{"id":7366,"date":"2011-11-22T22:09:39","date_gmt":"2011-11-23T04:09:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/?p=7366"},"modified":"2012-06-14T19:31:24","modified_gmt":"2012-06-15T00:31:24","slug":"hard-hearts-and-stiff-necks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/22\/hard-hearts-and-stiff-necks\/","title":{"rendered":"Hard Hearts And Stiff Necks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There are two things I see in scripture that cause us problems- hard hearts and stiff necks.<br \/>\nHard hearts describe people who are insensitive to God&#8217;s voice and untouched by his work in their lives. They simply don&#8217;t see or sense him, his voice, or his conviction.<a href=\"http:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/22\/hard-hearts-and-stiff-necks\/broken-clay-heart\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-7367\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-7367\" title=\"broken clay heart\" src=\"http:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/broken-clay-heart-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/broken-clay-heart-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/broken-clay-heart-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/broken-clay-heart-266x200.jpg 266w, https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/broken-clay-heart-90x67.jpg 90w, https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/broken-clay-heart-533x400.jpg 533w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Stiff necks describe people who are, even knowing what God wants from them, unwilling to change directions, unwilling to repent. They have set their course and will not &#8220;turn their necks,&#8221; change their minds or direction.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m thinking about this because I&#8217;m reading a passage, studying a portion of scripture where I see the disciples witnessing some of the most amazing miracles of all history and seems untouched, unaffected by them. They had hardened their hearts. They had become insensitive to God&#8217;s amazing work in their midst.<br \/>\nI wonder&#8230;.I wonder how hard my heart is. I wonder what God is doing in my life, around me, speaking to me and I simply don&#8217;t hear it, sense it, feel his presence. This is a dangerous place to be because we don&#8217;t realize that a hardness has developed in our lives and our relationship with God. I wonder if my stiff neck, my unwillingness to change my course is made worse by my hard heart?<\/p>\n<p>These are my challenges. These are your challenges. I pray that my heart will be soft to God, sensitive to his touch, responsive to his voice. I pray that I will not be so stubborn that I can&#8217;t change, can&#8217;t turn my neck to God&#8217;s directions in my life. I&#8217;m thinking about this because 12 men who lived for three years in the very presence of God on earth struggled with it. I know I do to.<\/p>\n<p>Lord, soften my heart, massage my stiff neck. Help me to respond quickly, to hear well your voice and respond to your leading in my life.<\/p>\n<p>Visit Mike at <a href=\"http:\/\/mikemesserli.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Finishing Well.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are two things I see in scripture that cause us problems- hard hearts and stiff necks. Hard hearts describe people who are insensitive to God&#8217;s voice and untouched by his work in their lives. They simply don&#8217;t see or sense him, his voice, or his conviction. Stiff necks describe people who are, even knowing &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/22\/hard-hearts-and-stiff-necks\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read more<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Hard Hearts And Stiff Necks&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7367,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,25],"tags":[2900,2896,46,2902,2901,66,173,2903,2894,2897,203,165,2898,2523,92,2899,2895],"class_list":["post-7366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archived","category-mike","tag-12-men","tag-amazing-miracles","tag-challenges","tag-conviction","tag-dangerous-place","tag-disciples","tag-earth","tag-god-s-voice","tag-hard-heart","tag-heart-massage","tag-hearts","tag-midst","tag-presence-of-god","tag-relationship-with-god","tag-scripture","tag-stiff-neck","tag-stiff-necks"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}