Did you know that in Exodus the Bible says that God "hardened Pharaoh's heart"? Some think this is God "picking on Pharaoh" by making him resist Moses, but Pharaoh actually hardened his own heart 4 times prior. In other words, Pharaoh had already decided that his heart was hardened... God just stopped trying to soften him up. Callousness is a dangerous thing because it challenges God's desire to use us. What we see in the Bible are several instances of people's hearts growing callous and God simply "moving around them". God doesn't seek out the biggest, the strongest, the smartest, or the most capable... he seeks out hearts that are open to the truth that He brings.

Compromise is a beautiful thing... sometimes. What if someone wants you to compromise the truth? Most things we treasure as "truth" are really just truth relative to our experience or relative to our knowledge, but one form of truth which will always hold is the truth of Christ. While compromise can lead to functioning governments and harmonious households, it can also drive us towards a perverted form of Christ-worship that starts looking pretty different from how God calls us to live. There are few things I know absolutely as truth, but one of those is that Christ is Lord and that what He has called me to do can't be compromised.

No one likes an inconvenience. We would rather not have to make difficult decisions between community events and church. We'd rather not have to sacrifice energy or sleep for prayer time or Bible study. Yet... here we are. As we look at Malachi, we can see how God feels towards his people who can't be bothered to give him the respect he's due. God is a God of love and compassion, but love and compassion at that level really insists that we show an ounce of reverence to a being capable of forgiving all our sins. As we look at how Malachi chastises the religious elite, we are faced with some hard questions: Do we give God our best? Are we willing to put him first? When we measure our actions against the calling God has placed on our lives, does it imply we serve a great and mighty God or a simple beggar who should be happy for the scraps we give him?

Love one another. It's such a simple command yet so difficult to do. We know the most important commandments Jesus gave us is to love God and love others, but why such an emphasis on love? As we dig deeper, what we find are references to our selves being "perfected" through love. What does that mean? "Perfected" means completed or make total in our purpose. In other words, we find purpose in our love. Many of us are accustomed to thinking of the famous "love chapter" in 1 Corinthians for wedding purposes, but a closer look at how love defines our purpose may bring new meaning to these frequently repeated scriptures.