I'm a pastor of an aging congregation, and I've watched people gradually drift away from faith not through one dramatic rebellion but through a series of small resistances. Paul warns about hardened hearts, and I realize this happens incrementally, through sustained refusal to hear God's call.
When someone first resists what God is asking, their heart isn't yet hardened. There's still sensitivity, still the ability to change course. But when they refuse and refuse and refuse over years, their capacity to hear decreases. The heart becomes hard not all at once but through layers of sustained disobedience.
This has shaped how I preach and pastor. I'm not trying to guilt people into obedience or shame them for struggles. I'm trying to encourage responsiveness, to invite people to listen while their hearts are still soft, to take seriously the subtle moments where we're choosing to harden ourselves through refusal. The goal is to help people maintain the capacity to hear rather than waiting until hearts have become so hard that change is nearly impossible.
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