In Freedom Part 3, Ashley and Carlie Terradez explain how freedom begins with us thinking the thoughts of God. Learn how to break worldly thought patterns that keep you from entering into everything Jesus has provided.
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The primary scriptures explored in this teaching are Galatians 5:1 and Phillipians 3:10-12.
Transcription
Carlie: Did you know that a heart that does not consider the things of God can actually become hardened to the freedom and the blessings that God has for you. Stay tuned and find out how to overcome this.
Announcer: Why live a normal life when you could be living the abundant life? Welcome to the Abundant Life Program with Ashley and Carlie Terradez.
Ashley: Hello and welcome to the Abundant Life. Hey, we’re so glad you’ve joined us today here in the lounge. My name is Ashley, and this is Carlie. And we’re teaching about freedom today. We’re teaching about the power of freedom and the fact that Jesus paid for your freedom. Amen?
Carlie: Amen. Amen. We’ve covered a lot of things so far in this series. So I encourage you, if this is the first time you’ve joined in, right here in the middle of the Freedom Series, then go back and watch the previous episodes because we’ve covered a lot of ground already.
Previously, we were talking about how the children of Israel didn’t enter the promise land because of their hardened heart. They had a heart of unbelief. They had been brought out of slavery, but the slavery was still in their minds. And that mindset was hindering them and actually keeping them, really, still in bondage. Our signature verse for this whole series is Galatians five, verse one. It says, “It was for freedom that Christ has set us free and never again to be subject to the yoke of slavery.”
We have a choice to stand firm in the freedom that Jesus has provided for us, but our part is to pursue that, is to stand our ground and not let our minds be taken over to captivity, into where we’ve come from, but look to where we’re going to. In other words, let go of the past in order to embrace the future. And so we’ve looked at a few different things here, a few different examples in the scripture, but one thing I want to look at today is the role of our heart and how to overcome what we call a hardened heart.
So what is a hardened heart, you might be wondering?
Ashley: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I’m wondering.
Carlie: He’s wondering. I can tell you’re excited.
Ashley: I’m waiting.
Carlie: This is just a heart that’s more in tune with the things around them, the opinions of man, the situations in the world, our feelings, our emotions, our carnality, rather than our spirituality. So we’re more in tune with the things of the world than we are in tune with the things of God. Well, over a period of time, a heart that’s in that condition will actually become hardened, is what it says, to the things of God, to the voice of God.
Ashley: Wow.
Carlie: If I was to describe somebody with a hardened heart, I would describe them this way. This is somebody that struggles to receive the love of God, struggles to enjoy life, struggles to find pleasure in the success of other people, struggles to receive compliments, has a really low self esteem. Even maybe struggles with depression, with anxiety, is more wrapped up in the things of this world. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re going out and they’re living a righteous life every night and living in sin, but just somebody that’s more preoccupied with the things of the world, with the condition of this world and the situation that they’re living in, than they are the things of God.
And over a long period of time, that starts to layer our heart. We can see this in the scripture and it’s important that we see this and then learn to identify it in ourself, so that we can walk in freedom.
Ashley: Amen.
Carlie: And we can be free.
Ashley: One way I look at this, helped me understand it when I first heard of this, because this might be the first time you’ve ever heard of this as a hardened heart. It might be the first time you’ve heard this saying, this expression, a hardened heart. One thing that helped me when I first heard about this, the one way that I could see it more clearly, and it helped me understand, it was a little bit like your conscience. It’s not your conscience, it’s not the same thing, but it’s a little bit like your conscious. You may have heard of the saying, “When you sear your conscience, right? So you do something and then you feel a little bit, “Oh, I shouldn’t have done that.” But you do it anyway and you sear your conscience. And then it happens again, you sear your conscience. It happens again, you sear your coinsurance. And what happens is you do it so many times that your conscious becomes hardened, if you like.
Carlie: You literally have scar tissue there, to where there’s no feeling anymore.
Ashley: Yeah. Basically, you harden your conscience, and then you can do things. That’s why people can do things. You think, “How could they do that terrible thing?” Well, because bit by bit, gradually, they’ve gone against their conscience. Everyone’s got an inbuilt conscience between right and wrong. They’ve gone against it. So, that really helped me. I realized, when God tells you to do something or when you read a scripture and it’s speaking to you and you go against it, that’s hardening your heart. When you don’t consider things, that hardens our heart. And I think often, it’s so important to have a sensitive heart to God. Often, we’ll think, “Oh, that’s just a small thing. It doesn’t matter.” No, the small things are building up, little by little.
In the King James version, it talks about waxing. Waxing cold. And what that expression means, it’s like when they get a candle, a wick, and they dip it in wax and pull it out and dip it in wax, the way they used to make candles-
Carlie: It builds up layers of wax.
Ashley: Yeah. I don’t think they make them like this anymore, but in the olden days is they would get a wick and keep dipping it in the wax and then pull it out and it gets hard. And then they dip it in again and it gets layer by layer. Over the course of time, them layers build up to the point where it’s thick and it’s a solid candle. So our hearts can wax cold, or our hearts can get hardened in the same type of way, in terms of it’s a little by little, isn’t it? It’s not just an overnight thing, it’s little by little that our hearts can become hardened. The good news is, they can become sensitive and soft to God again, real quick. Amen?
Carlie: Amen. Amen. So let’s look at this in scripture. I’m looking here in Mark chapter six. And this is the story, you’ve probably read this before, and from verse 45 of the walking on the water. It says, “Immediately,” he’s come back, Jesus, “he compelled his disciples to get into the boat and go to the other side to Bethsaida.” So he sent the crowd away. Jesus went to a mountain to pray and the disciples got in the boat and off they went. And it says, “When evening came, the boat was in the middle of the sea and Jesus, he was alone on the land.” Now the wind came up, a storm came up and it started to beat against the boat. And Jesus, it says, “It was about the fourth watch of the night and he came to them, walking on the sea and would have passed them by,” he would have passed them by, “but when they saw him walking on the sea, they supposed it was a ghost and cried out. For they saw him and were troubled.”
Now, this is really interesting. Jesus didn’t plan to get in the boat with them. He just planned to go to the other side. He planned to walk across the water and go to the other side. And the thing that interests me is just a couple of chapters before, in Mark chapter four, there was a really similar occurrence. A really similar instance, where a storm rose up, this time, Jesus was in the boat with them. And he said, “Let us go across to the other side.” And that time, when the storm came, real similar, the only difference being that he was in the boat this time, he stood up and he spoke to the wind and the waves.
Now, here we are, there’s been a couple of supernatural miracles, different things that have happened in the couple of days between one storm and the next. But everything that Jesus did when he was with his disciples, he was mentoring them, he was training them. “I’m going to do it, then I’m going to show you how to do it. Then you’re going to do it.”
Ashley: Okay.
Carlie: Right?
Ashley: It was good mentoring.
Carlie: Amen. Leadership 101. So in the storm, back in Mark chapter four, he was showing, “This is how you deal a the storm guys. This is what you do. You can speak to it. You can speak to it. You’re above the circumstances. You can speak to it.” The next miracle that we’re seeing, previously in Mark chapter six, is the miracle of the loaves. So it’s a different kind of situation, but all of these things are building to a point. They’re building to a point of training in the hearts of his disciples. Jesus is trying to get across to them that they have power. They have authority over the natural elements and things that come against them. This whole thing is training.
Ashley: It’s interesting. The miracle before this incidence, in Mark 6:37, they had this situation where they had 5,000 men who were hungry, really hungry. And Jesus said to his disciples, “You give them something to eat.” So this is exactly what he was doing.
Carlie: He’s mentoring them.
Ashley: He’s saying, “It’s your turn guys. Come and you access the supernatural power of God. You exercise your authority. Don’t leave it all up to me.” Jesus was into empowering people, he still is. Empowering people to do it themselves, empowering the body of Christ. And that’s what our ministry is about, empowering believers in the promises of God. This is not about us, “Look how great we are.” No, it’s about you doing the will of God. You’ve been empowered to do the will of God, to exercise the promises of God. If you’re born again, then you have authority, you have miracle working power on the inside of you.
Carlie: Amen.
Ashley: You have the spirit of God and you have everything you need, praise God, to walk in authority and walk in victory. Amen? That’s what Jesus said to his disciples. “You gave them something to eat. You do it.”
Carlie: You give you something to eat. Now, in the natural, just like looking at a storm, it’s the same kind of principle. Except this time, he was looking at loaves and fish. It didn’t look like there was going to be enough to feed all these people. But when Jesus saw it, he looked beyond the natural elements. He looked beyond the storm. He looked beyond the lack. He saw an opportunity for God to show himself strong on their behalf. And so he didn’t see things the same way the disciples saw things. He was trying to open the eyes of their understanding. Open the eyes… You have eyes of your heart, right? Open the eyes of their understanding.
Ashley: You’ve got naturalize eyes. It was the eyes of your heart, it’s like our imagination. It’s what we see on the inside. It’s your vision, the eyes of your heart are what you see on the inside.
Carlie: Yeah. And so when it came this time, he wasn’t in the boat in this storm. He was walking. He was going to pass them by. And now the disciples hadn’t quite got there yet and you can see this in their response because they looked at something that was completely supernatural. “Hang on a minute. That’s Jesus and he’s walking on the water.”
Ashley: Right.
Carlie: Right? But their minds didn’t understand it. So they tried to rationalize when they saw something supernatural. We do that sometimes. If it’s something that we don’t understand, we try to logic our way out of it. And it was confusing to them. And because it was confusing to them, they began to get afraid.
Ashley: The voice from heaven spoke out and spoke about Jesus. They said, “It must be thunder. It must be a thunderstorm.” But it was actually a voice. The voice of God spoke from heaven and they said, “It must just be a thunderstorm.” So they tried to ration things out and basically try to logic it away because some of their hearts can’t comprehend the supernatural.
Carlie: Exactly. It says that their hearts were troubled. Look in verse 50, “They all saw him and they were troubled.” When people, their hearts aren’t softened to the things of God, to the supernatural, they’ll take that and when they can’t understand it, they will become troubled. They’ll become troubled because their hearts aren’t able to literally wrap their minds around it.
“But immediately,” it says, “He spoke to them and said, ‘Be of good chee, it is I. Don’t be afraid.’ Then he went up and got in the boat and the wind ceased.” So this time, I think this is really interesting. This is like a physical demonstration, the very thing, the very act of nature that was trying to destroy them before, Jesus is saying, “See boys? That storm that we defeated, it’s still under your feet. It’s under your feet.” He was literally walking above the circumstances.
Ashley: So the storm that was… Yeah, the circumstances that were trying to kill the disciples and take them out, Jesus was walking on the top of it.
Carlie: Yeah.
Ashley: That’s awesome.
Carlie: And that’s a demonstration right there.
Ashley: Amen. People say, “How are you doing?” “Well, I’m okay, under the circumstances.” What are you doing under the circumstances? Walk on top of them.
Carlie: Amen.
Ashley: Now you’re above and you’re not beneath. You’re the head and not the tail. And if you’re born again, you’ve got Jesus as your Lord and savior, I’m telling you, you can walk above the circumstances. However bad those circumstances are, you can walk above them, praise God. God’s giving you the ability to do that.
Carlie: Amen. He demonstrated two different ways to deal with storms. You can speak to it, or you can rise above it. Either way, it’s under your feet. Either way, it’s going to stop.
So he gets in the boat, look at this though. It says, “They were greatly astonished in themselves beyond measure. And they were astounded,” it says in some translations. Astounded-
Ashley: Mine says, they marveled.
Carlie: Marveled.
Ashley: Marveled.
Carlie: Marveled. Another translation says, “And that they were astonished. The reason that they were astonished at this miracle, and it tells you why, it says in verse 52, was because they didn’t comprehend or they didn’t understand the miracle of the loaves-
Ashley: Hmm, that’s good.
Carlie: … because their hearts were hardened. The word comprehend there, it’s talking about an understanding. They didn’t consider it. They didn’t ponder it. Right? And astonished-
Ashley: The Amplified is really good here. So we’re still in Mark 6:52. This is the Amplified translation, says this, “For they failed to consider or understand the teaching and the meaning of the miracle of the loaves.” See, the meaning of the miracle of the loaves. “In fact, their hearts had grown calloused.” Same thing, hardened heart, callous, waxed cold, callous. “And they’d become dull and had lost the power of understanding.”
Carlie: Amen.
Ashley: Isn’t that powerful?
Carlie: In some translations, in verse 51, maybe it says this in the Amplified, “When they were greatly astonished.” The word astonished, it means to be out of one’s mind, to be insane, to put out or to be beside oneself.
Ashley: Wow.
Carlie: They were literally out of their mind, they couldn’t understand with their mind because their hearts had become hardened and callous. And they didn’t recognize the supernatural power of God, in the incidences leading up to that. And I think that we can really take some examples from that. We need to have our hearts soft towards God. I don’t know about you, but I want to hear God when he speaks to me in a still small voice.
Ashley: Amen.
Carlie: I want to hear his direction. Hearing God, is crucial to our survival. It’s literally crucial. In fact, we have a whole course on how to hear God. Don’t we?
Ashley: Yep, yep. Hearing the voice of God. How to hear God, it’s very important.
Carlie: The voice of God leads us into freedom, leads into protection.
Ashley: Amen. It’s powerful. There’s been so many times in our life where God’s spoken to us. And I’m telling you, when you hear God’s voice, it’s amazing when you act on it, but you have to be tuned in to God to be able to hear it.
Carlie: He has a frequency.
Ashley: And often, if our hearts get hardened… And like Carlie said earlier, it might not be sin, it might just be the natural things as well. It might be the cares of this world. It might just be the natural things that we’re focusing on, that hardens our heart. So I think we’ve got so much more to share with you today. We want to pray for you and minister to you and finish sharing with you. I’ve got a testimonial I want to share with you as well. But until then, I want to share some exciting things we have. So you can be empowered by what’s coming up next.
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Ashley: Hey, we’re talking about living in freedom, we’re talking about hearing the voice of God, we’re talking about having a soft heart towards the Lord and not letting our hearts grow hard to the things of God. Praise God. But I’ve got a testimony I want to share with you. And this is from Thelma. Thelma wrote in, thank you for writing us. You can write into TerradezMinistries.com. The details are there on your screen, TerradezMinistries.com. I’d love to hear from you. We’d love to hear your testimonies about what the Lord is doing in your life.
So this is a testimony from Thelma. She said she owed $2,000 in taxes to the IRS, uh-oh, which was an unexpected expense. She thought she would just need to be disciplined and save the money and able to save up and pay the debt over a course of time. But then one day she was praying and remembered the expense she had and she said, “Okay, Lord.” She’s just talking to the Lord, she was having a conversation with the Lord. I love this. She said, “Okay, Lord. You said in your word that you would supply all my needs and now I need an extra $2,000.”
She said, she left for work and forgot all about it. So she made the request, cast your cares as unto the Lord. She made the request and she left it and she went to work and forgot all about it. “Around noon, a friend of mine,” that she hadn’t heard from in over a year, texted her and asked if she was still selling some things out of her basement. He and a friend came and looked and decided to make an offer for the entire lot of all the things she had in her basement and the amount was $2,000. Isn’t that neat?
So not only did she have $2,000 to pay her taxes, she also had a nice tidy basement.
Carlie: Praise God.
Ashley: It’s a win-win.
Carlie: That’s a win-win.
Ashley: It’s a win-win. In fact, I wasn’t planning to do this, but shameless plug, I have a course on this. You can get the course, the details are on the screen. How to buy and sell stuff and make money.
Carlie: Come on.
Ashley: You’ve got stuff in your basement, you’ve got stuff in your attics, stuff in your kitchen cabinets, in your garage, whatever, that you don’t use, you could sell that stuff and make money.
Carlie: That will lead somebody to financial freedom.
Ashley: It could lead to, I’m telling you, financial freedom. You can make extra money by selling the stuff you don’t need.
Carlie: Absolutely.
Ashley: I tell people if you haven’t used it for a year and it’s not sentimental, then go ahead and sell it and make some money.
Carlie: Clear out that storage unit.
Ashley: Thanks for that testimony, Thelma. We appreciate it, glad you got to pay your taxes and glad you got to clear out some stuff in your basement.
Carlie: Amen.
Ashley: So we’re looking at a hardened heart in particular, at the moment. Walking in freedom, the hardened heart and we looked at what we consider, how important it is to consider the things of God.
Carlie: Yeah, absolutely. We’re talking here about when Jesus was walking on the water. Now, there’s another account of this very same incident in Matthew 14. So let’s look at what Matthew has to say about it, in chapter 14. It’s a real similar account, except there’s a little bit more to it in this one. In verse 27, it says, “Immediately Jesus spoke to them saying, ‘Be of good cheer. It is I. Do not be afraid.'” And then Peter, “Now Peter answered and said, ‘Lord, if it is you bid me to come on the water.'”
Ashley: It’s almost like Peter didn’t give the Lord a choice. He said, “Lord, if it’s you, tell me to come out and walk on the water.” So what’s God’s going to say, “Well, no. It’s not me.” But yet at the same time… So basically, Peter almost cornered Jesus here in saying, he’s going to have to do this.
Carlie: He placed a demand on him.
Ashley: Peter placed a demand on Jesus. I love this because no one else did this. This was Peter’s thinking. We looked at how the things you can see and the things you think on can actually change what you experience of God. And Peter right here was like, “I’m going for this.”
Carlie: I really like this because I think sometimes Peter gets a bit of a bad rap.
Ashley: He does. He’s the one who speaks first, thinks later-
Carlie: He does.
Ashley: … and things like that. But people who gave him a bad rap, you wait to get to heaven because he’s going to be quite a buff guy.
Carlie: Well, on him, Jesus said, “I’m going-
Ashley: You got to be careful.
Carlie: … on you, I’m going to build my church.” So, he called him the rock.
Ashley: On his revelation.
Carlie: On his is revelation. Now, what I want us to see here is in the boat, the boat was full of disciples. Now they couldn’t receive, they couldn’t wrap their mind, their hearts were hardened because they weren’t soft. They didn’t recognize who Jesus was or what he was doing in that moment because they hadn’t considered, they hadn’t pondered, they hadn’t thought through the miracles that they’d seen previously.
But there was one disciple that was the exception to that, who didn’t think the same way. His heart condition was opposite to the condition of the heart of the other people in the boat. And that’s Peter. This is Peter, who gets a bad rap because he denied Jesus three times. He was the one that was scared for his life, hiding in the garden when Jesus was arrested and was called out by a little girl for denying Jesus three times saying, “I’m not with him.” He was the one on the beach that Jesus reaffirmed three times. “Peter, do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me?” This gives us an insight into Peter’s heart.
Ashley: Jesus also said to, “Get behind me, Satan.” So he must have been offended at that. He said, “Jesus, you don’t have to go to the cross. You don’t have to die.” And Jesus said, “Get behind me, Satan.” So he could have been offended at that.
Carlie: Peter was a man that spoke out of his heart.
Ashley: Amen.
Carlie: It’s almost like he had no filter sometimes, what he was thinking just came out.
Ashley: I can’t imagine anyone living like that.
Carlie: Anyway, but he was really tender hearted. He was just really tender hearted. His heart was softened to the things of God. Sometimes that meant he had bit of foot in mouth disease. He spoke first and thought later.
Ashley: Amen. It’s a great way to live.
Carlie: He was on the edge, but he was a man of great faith. And so unlike the other disciples in the boat, his heart was soft towards the things of God. And so when he saw Jesus, he said, “Lord, if it is you, bid me come on the water.” Now every discipline in that boat could have walked on the water, every single one of them. But Peter was the one that placed a demand on it. He was the one that stepped out of the boat and decided to follow Jesus’ example. Man, that warms my heart. There’s someone there, it says, “Peter got out of the boat, he walked on the water to Jesus. But when he saw the strong wind, he was afraid and began to sink. And he cried out, ‘Lord, save me.'”
Ashley: Because it’s easier to walk on water if it’s still, but if it’s windy-
Carlie: Isn’t that what they show you in the children’s Bibles, with all the pictures?
Ashley: Yeah, I know. It’s just a Millpond, but here’s the thing. Wherever the water is still or wherever there’s a wind and waves, it doesn’t really make a difference. It’s impossible to walk on water. You cannot, in the natural, walk on water. It defies natural laws. So it’s funny how he got distracted. He took his eyes off Jesus, took his eyes off the word that God had gave to him. Jesus said to him, “Come to me.” He took his eyes off that and he started to look at this storm around him. He started to get distracted from the circumstance around.
There’s a great life lesson there that we could go into. We’re not going to, but if you get distracted by the things around you, you can easily find yourself sinking. Before he was walking on top of the circumstances, if you start meditating on those circumstances and focus on them circumstances, whatever you focus on gets bigger. What you focus on gets magnified.
Carlie: Well, exactly. And we need to camp here a little bit because this is actually the cure to a hardened heart.
Ashley: Walk on water?
Carlie: Yes.
Ashley: Okay.
Carlie: It’s what we meditate on.
Ashley: I did try it.
Carlie: You did try it?
Ashley: If they’re watching this show, they’re watching this program, I guarantee you, most people-
Carlie: There going to run out and try it?
Ashley: … have tried it at some point. No, they’ve already tried it. At some point, everyone’s had a go at trying to walk on water. No? Maybe it’s just me.
Carlie: I don’t know.
Ashley: Okay.
Ashley: At swimming pools, I’m already ready to swim, but I just thought, what if I could just walk on water? So you run really quick and anyway. It feels like the first few steps you could actually be walking on the water.
Carlie: I think that’s called momentum.
Ashley: Just momentum?
Carlie: Yeah, yeah.
Ashley: Okay.
Carlie: Just run faster next time. I don’t know. It works for hovercraft. Just run faster.
Ashley: Yeah, really fast.
Carlie: Anyway. Getting back to this. What we think about and what we consider and what we allow in our hearts is going to determine whether we sink or swim. Whether we walk on the water, whether we rise above the circumstances, whether we cross to the other side and make it out alive, or whether we sink. And Peter was the one that got out of the boat and walked on the water, when all of them, in fact, could have done that.
Ut the reason that Peter was able to do that was because of the condition of his heart. Peter’s heart was softened to the things of the Lord. It says, when we started reading that, back in Mark chapter six, the reason that they were afraid, that they were troubled, was because they were astonished even. They were insane, they were out of their mind, is what it says. If you study out, is because they did not consider the miracle of the loaves and their heart was hardened. It was calloused towards the things of God.
Then this word, consider, it also means to ponder. And then there’s somebody else in the scripture, I want to show you, that had learned the art of pondering. Pondering, right? Not the same as daydreaming, but we need to think about things.
Ashley: Pondering, so meditating on something, thinking, mulling it over.
Carlie: Look at this. This is in Luke, chapter two. In Luke, chapter two, now this is Mary. Now, I feel for Mary and Joseph, because they’d never raised a messiah before. There wasn’t a Facebook group that they could join on raising messiahs. They couldn’t phone a friend. There wasn’t a manual that came with it. There wasn’t a Pinterest board or something where people kept helpful tips on Messiah raising.
Ashley: No Messiah raising blog.
Carlie: No, no. None of that sort of stuff. And so when they run into challenges, it’s like…
Ashley: What do you do?
Carlie: What do we do? Praise the Lord. Right? And so, there’s several times in the scripture where it says Mary didn’t really understand what’s going on, but she pondered things in her heart.
Ashley: Think about that. Mary could be one… You get these parents that say, “My child’s perfect.” Okay.
Carlie: She actually could.
Ashley: “My child’s perfect,” that’s kind of cool.
Carlie: That’s pretty cool.
Ashley: I guess we’re like that, too.
Carlie: So this is one of those examples. This is in Luke chapter two, the birth of Jesus, verse 16. “They came hurrying and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in the manger. And when they seen him, they made widely known the word, which was told them concerning the child. And all of those who heard it marveled at what the shepherds told them, but,” verse 19, “Mary kept all of these things and pondered them in her heart.”
It’s like, “I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t understand this. This is out of my realm. This is out of my sphere. This is literally out of this world.” But rather than speak out of her unbelief, or maybe her emotions or her concern or what she was thinking, she just kept those things in her heart. She took the word of God, even if she didn’t understand it and kept it in her heart.
The word ponder, this is what it means. It means to combine, to join together in one’s mind, to converse or to speak. To converse or to speak. This is the cure to a hardened heart. When we take what the word of God is saying to us, take the word that we’ve heard, whether we understand it or not is almost irrelevant. Take the word that we’ve heard and meditate on it and combine it in our minds and think about it and mull it over and meditate on it. Combine it, talk about it, converse and speak it out.
Ashley: That’s good.
Carlie: That is how we get past a hardened heart. It enables us to peel back the layers of our heart, the layers of unbelief, the layers where we’ve just literally been out of our mind, been more carnal, been more worldly focused. As we take the word of God and let it sink down into our heart and start speaking out, conversing, rolling it around-
Ashley: Imagining it.
Carlie: … imagining it, what we’re doing is we are agreeing with the incorruptible seed of the word of God. We are literally planting the word of God in our heart, and it’s going to bear fruit. It’s going to bear fruit. Now, the other incidences is just a little bit later in the chapter, actually.
It says here in verse 51, Luke 2:51, “He went down with them.” And this is another time, when Jesus was a little older, and they left him in the synagogue and didn’t realize till a few days later.
Ashley: I know-
Carlie: Every parent’s worst nightmare.
Ashley: We lost the Messiah.
Carlie: Can you imagine that? “I’m sorry, Lord. I’ve left him somewhere.”
Ashley: I lost him.
Carlie: I lost him.
Ashley: Jesus wasn’t lost.
Carlie: He wasn’t lost.
Ashley: They just didn’t know where he was.
Carlie: He just hadn’t been found.
Ashley: They didn’t know where he was.
Carlie: You know when you say, “I was lost, but Jesus found me.?
Ashley: Yeah.
Carlie: I don’t know how that works in this situation. Jesus, wasn’t lost and Jesus found himself. But anyway. “But his mother kept all these words in her heart.” She kept them. We need to take the word of God and plant it in our heart. If you’ve listened to this, you’ve realized that maybe there are circumstances in your life, there’s thinking in your mind, there’s trains of thought, there’s past negative experiences. Maybe there’s symptoms in your body that is speaking to you really loudly. Maybe your bank accounts tell talking to you, telling you… Maybe you’ve got people around you telling, “You can’t do it. You can’t believe God. You’re foolish for putting your faith out there. You’re going to be disappointed.”
Maybe you’re just surrounded by negativity and your heart has come into this condition that we call hardened. Maybe you find it hard to even hear when God is speaking to you anymore. Maybe when you read the word of God, you just feel like God isn’t listening or he doesn’t care. That’s a characteristic of a hardened heart, but I want to encourage you today, start reading the word of God, deciding to believe it and ponder it, meditate it and speak it out. And your life is about to change. Amen?
Ashley: Amen. Praise God. Hey, thanks for being with us today. We’ll be back real soon, but remember, until next time don’t just settle for living a normal life when you could be living the abundant life. We’ll see you soon.