Soft Hearts?

     “I said, ‘Plant the good seeds of righteousness and you will harvest a crop of love. Plow up the hard ground of your hearts, for now is the time to seek the Lord that He may come and shower righteousness upon you.’” Hosea 10:12 NLT.

     What might be hindering this? Sometimes, when people come in for help, their hearts have become hardened. The disappointments, sorrows, griefs, and traumas in life, without healthy ways to process through them, have led to hopelessness and despair. Often, the logical solution is to harden the heart to protect from further hurt.

     Scripture tells us, though, to plow up the hard ground of our hearts.  It doesn’t say that we won’t experience hardness of heart. It tells us what to do when we do experience it. So, how do we do it? What does it mean to seek the Lord? And, what does it mean to plant the good seeds of righteousness so that we can harvest a crop of love?

     The context of the chapter is the Lord’s judgement against Israel because of their idolatry. Verses 1-11 deal with the condition of their hearts and His judgements against them. Verse 12 gives instruction on what to do to turn back to the Lord, and verses 13-15 tell us what will happen because they didn’t. Verse 13 says, “But you have cultivated wickedness and harvested a crop of sins. You have eaten the fruit of lies--trusting in your military might, believing that great armies could make your nation safe.” Interesting. Eating the fruit of lies.

     So, what do we do about that? How do we unpack it and make application in the context of counseling and daily life? First, I think we have to look at idolatry. Miriam Webster dictionary online defines idolatry as 1) the worship of a physical object as a god 2) immoderate attachment or devotion to something.

     My definition of idolatry: trusting in something other than the Lord for satisfaction, soothing pain, comforting the heart, protection from pain...you get the idea. Could it be that, when we harden our hearts, we are erecting an idol of self protection? Essentially saying, “God didn’t do a good enough job so I will do it better”? Often, it comes from believing lies the enemy furnishes us with at the point of pain. He offers a solution and we take it.

     So if hardness of heart is idolatry, and it comes from believing lies, what is the antidote? Repentence. Changing our minds. How do we change our minds? Believe the truth. How do we believe the truth? Offer up the lies we’ve bought into, to the Lord in exchange for His perspective. Then we embrace His perspective.

     A side note on seeking Him: A few years ago, I read Isaiah 55:6 “Seek the Lord while you can find Him. Call on Him now while He is near.” (NLT). I started asking the Lord what it meant to seek Him. One day, on my morning walk, the answer came. As I was walking, I was thinking, “I really miss my dad. I wish he would come by just to see me.” Just then, the Lord said to me, “That’s what it means to seek me. That longing you have in your heart for your dad...have that longing for me.”  I’ve never forgotten that moment.

     To wrap up then...God’s heart is for us. He desperately wants us...longs for us. It grieves Him when we walk away, reject Him, and look to other things. He goes to great measure to invite us to come back to experience intimacy with Him. Our part is to ask Him what lies we are believing, allow Him to expose them, ask Him for His perspective, and believe what He tells us. This, I believe, is how we plant seeds of righteousness, harvest a crop of love, plow up hard ground in our hearts, and seek the Lord. He loves us immeasurably more than we can ever know or grasp.