Maybe you’ve noticed it happening gradually. Your morning devotions used to energize you, but lately they feel more like homework.
You’re reading your Bible, praying, maybe even practicing some silence or fasting. But something’s off. The practices that once led to real spiritual growth now feel dry and mechanical.
If you’re wondering whether you’re doing something wrong, you’re not. You might just be discovering what happens when good spiritual disciplines become rigid rules.
When Good Rules Become Bad Masters
In 2018, the Washington Post reported a story that still haunts me. Firefighters in South Fulton County, Tennessee arrived at a house fire with all their gear and training, ready to save the day.
But then they just…stopped. They watched the home burn to the ground. Why? The house was outside their jurisdiction.
The homeowner, Vicky Bell, begged them to break protocol. She offered to pay whatever it cost. But the policy prevented them from helping. They stood there, fully equipped, watching flames consume everything she owned.
This story captures something profound about human nature. Rules are intended to help us. But sometimes we get so caught up in rules or policies or guidelines that they become rigid to us.
When rules are rigidly applied, they can become harmful. Those firefighters weren’t bad people. The policy wasn’t written with bad intentions. But somewhere along the way, they became convinced that preserving rules was more important than fulfilling the job they’d been trained to do, which was to help people.
I see this same dynamic playing out in Mark chapter 3, except instead of firefighters, we have Pharisees. Instead of a burning house, we have a man with a withered hand. Instead of county policy, we have the rule of the Sabbath.
The Trap We All Fall Into
Spiritual disciplines like Bible reading, prayer, worship, and service are all very good things designed to bring you closer to God. But sometimes, if you’re not careful, you can become more invested in managing your relationship with God than experiencing His grace. You can become more concerned with God fitting into your well-organized spiritual life than letting Him rule over it.
This morning, as I do every Sunday, I got up very early and sat in my office praying. I was praying through my sermon, praying for people, and I asked the Lord, “Will you just help me help them love you more?” Then I prayed something that surprised even me: “Lord, will you remind us not to try to manage you?”
Because I think at times, myself included, we try to manage God.
When Knowledge Blocks Experience
The Pharisees knew God’s Word perhaps better than anyone does today. They knew the laws of Moses. They knew the Pentateuch. They had studied it their entire lives. Yet they were missing God Himself, standing right in front of them in the person of Jesus.
Here’s the devastating irony: Religious people can oppose God by their version of serving Him more than loving Him and letting Him be God. Devout Christians can end up missing God’s work because we’re so committed to our way rather than allowing ourselves to experience God’s grace.
The Pharisees didn’t think they opposed God. No, they loved God. They claimed to be committed to God. But over time, they became more committed to their rhythms of pleasing God than to God Himself. And like them, we can become so focused on protecting our understanding of how God should work, or how we want Him to work, or how we believe He wants us to work, that we miss God actually working.
The Hardening Process
In Mark 3, when Jesus looked at the religious leaders, He responded with both anger and grief. The Greek word used describes a gut-wrenching, righteous anger combined with deep distress, like being gripped in your bowels over what you see. He was looking straight into their souls, perceiving their hearts.
What He saw was a gradual hardening process. Not an immediate paralysis, but a slow calcification happening through repeated resistance, repeated pressure, repeated choices to turn away from grace.
I once heard someone compare our hearts to bananas. Stay with me here, it’s kitschy but powerful. You can have a heart that’s as hard as a frozen banana (yes, you can pound nails with a frozen banana), or you can have a heart that’s supple like banana pudding. Your choice.
The Pharisees’ resistance was a sign that their hearts were hard, unreceptive. The Bible warns us time and again to have pliable hearts for God’s purposes. If we don’t, we’ll miss His most significant work within us and through us.
Three Ways Others Respond to Jesus
As I look at Mark 3, I see three distinct responses to Christ:
The Pharisees: Active opposition. They witnessed His power but rejected His authority. They allowed their rules to be more important than seeing God’s work. They were so focused on their systems that they missed their Savior.
The Demons: Forced recognition. They had perfect knowledge, “You are the Son of God!” but no relationship with Him. They knew who He was but weren’t changed by the truth.
The Crowd: Desperate faith. They pressed in on Jesus, seeking transformation. They didn’t just want to hear about Him or grow in information. They wanted transformation. They put aside their comforts, pride, and prejudices to receive God’s grace.
Think about the difference between a lightning bolt and a power line. A lightning bolt is dazzling, powerful, and commands attention, but it’s momentary. A power line carries steady, controlled power, providing light and energy that transforms homes and cities.
The demons reacted to Jesus like a lightning bolt. Stunned by His presence, crying out His identity, but not following Him. The Pharisees dismissed the power completely. But the crowd? They saw Him as a source of life. They didn’t just recognize His power; they pressed in to tap into it.
Your faith in Jesus should be like a power line: a constant connection, daily dependence, and transforming power that pumps into your career, relationships, personal and public life. Life-giving. Sustaining. Not startling, but sustaining.
The Uncomfortable Truth
Let me be clear: Knowing about Jesus is not the same as following Jesus. Some people believe they’re saved and know Christ. They don’t. Some people are what I call “unsaved Christians.” You have all the religious activity, but haven’t fully surrendered your life to Christ.
I’m begging you, don’t just know a lot about Him. Have all-in faith in Him. Know Him, experience Him, and let His power change everything about your life.
Some of you are fighting against Jesus like the Pharisees. You’re rigid in your religion, rigid in your service, but you have active resistance to what Jesus is calling you into.
Some of you are like the demons. You know about Jesus, but you refuse to be transformed. You’ll acknowledge He’s powerful, but you’re maintaining your distance.
But I pray you’ll be like the crowd. Pressing in on Jesus, falling on Him, seeking His touch above everything else. Just wanting to know Him, walk with Him, and be close to Him.
Breaking Free This Week
Here’s how I’m keeping my heart in check this week, and I invite you to join me:
Daily Heart Check: Every morning, ask yourself, “Lord, where am I resisting you? Where am I resisting your work in my life?” Look for Him to show you where you’re resisting grace, where you’re more about your rules or spiritual disciplines than about seeing what He’s doing.
The Disruption Test: When your plans get interrupted, pause and ask, “God, could this be your grace trying to break through?” Ask yourself if you’re more frustrated about your objectives being thwarted or genuinely open to God’s timing.
Weekly Review: At the end of the week, ask three questions:
- Where did I choose rules over personal relationship with Christ?
- Where did I resist God’s unexpected work?
- How can I do better next time?
The Frozen River
Sometimes our hearts are like a river frozen in winter. It can appear completely frozen on the surface, but water still flows freely underneath. Perhaps your heart has grown hard on the surface. But I promise you, God’s grace never stops flowing. God’s grace never stops working. It can break through even the hardest of hearts.
Ice forms on our hearts when busy schedules crowd out God’s voice. When comfortable routines cause us to resist any disruption. When religious habits replace real relationship with God.
But this week, when God tries to break through that ice in your heart, when His grace starts flowing, when He disrupts you in an unexpected way, pause and ask yourself: Am I going to respond, or am I going to hold to my rigid rules? Am I going to allow my life to flow with grace, or am I going to be more concerned about what I accomplish for God according to what I think He wants?
The Choice Before You
The surge of God’s grace is available to you today. It’s not something you just have to witness from a distance. Jesus is still in the business of drawing people to fall upon Him. The only question is: Will you?
A hardened heart looks like rigid religiosity. It’s resisting God’s work, being self-protective, hiding behind rules, and more focused on being right than being loving.
But a responsive heart? It’s soft and moldable. You can’t wait to see God’s purposes and His will fulfilled. It’s ready to recognize God’s work. It’s self-giving in service as an act of worship. It moves toward grace rather than toward justice.
Friend, are you fighting for God, or are you actually sometimes fighting against Him?
Don’t let your rules, your traditions, your personal preferences keep you from celebrating God’s work in your life. Don’t bring destruction upon yourself by trying to manage the unmanageable God. He came so that you may have life. Trust Him. Trust His purposes. Trust His forgiveness. Trust His plan. Trust His grace.
Because, in the end, you can attend church regularly and still be utterly irregular in your responsiveness to God. You can have perfect theology and miss Jesus Christ altogether. You can walk with the Lord for decades and have pieces of your heart grow so calloused that you’re not even aware of it, opposing the very things God’s doing while sincerely convinced you’re defending Him.
Please be responsive in your hearts. Because a hard heart misses God’s grace, but a soft heart mirrors God’s grace.
The choice is yours.