The Surprisingly Common Trap that Hardens Believer’s Hearts
When the disciples of Jesus just couldn’t believe
Marvel for a moment at these words:
And Jesus got into the boat with the disciples, and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened. (Mark 6:51–52, ESV)
The disciples witnessed Jesus multiply five loaves and two fish into enough food to satisfy thousands. They ate the food themselves. That night, they watched as Jesus walked on the water and calmed a storm instantly. These disciples loved Jesus and witnessed Him perform awe-inspiring miracles before their eyes.
Yet their hearts were hardened.
That’s astounding.
We constantly expect that if we saw a miracle first-hand, it would help us believe. Yet the disciples saw several spectacular miracles in less than 24 hours and their hearts were hardened — even when they wanted to believe this Jesus whom they had left everything to follow.
Who hardened their hearts? What hardened them impenetrably that witnessing these miracles first-hand wasn’t enough for them to believe?
Did God harden their hearts? Very unlikely. Jesus expects them to understand. He expected them to be able to give bread to the crowd; He expected them to understand.
Did sin or opposition to Christ harden their hearts? Very unlikely. They served Christ as disciples, trying to be exactly like Him. They obeyed Him, followed Him, learned from Him.
So what did harden their hearts?
Limited expectations.
Putting God in a box
The disciples still cherished their limited expectation that Jesus would be a human Messiah, establishing a physical kingdom imminently, where they would reign with Him in political power. That’s what they expected; that’s what they saw.
They did not expect Jesus to be God, possessing authority over the entire Creation. Even when they had the evidence in their hands.
They saw Jesus multiplying the bread, which should have been a clue. God supplied supernatural bread to Israel in their wilderness wanderings. God supplied bread to Elijah and through him to the widow and her son. God continually provides for His people supernaturally.
When Jesus did the same, it should have been a clue. But they did not understand what the loaves revealed.
Thus we learn: limited expectations harden hearts.
The disciples had the evidence before their eyes. They distributed the bread. They saw the miracle. They all tasted the evidence!
Yet they did not perceive its meaning. They were so committed to their pre-determined interpretation of who Jesus must be that their hearts were hardened to anything else.
Expect God to be greater than you imagine
We limit God terribly. We expect Him to do so little in our lives. We wish He would do more, and we wish we were worthy of Him doing more in our lives, but we expect so little of Him and of ourselves.
And because we’ve adopted these limited expectations, that’s what we see — even if God confronts us directly with the evidence of a far greater reality.
God won’t fit into your limited boxes. But to you, it will seem like He does, because that’s what you’ve told yourself to expect. That’s how we harden our hearts: we expect less of God than who He really is.
The disciples were completely amazed that Jesus could control the natural elements. If they had understood about the loaves, they could have expected it. If Jesus indeed is God in the flesh, providing food miraculously in person just as He had done throughout Israel’s history, then His power should have no limits.
Instead Jesus’ power confounded them. This was not who they thought Jesus was.
And the remarkable thing — the most mind-boggling piece in this entire story — is that the disciples still did not adjust their limited expectations. Jesus astounded them by operating outside their expectations, but they did not repent of limiting Jesus to who they expected Him to be.
God must open your eyes
We don’t know what to expect of God. Every time we try to guess at what God is like, we imagine less than who He really is. Every time we try to anticipate what God is doing, we imagine less than what He is able to accomplish.
For us to see rightly, we need God to open our eyes.
Thus the Psalms record the prayer:
“Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.” Psalm 119:18, ESV
If all we had to do was read the Bible, this prayer would be useless. We can already read. We can already hear, see, and think about the Scriptures.
But without God, we still cannot see.
Without God, we are trapped in our limited expectations. We are limited creatures, limited by our time, our ability, our opportunities, our energy, our strength, our wealth (or lack thereof). We live limited lives, so we naturally expect everything to be limited — even God.
Without the help of the limitless God, we cannot expect anything but what we experience: limits, limits, and more limits.
Worse, the world contains endless distortions of who God is. Despite God providing a clear and consistent record in the Scriptures, humanity continually re-invents God in alternate religions, alternate interpretations, or alternate expectations. We spread these distortions throughout our cultures until we expect vastly different things about God than who God really is.
And if we let ourselves be limited by these distorted expectations, we will never see God clearly.
So we pray. We acknowledge that our eyes see too little. We admit that we expect less than what God wants to do. We ask God to open our eyes, so that our hearts may be softened, and we can see things greater than we expect.
We want to see God as He is — not as the lesser version we expect Him to be.
Today, pray this prayer. Ask God to open your eyes. Every time you open the Word, ask God to open your eyes so that you may truly see what He is saying and understand who He is.
I promise you: God will be far greater than you have ever imagined.
Hello. How does Protestants repent? Because in other denominations, in order to repent, you need to go to a priest. In Islam, one can repent for sins directly to God.