Gut Punch

There are a few places in Scripture that leave me feeling like the wind has been knocked out of me. One of those places is, “They will not enter my rest” (Heb. 3:11). It’s like a gut-punch. Boom. Door slammed. 

Another verse that hits me like that is “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie…” (Rom. 1:25). Whoosh-instant pain. When we allow our hearts to become hardened (Heb. 3:8, 15), isn’t this exactly what we’ve done: traded in God’s truth and chosen a lie (or many lies) instead?

In my opinion, those are two of the saddest, most heart-wrenching verses in the Bible, because they combine the unthinkable with reality. It’s unthinkable that someone would choose lies over God’s life-giving truth, but the reality is that I do it all the time. It’s unthinkable that our grace-filled God would deny Rest, but in reality, this passage tells us that He has and will if we allow our hearts to become too hardened by sin. 

Most likely, the hardening happens slowly over time. They’re small choices, little intentional moments that add up and become habits of either action or thought. And soon our hearts become hardened; creating callouses that make it difficult for us to experience God’s presence in our lives.

We cannot expect to bring the calloused mess of our hearts into God’s presence-His Rest- and hold onto it. We have to surrender that hardened mess first. 

In my Bible, at some point I drew a double-ended arrow between Hebrews 3:11 and 13 with the word “cycle” written to the side. I keep coming back to that idea.  

Sin’s hardening of our hearts takes a toll. We weren’t created to live under that weight. So we look for rest. But if we’re not willing to surrender the sin and the hardness, we can’t experience God’s rest. And we start looking elsewhere-in all the wrong places, further hardening and callousing our hearts. And the cycle continues. Sin → hardened hearts → look for rest → can’t enter true rest. Lather, rinse, repeat.  

Since verse 13 also tells us to encourage each other against this hardening of our hearts today, I am doing so by praying that God will begin showing all of us where our hearts are hard, and that He will help us surrender them and allow Him to soften those areas. We can have rest, or we can have our sin-but not both. I will be praying that we reverse Rom. 1:25 by exchanging the lies we’re believing for God’s truth instead so that we can receive His Rest. 

- Connie