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How our choices effect our spiritual discernment.




I’ve been doing a small Bible study on how our choices can lead us into deception and temptation and even harden us to the truth.

I’m not a scripture scholar by any stretch of the imagination but I love the Bible and know that it has been preserved by God to instruct us in truth.

The first time I noticed that God could allow someone’s heart to be hardened and their eyes and ears stopped to the truth was in the following passage:


For the hearts of this people have grown dull.
Their ears are hard of hearing,
And their eyes they have closed,
Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears,
Lest they should understand with their hearts and turn,
So that I should heal them.’


I wondered why God would allow the people’s hearts to grow dull and let their eyes and ears be closed. 

But then I saw times in my own life when I have run after my own ‘truths’ feeling like they were so much liberating and authentic. During these times my heart was hardened to the beauty and goodness of The Father. I saw Him through a warped vision. It justified my turning away from the beautiful truth He was trying to give me. ; the Truth that would protect my soul, my sight and my feet from stumbling.


In the book of Exodus, God hardens Pharaoh’s heart when he refuses to release the Israelites from slavery to Egypt.


 Exodus 9:12

12 But the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh; and he did not heed them, just as the Lord  had spoken to Moses.


This indicates that walking away from God’s truth and commandments can have devastating effects on a person’s ability to feel and see truth.

In the case of Pharaoh his heart was hardened.



Psalm 21:2

Thou hast given him his heart's desire, and hast not withholden the request of his lips. Selah.


These days we are told to ‘follow our hearts.’ But God’s Word warns us that our own hearts are not to be trusted. 


Jeremiah 17:9

The  heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?


Psalm 81:12

12 So I gave them up unto their own hearts' lust: and they walked in their own counsels.


Proverbs 1:31
Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices.

2 Corinthians 4:3-4

And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.


Yet if we give out hearts to God and surrender to Him He can transform our hearts, open our eyes and unstop our dull ears so that we can joyfully walk in the way of Truth.


Satan can come as an angel of light and deceive us easily.
The enemy doesn’t come to us with horns and a tail but with well reasoned, humanism,  secret ‘higher’ knowledge, and a social ‘gospel’ that promotes false values which conflict with God’s Word.
There are more examples of how the human senses can be blinded by following their own way and loving their own ‘knowledge’ and the ideology of the world rather than the eternal truth of God.



9 Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,

10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.

11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:

12 That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.


18 “He that believeth in Him is not condemned; but He that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

19 And this is the condemnation: that Light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.

21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.”


18 For the wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness,

19 because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God hath shown it unto them.

20 For from the creation of the world the invisible things of Him are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.

21 For when they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God, nor were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

23 and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man, and to birds and fourfooted beasts and creeping things.

24 Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies among themselves.

25 They changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.

26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women changed the natural use into that which is against nature.

27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another, men with men, working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense for their error which was meet.

28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind to do those things which are not fitting,

29 being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity. They are whisperers,

30 backbiters, haters of God, spiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,

31 without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affections, implacable, unmerciful.

32 And knowing the judgment of God, that those who commit such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but have pleasure in those who do them.


Yet there is good news. If we give our lives to God, He will give His life to us. He will transform us into His beautiful image and give us the strength and understanding to delight in Him and walk in His ways. And His way will not seem restrictive but a liberation from the bondage of self and sin.


Psalm 16:5-6. 

5 The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup; Thou maintainest my lot.

6 The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage.


Then He will open our eyes and unstop our ears and we will know Him and love Him as He knows and loves us.


In Luke 4:18 Jesus opens the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and reads these words about himself:


“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free”















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