‘Familiarity breeds contempt’…is a well-known phrase you have probably heard before.

It is the idea that knowing a person, a place, or a situation, well... can cause you to  lose respect for them/it simply because you get bored or take them for granted. I would probably be more inclined to use a modifier in that statement and say ‘over… familiarity’…and would then include how it can also affect our ‘walk of faith’ …including God’s word. Hear me out on this one, if you would.

I don’t believe that a person who has a genuine relationship with Jesus and is truly abiding in Him is in danger of becoming dissatisfied with God, but a person who is ‘walking in a form of godliness’…probably has already (2 Tim. 3:5). Let’s not forget that many who actually grew up around Jesus remained skeptical of Him, especially when Jesus went public with His ministry and they were actually offended by Him (Matt. 13:54-57). Some of his own family accused Him of having ‘lost His mind’ (Mark 3:21).

How many of us would admit that on more than a few occasions…you have found yourself reading through your Bible and a page or two in…you realize your eyes have been ‘going over the words’…but your mind was elsewhere; maybe thinking about all the things you needed to get done that morning, or with any other number of ‘distractions’. The same thing can happen while singing worship songs in a church service.

Then there is the accusation brought forth by Jesus who quoted Isaiah when referring to all the ‘hypocrites’…who “honor God with their lips, but their hearts are far from Him” (Matt. 15:7-9), even suggesting their ‘worship is in vain’. Is it not remarkable that we can read over scriptures like this and our default setting is to think: “That’s those people over there” … while never stopping to examine our own hearts to see if this is applicable to us.

I only bring this up because of what we discussed yesterday regarding the seed that fell along the pathway, in the parable of the sower which Jesus taught to the multitudes. (Matt. 13). The seed, of course, represented the word of God, and when the seed was sown upon different soil types, it responded differently depending on what those ‘soil’ conditions were, which actually represents the condition of our hearts. And it was the seed that fell along the wayside, or path…a place of familiarity… that was quickly snatched up by the birds of the air, which Jesus later explained represents the ‘devil’.

I’d like to take a moment or two and examine what factors can contribute to the hardening of our hearts, which the Bible addresses frequently. When we have hard hearts, it makes it nearly impossible for God’s word to take root in us…where it can grow and thrive and bring forth ‘good fruit’. The first contributing cause of hardening hearts is sin. Repeated sin, or the practice of sin, is what leads us down a path where our hearts grow cold, which is what the ‘deceitfulness of sin’ does in us (Heb. 3:12-13). I’ve mentioned this before, but if there is an area in your life that has ‘easily ensnares you’ (Heb. 12:1), I would suspect that if/when you ‘go to God’…to talk to Him about it…again and again, (a.k.a. ‘confessing one’s sin’)…the condition of your heart and the depth of your ‘repentance’ has probably grown shallow over time.

I would even submit that for many sincere Christians who have experienced this…they actually reach a place where they just ‘learn to live with it’, maybe gave up even ‘confessing’ it to God, let alone ‘repenting’ of it, since ‘repenting’ suggest ‘turning from’…that sin. I don’t say this to condemn anyone, rather to just point out what so many of us have struggled with over time. And when I say one ‘lives with it (sin), I’m not saying you are thrilled with the idea, as you probably remain ‘conflicted’ with all the mind games that come along with that struggle in trying to overcome that sin.

Another simple example might have to do with your TV viewing habits. Ever been watching a show where early on in the film, you are hearing and seeing things you sure would not want your young children to be taking in…and something within you might ‘wince’ when it popped up, maybe 'hearing a voice' suggesting you have no business allowing this in to your home…but something ‘else’ suggests it will be okay…and over time…that ‘wince’ becomes less and less noticeable. What is happening in those moments is your heart is hardening to God’s voice…as your ‘conscience eventually becomes seared’. (1 Tim. 4:2)

This all becomes problematic for the professing ‘believer’ because it makes God’s word of ‘no effect’ in us, which Jesus said could very well happen (Mark 7:13). And then we wonder later on…’why doesn’t God speak to us anymore?’.

Yes…the tendency to ‘resist the things of God’…especially His word…when we refute it, doubt it, or flat our reject it…is the single most detrimental reason our hearts harden over time. A verse, for example…like 1 John 3:6 might trigger a response like: “I don’t believe that!”…or “That’s not what that means!”…and before you know it, you find yourself reading God’s word less and less because it has little effect on you. Thus making the conditions ripe for an ‘easy meal’ for those ‘birds of the air’ that swoop down and snatch up whatever word you may be hearing but not receiving. And who again… are those ‘birds’ of the air that Jesus mentions in Luke 8:12?

Meanwhile, others who have truly come to Jesus and are feasting upon His word…and ‘growing thereby’ (1 Pet. 2:2)…can’t seem to get enough of His word and are reading it more and more. Funny how that works. It reminds me of a quote I came across years ago suggesting that “The same sun that melts the ice...also hardens the clay”.

And why does any of this matter to you? Well…as we continue to study this parable, we will learn that any seed that falls short in growing and eventually ‘maturing’…as it fails to produce fruit…poses an undesirable outcome. We are told that ‘trees that fail to bring forth good fruit…are cut down and thrown into the fire’. (Matt. 3:10; 7:19; Luke 13:6-9)

Yes…there is a legitimate reason why the ‘enemy’ will do everything he can to keep you out of God’s word, or at least hinder you from receiving it…and then ‘doing’ what it says (James 1:22).