Friday, August 15, 2014

Pray For God To Soften The Hard Hearts Of The World


Isaiah 63:15-16 -  Look down from heaven and see from your lofty throne, holy and glorious. Where are your zeal and your might? Your tenderness and compassion are withheld from us.  But you are our Father, though Abraham does not know us or Israel acknowledge us; you, O LORD, are our Father, our Redeemer from of old is your name.

 

Isaiah struggled daily with people who had gone their own way….who knew who God was….but chose to do what they wanted anyway. God had allowed their hearts to harden just enough that they would reject his ways till he was ready to bring them out of the season of punishment he had placed them in. Isaiah longed for the time that God would bring them out of their suffering... melt their hearts so they could repent and come back to God.

 

I truly don’t understand the concept of God hardening a heart. It baffles me that he would want to wait one second to save someone.  It seems in contradiction to the whole purpose of accepting God. My small human brain sees it as a repeating record….just wasting the energy of those around them that are trying to share with them just how great God is.

 

But then again…I am not to understand everything about God…I am just to trust in faith that he knows what he is doing. I am just to model my prayers after this great one from Isaiah. I am simply to pray for those with hardened hearts….for these lost and deceived….for the atheist…for those that have trusted other Gods and religions that are not based on the Holy Lord…and for those rebellious in the world who have gone their own way….even when they know who God is and loved him passionately at one time.  I am to pray for God to look down and see the needs of those around me….to bring back his tenderness and compassion to a world that is slipping further away from his will every day.

 

I am guilty once again…of not even thinking to pray for these groups of hardened hearts every day. Yes …I lift an occasional prayer…but I fall so short of the model I see here in Isaiah’s life. I could justify that God didn’t call me to be that passionate in prayer for them. But my heart knows that if I believe it isn’t my job  ….my heart runs the risk of becoming just as hard as the ones he calls me to pray for.

 

Father….thank you for the reminder that fervent prayer for others should be at the top of my to-do list every day. Forgive me for not embracing the hardened hearts of those around me….and taking time to pray that you come and soften them…..so they can understand and believe in your love.  Help me to find a way to increase my time in prayer for those around me…so you can come and begin to transform the many people around me that you have allowed to have hardened hearts.  Don’t let me stop until you return…and take all of us home with you to heaven.  Amen.

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