David’s prayer of repentance in Ps 51 shows us the importance of keeping our hearts right. All our speech and actions are the overflow of our heart attitudes and Jesus reminded us in the Sermon on the Mount that actions can be more complex than they appear. If we are ever to understand our own actions or the things other people do, we will have to dig deeper than the action itself into the motivation and the belief system which have prompted the action.
The state of the unregenerate heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. (Jer 17:9) From early times ‘every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time’ (Gen 6:5) and those who are without Christ are ‘darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.’ (Eph 4:18) Pharaoh gives us an example of someone who repeatedly hardened his heart when confronted by God’s might and majesty (Ex 7:14, 8:15), and sadly this tendency to hard hearts is not reserved to non-believers. The wilderness wanderings show us the Israelites repeatedly grumbling against God and hardening their hearts even when they had witnessed His miraculous provision. (Ex 17, Num 20:1-13) Moses’s advice ‘Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer’ (Deut 10:16) needs to be applied to all of us.
God’s aim is to transform our unregenerate hearts of stone into renewed hearts of flesh (see Jer 31:33, Ezek 11:19). He is in the process of sanctifying and transforming each one of us and our role is to guard our hearts, since this is the wellspring of life. (Prov 4:23) Like David, we have to be sensitive to God’s Word and repent when we have gone wrong, asking God to ‘Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.’ (Ps 51:10) Our prayer needs continually to be ‘Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.’ (Ps 139:23-24)
When we pray David’s prayers in Psalm 51 and Psalm 139, what we are doing is not only giving God permission to enter our lives and cleanse us; we are allowing Him to sensitise our hearts. When our hearts are hardened, when we have hearts of stone, it takes a lot to penetrate our hearts. Every time God speaks to us, we have a choice. We can hear His voice and respond to it. Or we can harden our hearts and ignore Him. God’s voice, if we are sensitive to Him, is like a pinprick. If your skin is soft, you can feel a pinprick. A pin can draw blood. So often, that is how God is with us. He pricks our consciences. He whispers words of exhortation to us. He nudges us to the right choice. He reminds us gently of the way we should go.
If our skin is not soft and sensitive, however, we can jam a pin into it and not even feel it. Our skin can become calloused. A callus (or callosity) is a toughened area of skin which has become relatively thick and hard in response to repeated friction, pressure, or other irritation. Calloused skin is one thing – an annoyance rather than a major problem. But calloused hearts are a much bigger problem. Jesus said that most people who listened to Him did not respond in faith because of their calloused hearts. (Matt 13:15)
If we do not respond to the pinpricks of God’s Spirit, His Word will come as a sword or scalpel to us, cutting through our layers of defence and doubt (Heb 4:12), which is inevitably more painful! Let’s allow God to search and know our hearts and to create in us pure hearts, as David teaches us, we will be able to recognise His voice more clearly and can then choose to obey Him; we are laid open to ‘listen and obey’, which is the response God is longing for.