To View the Video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/JZLUagG_Glk
SHOW NOTES
Welcome to a new week of the Hope Rescue Podcast! This week we are talking about how God can soften even the hardest of hearts.
One of the major reasons for mental health problems is when our conscience shuts off. When our conscience is no longer driving our behavior, we give in to every fleshly desire that presents itself. This also causes a hardening of our hearts. Ephesians 4:17-19 says, “Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.” When we are alienated from the life of God and ignorant to God's truth, we abandon self-restraint and pursue impurity. It becomes easy to fall into sin and live life with hardened hearts. We become insensitive to the devastation we are creating around us.
Maybe you feel like you've travelled so far from God there is no way to get back to Him. We want you to know that is a lie, and there is always a way back to God. Repentance. Repentance is a process of changing your belief system. Paul continues in Ephesians by giving us instructions to finding our way back to God. Ephesians 4:20-24 says, “But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” If we want to become free from the hardness of our hearts, we must intentionally disrobe from the corruption of our deceitful desires. We must embrace truth.
Galatians 2:20 says, "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” We need to see ourselves as crucified with Christ. We are renewed through Christ. If you find yourself cold towards God and others and you want to change, start by intentionally taking off the old self, renewing your mind with truth, and putting on your new self that's been created in Christ. Tim says, “Corruption spirals us towards decay and death, but being in the life of God leads us into newness in Christ.”
QUOTES
“When we are alienated from the life of God and ignorant to God's truth, we abandon self-restraint and pursue impurity.” -Tim
“Corruption spirals us towards decay and death, but being in the life of God leads us into newness in Christ.” -Tim
“Your feet follow where your heart is leading.” -Kimberly
REFERENCED SCRIPTURE
Ephesians 4:17-19 says, “Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.”
Ephesians 4:20-24 says, “But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”
Galatians 2:20 says, "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
