Hard or Soft?

Psalm 95:8a "Harden not your heart..."  Ephesians 4:32 "Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you."

I am going to try and keep it really simple today.  Are our hearts hard or soft? And what difference does it make?  And, no I'm not talking about tacos either. :)

I have heard many people say many times that they have hardened their heart because they had gotten hurt and they were not going to get hurt any more.  While on the surface a statement like that makes a lot of sense, when you dig a little deeper into the matter it never does what the person is attempting to do.

Anyone that I have ever seen harden their heart with the purpose of never getting hurt again always seems to get the same results from their hard heart - they get hurt even worse, and their heart grows even harder.  Each time their heart gets harder it actually becomes easier for them to get hurt.  They begin expecting to be hurt and they find hurt almost everywhere they look.  After a while people with hard hearts become as easy to spot as who is 7 feet tall.

Ephesians 4:32 exhorts us to keep our hearts tender and soft, always kind and forgiving.  I know from personal experience that forgiving someone is not the simplest of tasks. But we must understand that the forgiveness that is being offered is not really for the person being forgiven as much as it is for ourselves not to become hard hearted.

I know I said I was going to keep it simple today and believe it or not it is a very simple concept, but not as simple to carry out.  I will promise you this though - the more you forgive others, the simpler it becomes to forgive more.  As you consider forgiving someone or not, take just a moment and ponder on what God through Christ has forgiven you for.  If can truly take a close look at what God has freely forgiven you of - in comparison you too can and should forgive.