Heb 3:13 Encourage one another every day, as long as it is called today, lest none of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin
Recently, a beautiful, young, military wife, married for three years with one baby, called and talked with me about her marriage. She had ‘caught’ her husband looking at porn on the family computer. It was NOT the first time. In their last communications, he expressed hesitancy about their relationship, even using the ‘D’ word for divorce! She was blind-sided and shocked. In the course of listening to her pain, through her tears she said, “He is not the same man I married. How could he even think about abandoning us? How could he be so ‘hard’?”
The wife of a senior officer called and wanted a meeting with my wife and I. She sounded desperate and needed someone to talk to. She had found the computer history and secret files that her husband had placed on their computer. It was full of porn. He denied it, lying to her. He was mad that he had been discovered. He too used the “D” word. In listening to her pain and the anguish of soul, she said, “He is not the same man I married. I would have NEVER guessed that this was going on in his life. How could he abandon our children and me? How could he be so ‘hard’?”
Both cases are heart breaking. In both cases, the wives were shocked and confused. Sadly, in both cases, today’s verse applies. The sad but clear truth is that SIN HARDENS the heart. It always has and always will. The one involved in sin may be enjoying the ‘fleeting pleasures of sin for a season’, and may think that they can successfully hide their sin. But ‘God is not mocked, whatsoever a man sows, he also reaps’. One of the natural consequences or fruit of sin is a ‘hard heart’.
We desperately need each other. We need buddies who love us enough to tell us the truth. We need buddies who will pray for us and who will be uncompromising when it comes to sin. We need buddies that we can confess our sins to and who will pray for us. The lack of buddies will lead to comfortableness with sin. The results of this are deadly: broken marriages, fatherless children, and a breakdown of families leading to further deterioration of the culture.
