A Heart Growing Numb

“A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.” Ezekiel 36:26-37

I went for my regular check up with my heart doctor this week and on his desk in the exam room was a number of pictures of hearts. He can medicate and offer advice on how to improve the physical heart but only God can change a spiritual heart. Those thoughts led me to think about how the spiritual heart could become numb to the things that used to pierce that heart.

For example, there have been tragedies in our country – numerous acts of violence and terrorism. The more we see and hear about bad news, the more our human spirits are becoming numb to the bad news. Evil acts of murder and terrorism are all around us and numerous times are almost in our back doors here in Tennessee.

Since the earth-shattering events of 9/11, we have consistently viewed acts of violence even though the majority of them have been outside the borders of our country. As time goes on, I’m afraid events like these will just be commonplace and we will become numb to the emotional effects of these events. It could become, “Oh, no big deal, just a normal day in America.”

Not only are we in danger of becoming numb (insensitive) to human catastrophes such as these, we are becoming numb spiritually. First, to the news of God’s Word as we seem no longer challenged or moved by the preaching, teaching, and studying of the Bible. Secondly, we are becoming numb to the sin around us. We become accepting and tolerant of blatant outward sin that our parents and grandparents would not have stood for.

Sometimes the sin that has crept into our society is cute and many like to play around with it. After all, much of the time, sin appears harmless. But there comes a time when sin releases it ill effects on you. God is forgiving as stated in 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” But there is no guarantee that the circumstances of sin will not linger on for some time to follow. It’s like my mother always told me, “If you play with fire you are going to get burned.” Those words are still true today.

The answer to stopping the spread of this numbness and insensitivity lies within our hearts. Only God can change the human heart. But first, put your heart into His hands and yield to Him as clay in the hands of the potter.

Bro. Larry


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