Spiritual Sclerosis

We often talk about the importance of having a soft heart instead of a hard heart. In medicine, the process of something becoming hard is called sclerosis, and one of the leading causes of death and disability is arteriosclerosis, or the hardening of the heart's arteries and blood vessels. This happens because something called plaque builds up in the blood vessels and makes them stiff and narrow and less able to perform their proper function of pumping blood through the body. Just as our physical heart hardening can lead to disaster and death, our Spiritual heart hardening can have the same consequences. When we sin and make bad choices, we allow spiritual plaque to build up in our spiritual arteries. Sin restricts and closes off our choices and opportunities, and makes it harder for the influence of the spirit to flow through us. But repentance and forgiveness can help us to remove all of that plaque that is clogging and hardening our hearts. No matter how much scar tissue our hearts have built up over the years, Christ can give us a brand new heart, completely soft and malleable and free of plaque or lesions. We should be very concerned if our physical heart becomes hardened, but we should also treat as a matter of life and death our Spiritual heart becoming hardened, and if we notice that the Spirit isn't flowing as swiftly and as freely as it used to, then we should plead for a new heart and if we our sincere in our efforts to change, the Lord will give us that new heart.