Hard Hearts = Closed Hearts

[b]But if your heart turns away so that you do not hear, and are drawn away, and worship other gods and serve them Dt 30:17 [/b] I had an interesting situation recently, we we're away with friends on an annual get together, those times are really precious to us and a time of great fun and refreshment. On the Sunday we went to my friends church, he's the new Curate there. At the end of the service He announced that he'd invited a homeless guy back for lunch. If I'm honest I was disappointed by this, as our times together are so precious that I didn't want to share them with anyone else. But it was his house so what could I do, besides he was being more Godly than me. So lunch went ahead, and I spent a lot of the time getting my heart right. My friend had chosen the better way and I needed to get my heart right before God on this. Finally I got myself into a time of submission, which was pretty much the end of the lunch, then the most amazing thing happened, God spoke to the man, through me, in the most graphic detail about his life. Lots of his issues in life were explained to him, way beyond what he'd expected to tell us about. It was beautiful to see this broken, humanly strong guy, dabbing his eyes dry as God ministered to him in a deep and personal way. I had to smile as I heard him say "Sorry I've got something in my eye" by way of an apology for the tears. That day taught me a lesson, we can't afford to have a wrong heart about things if we want to hear God speak to us for other people. My heart was totally closed to that guy at first, seeing him as an inconvenience, and I would have missed the blessing of seeing him being touched by the Father heart of God if I'd stayed in that place. It also made me think how many times I'd missed God's appointments in the past by a hard heart. My prayer for us all is that God softens our hearts so that God can speak to us and through us at anytime.