Welcome back to the podcast. Over the years we have taken up a lot of questions from

listeners who struggle with self-doubt, wondering if they are in fact an unbeliever asking whether they have committed the unpardonable

sin, asking whether they have or will fall away, asking whether they are one of the non-elect.

There's just a lot of sober, fearful, self-reflective questions like these that come up all the

time in the emails that we get and that's true today in this question from a listener named Aaron.

Hello, Pastor John, he writes,

I'd like to first say that you have truly been a blessing to me.

I thank God for you.

I've recently started to pursue a better relationship with the Lord.

I often come across this phrase though in the New Testament about the hardened heart,

the hardened heart. My question is, how would I know if my heart was hardened against

God? What does this mean? And how can I ensure that I don't have a hardened heart towards God.

Let's start with the most general meaning of hardness of heart in the Bible.

And then we can move to the specifically Christian meaning of hardness of heart in relation to God and how to avoid it or how to get rid of it.

The most general meaning of the hard heart is a heart that lacks ordinary feelings of tenderness and compassion.

For example, compassion for the poor, Deuteronomy 15-7.

If one of your brothers should become poor,

you shall not harden your heart against your poor brother, but you shall open your hand to him.

Or not just compassion for the poor, but also compassion for the sick or the disabled.

In Mark, chapter 3, verse 5, Jesus sees a man with a withered hand in the synagogue and he says to the people surrounding him,

is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm to save life to kill, and they were silent. Now that was not a hard question to answer.

I mean, is it okay to save life or to kill that's not and they were silent and it says

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