Day 90 with David: A hardened heart will never enter into God’s rest.

“For He is our God, And we are the people of His pasture, And the sheep of His hand. Today, if you will hear His voice: “Do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion, As in the day of trial in the wilderness, When your fathers tested Me; They tried Me, though they saw My work. For forty years I was grieved with that generation, And said, ‘It is a people who go astray in their hearts, And they do not know My ways.’ So I swore in My wrath, ‘They shall not enter My rest.’ ””

‭‭Psalms‬ ‭95:7-11‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

Have you ever heard the phrase,” “to be bent on” doing something? Even if you haven’t heard the phrase, I imagine we have all interacted with people who are bent on doing something. Perhaps, sometimes, we are those people.

To be bent on doing something means that the person has determined what they will do and are not likely to be dissuaded. Additionally, I have heard observed an odd phenomenon among human beings: once a person is bent on doing something, or bent on thinking a particular way about something, they will selectively perceive all future information to further confirm the “bent.” In other words, if you have decided to do something, and you hear negativities about it, you are not likely to give that contrary information credence. On the other hand, information affirming the “bent” is given great weight and used as further proof or support for what has been decided

People who have allowed walls to be built up around their opinions, have basically been self-exiled to an echo chamber. In other words, all they hear is what they want to hear; all they will know is what they want to know.

Now, as bad as having a closed mind or heart is in the general practice of life, having a closed mind—or in biblical terms, a hardened heart—against the things of God, can be disastrous to your eternal soul.

“Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.”

‭‭Ephesians‬ ‭4:17-18‬ ‭ESV‬‬

In the above passage the apostle Paul speaks of people being alienated from God because of the condition of their hearts and minds. As a matter of fact, we see the Lord speaking of the hardness of His people’s hearts, all the way through the Bible. Jesus spoke of the hardness of people’s hearts when they failed to believe or when they couldn’t understand what He was saying.

In our portion from Psalms today we see the Lord speaking through David, warning the people not to harden their hearts as those who were in the wilderness had hardened their hearts, perishing because of it. Interestingly, this passage is quoted three times in the book of Hebrews! It’s a very serious thing to allow your heart to be hardened when the Lord brings correction or when things don’t go the way you want them to go. If we allow our hearts to stay hardened, we have no hope of being able to enter into the rest of the Lord. Let’s ask the Lord to search us and help us to know areas where we have closed ourself off from His voice.

Through Jesus Christ, we have rest from the labor of our trying to earn our own salvation. But, there is yet a greater rest to be entered. God forbid that we should allow hardness of heart—or anything else—keep us from following His voice all the way home.

For today let us know and understand what David knew:

A hardened heart will never enter into God’s rest.

#100dayswithdavid