHT THAT

THEY CAN HAVE THEIR CAKE AND EAT IT TOO, AND

BOTH HEAVEN AND HELL WOULD SCREW

THAT UP FOR THEM.”

Nonetheless, God in Psalm 95 says to those who harden their hearts against God and His ways,

“Therefore I swore in My anger, truly they shall

not enter into My rest.”

HEARTS TOTALLY PAST FEELING

Just how hard spiritually and morally can hearts become? Extremely hard! Unimaginably hard! Terrifyingly hard! We read some unthinkable and very scary words in Ephesians 4:19 KJV,

“Who being PAST FEELING have given themselves over unto

lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness

with greediness.”

That is always very bad – PAST FEELING. Which means – NO FEELING. I would much rather have a spouse in a troubled marriage say to the other spouse, “I hate you,” than to have him or her say, “I have no feeling for you – neither love nor hate – nothing.” That is very bad because:

“NO FEELING IS ALWAYS THE TERMINAL STAGE OF THE

HARDENING PROCESS.”

So be careful now, don’t let what is being warned about here flit by us so that we do not really grasp the meaning – PAST FEELING. The NASV uses the words HAVING BECOME CALLOUSED. That is a bad translation, and very weak also. The KJV has it right – PAST FEELING. I have calluses on my feet, but I can still feel through them. Being calloused is a bad state being spiritually and morally, but being past feeling is far worse and far more deadly.

I have noticed something in society and in the church lately that staggers me when I hear and see it. And what is that? When someone is asked for instance what they feel about a moral issue such as couples living together before marriage or as an alternative to marriage, I have heard it stated again and again, “Oh, I don’t know, I really do not have strong feelings about that one way or another.” Do you mean to tell me that even people in the church don’t feel pro or con about such issues? Exactly! There is now a numbness where before there were pulsating nerve endings. Hear it:

“WE HAVE COME NOW TO THE NON-FEELING

TERMINAL GENERATION.”

It comes very close to the word CARELESS. That word very simply put has as one of its meanings, “I COULD CARE LESS!” That word CARELESS is used by God to describe the wicked and bloodthirsty city of Nineveh, the ancient capitol of Assyria. God describes them in Zephaniah 2:15 as:

“the city that dwells CARELESSLY.”

They could care less what they did to other nations and peoples. It was a society that could CARE LESS – PAST FEELING. I have run into that attitude again and again in those who have said about very important issues, “I could care less,” or, “I don’t really care one way or another,” or “That is a lot of fuss about nothing.”

PAST FEELING! Don’t let that slide by! That is where hardening of the heart leads to, and it is the most dangerous and deadly state of being, or should we say state of non-being that can ever happen to man. It is the MARK OF DEATH, because dead people don’t feel anything either. If you will:

“IT IS THE CATASTROPHIC DEAD END OF THE HARDENING

OF THE HEART, NAMELY, A SPIRITUALLY AND

MORALLY NEUTERED STATE OF BEING.”

What is that PAST FEELING – NEUTERED state of being like? It is like this:

“WHEN A MAN HAS LOST HIS TASTE, ANYTHING

WILL GO DOWN INTO HIM.”

Do you mean like, “ANYTHING GOES?” Bingo! That’s it! Right on! Like this:

“WHEN YOU CAN’T FEEL THE RIGHT OF RIGHTEOUSNESS,

YOU DON’T PURSUE IT, AND WHEN YOU CAN’T FEEL

THE SIN OF SINFULNESS, YOU DON’T

RESIST IT.”

Now you are on to it! As the saying goes, “It is what it is.” It is then also like this when applied to truth and falsehood:

“IN A PAST FEELING – NEUTERED STATE OF BEING, TRUTH

DOES NOT REALLY BLESS YOU AND FALSEHOOD DOES

NOT REALLY BOTHER YOU.”

When it comes to truth, I was so blasted with that neutered reality two Sunday mornings ago when my wife and I were in a charismania church, not a Biblically Pentecostal church, but a charismania church. The young pastor made statement after statement in his sermon that should have made the hairs on the back of people’s necks stand up aghast in protest. The statements were:

-The angels are karate-kicking and pogo-sticking around the sanctuary.

-God is going to do wild and crazy things around here.

-The Bible is only half of the truth.

-The Holy Spirit has to give us the other half.

-The entire Bible is such a terribly confusing book.

This is not the time and I don’t have the space to shred these falsehoods with truth. That will have to wait for another time. But what was even more horrifying than the blasphemous and heretical statements were the completely neutered – past feeling non-reactions of the people. There seemed to be the complete stupor of neither here nor there, neither for nor against, neither jubilation nor jaundice. I am sure that it happens every Sunday as there seemed to be a Laodicean reaction of neither hot nor cold. Past feeling and certainly past discernment!

I asked my son how this could be. He said:

“IGNORANCE WHICH IS THE RESULT OF NOT CARING.”

I said, “Do you mean to say that people don’t really care – careless – about truth in the church?” His response, “They could care less about truth, as long as what is being said pleases them.”

In short, speaking about truth and untruth, any lie and any falsehood will be swallowed by those and digested in those who have lost all taste for truth – PAST TASTING.

And what is being described here morally in such a totally unfeeling state of being is that all moral qualms have died and bit the dust, and all immorality and uncleanness is carried out without one pain of heart or twinge of conscience – PAST FEELING. That is the world, that is now America, and that is now happening in the church.

CONCLUSION

Listen:

“HARDNESS OF HEART IS THE RESULT OF RESISTING

THE LORD OF THE WORD AND THE WORD

OF THE LORD.”

And again:

“EVERY OPPOSITION TO THE SPIRIT OF GOD HARDENS

THE HEART TO RESIST HIM HARDER.”

And worse still:

“CONTINUED OPPOSITION AND RESISTANCE OF GOD WILL

HARDEN THE HEART INTO BEING PAST FEELING.”

And finally:

“WHEN YOU ARE PAST FEELING, YOU COULD CARE LESS

ABOUT ANYTHING.”

Then, God will withdraw his grace from such a people or person, even as He did when Pharaoh hardened himself beyond breaking, and God then suspended His convincing and converting grace and drowned him.

America is now with Pharaoh in her own plagues of devastating fires and consuming drought and violent winds. She doesn’t know it, but she is in her irrational hardness of heart on her way with Pharaoh to the Red Sea.

God never judges tender hearts, but every judgment comes upon hard hearts. Why? Because:

“HARDNESS OF AND NON-FEELINGNESS OF HEART IN THE END

IS THAT AND THAT ALONE WHICH RENDERS ALL MEANS

OF MAN’S SALVATION UTTERLY INEFFECTUAL.”

Listen to God! America be warned! Church be warned!  He that hath ears to hear let him hear what the Spirit of God is saying to the nation and to the church!

Please pray with me:

“Dear merciful God and Father, eternal thanks and praise to You for your long-suffering grace and mercy upon such a hard-hearted and stiff-necked people like us. Oh God of tender mercy, forgive us for hardening our hearts and shaking our fists in Your face for so many years as a nation and as a people. We have deeply offended Your glory and holiness and defied Your laws. We have resisted Your Spirit, and set our ways in violent opposition to Your Word and leading.

We bow our hearts and heads before you pleading for your grace to forgive us for disgracing you through fornication, adultery, divorce, abortion, pornography, violence, homosexuality, greed, and self-obsession. Lord, blot out our transgressions through the blood of Jesus Christ and cast them into the sea of Your forgetfulness forever. We dare ask this only upon your gracious promises in Jesus Christ and Him alone.

Holy Spirit, break the hardness of our hearts and the heart of America. Holy Spirit of God fall powerfully on us and on this nation. Melt us, mold us, fill us, and use us and this nation that once again we may turn away from sin and to your righteousness for your glory. Mercifully stop us from the point of no return and unbreakable hardness and utter feelinglessness against and toward You. Bring us and America to our knees in broken-hearted repentance before it is too late.

O God of Jacob, wound us so that we can be healed. O God of David, smite us so that we can be saved. O God of Peter, break us so that You can restore us. O God of Saul, blind us so that we can see. O God of Paul, humble us so that we can exalt in You. Amen.

HAVE THINE OWN WAY, LORD

1. Have thine own way, Lord! Have thine own way!
Thou art the Potter, I am the clay.
Mold me and make me after Thy will,
While I am waiting, yielded and still.

2. Have thine own way, Lord! Have thine own way!
Search me and try me, Savior today!
Wash me just now Lord, wash me just now,
as in thy presence humbly I bow.

3. Have thine own way, Lord! Have thine own way!
Wounded and weary, help me I pray!
Power, all power, surely is thine!
Touch me and heal me, Savior divine!

4. Have thine own way, Lord! Have thine own way!
Hold o’er my being absolute sway.
Fill with thy Spirit till all shall see
Christ only, always, living in me! Amen!