How to Respond to a Hard Heart

Brothers and Sisters when I posted my previous post I was unable to understand the importance of this concept.  Having said as much I need to warn the reader that I may need to break this into two segments.  

Firstly, as I wrote in the previous entry, there is someone close to me who has a hard heart against me.  If you don't know what that looks like, or feels like, please read that part again before reading ahead. 

So, brothers and sisters, the first thing I must do is reveal the effects of a hard heart on those that love the possessor of such a heart.  To avoid confusion, from here on the hard hearted person will be the "victim" and the object of the hard heartedness will be the 'bystander'. 

 In order to put it in a perfect context (I think), there is a death that occurs inside the bystander that changes them.  It is a humbling sort of emptiness that can be consuming.  The victim's behavior is so thoroughly degrading that the bystanders state is perpetual melancholy and extreme anger.  It is this state of the bystander that is both dangerous and necessary.  

It is dangerous because we have an enemy that wants to tempt us.  He knows us, and he is aware of the conditions that make us weak.  The greatest danger for the bystander is 'sin' because what the bystander desires more than anything else is to escape the pain.  The easiest way to escape is to self-medicate through sin.  Overeat, get drunk, let a few choice words fly, slam doors, kick things, go hangout at places you should not be in, look at things you shouldn't look at; listen to music you shouldn't listen to, all so you can forget how badly you are being treated if only for a short time.  And then, your opinion of yourself is lowered even more because you sinned.  So a cycle begins and the bystander struggles mightily to maintain an identity in Christ while they are in the storm.

But this is a necessary condition in that the bystander must exist in this state so that God can be glorified!  The bystander must understand that nothing can be done for the victim's heart apart from God.  The bystander learns to trust God by continuing to 'go through' the storm which is the victim.  The bystander learns to depend on God's grace and learn that God's grace is sufficient.  What the bystander must learn is that a person cannot control another person's heart.  They can only pray and continue to love unconditionally.  From this perspective, the bystander becomes stronger in Christ by picking up that cross and following Jesus.  Once again, God can show victory in those who are broken.  Not by their own power, but by his grace.

^{Hebrews 12}

⁷ But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.

⁸ We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair;

⁹ Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;

¹⁰ Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.

¹¹ For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.