How Not to Be Hard-Headed

Allow me, dear reader, to offer two lessons I learned from my reading or hearing the Word last year.

We were studying Luke in our Wednesday night home group, and it was Josh Howard’s turn to teach. He made the point that Mary Magdalene, out of whom Jesus had cast seven demons, was at the cross with Jesus. Then she was at the tomb on Sunday morning to anoint his body, but instead she saw the risen Jesus. Josh told us, “Jesus healed a lot of people. But Mary was there at the end for the Lord.” The thought occurred to me, “If every person who had been healed or delivered of demons or saved by Jesus had come to the cross, there would not have been room for them.” And then I thought, “Why weren’t they there?” Well, the same reason why I am often not ‘there’ for Jesus when he is being persecuted today. I am afraid to speak up, or ashamed to acknowledge, sometimes, that yes, I do believe Jesus is the Son of God. And that I do believe he is our hope for salvation, and that there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. Paul may have struggled with this sometimes; I’m not sure. But I know he asked the church at Ephesus to pray for him, “that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel.” Have you ever put that on your prayer list? Let’s agree to pray that for one another this year.

I was reading in Isaiah and saw where God called his people obstinate. He actually said they had iron necks and brass foreheads. Does anybody besides me resemble that remark? I have a hard head and a stiff neck. A hard head is marked by stubbornness, thinking you’re always right, with a very slow trigger on asking for any help thrown in to boot. A stiff neck keeps your hard head right where it is, so you won’t turn your face to the Lord, and to your brothers and sisters. As I pondered that, I wrote down two things I think we can all do to be less hard headed.

The first thing is to learn, and really receive, the truth that God loves you with a perfect love. That means he also likes you, and his love and his like is not dependent on you or on your family ’getting it all right.” You say, “I thought people who are hard headed are that way because they are proud of how much God loves them, even thinking God loves them a little bit more than the next guy.” I don’t think so. I think the hardest heads belong to those who do not receive his love or fully embrace his grace. They still think they can earn it through hard work and by keeping their lists of doing all the right things. The truth is, understanding God loves us and likes us frees us to love him more. It also frees us to love our wife or husband more, and to love our children more, regardless of whether they get it all right. The hard-headed way of thinking, “I have to get it all right” is legalism. Legalism will lead to either one of two things. It will produce bound-up, fearful people who simply walk in lockstep to what they believe will make God or others around them happy. Or, it will produce rebels, who eventually throw off all restraints and run headlong into sin. God. Loves. You. Period. Believe it, receive it, and then practice that kind of love with everybody you know.

Here’s the second thing. Once the thinking is right, start the practice of admitting when you are not in the right place or the right mind. Not just to yourself and to God. But practice admitting that to a trusted brother or sister in the Lord. Not one of us can do this Christian walk by ourselves. Admitting we need the church is an act of humility, and that takes care of a hard head in short order.

I hope this will encourage you on your journey through the new year.