This post was last updated on April 23, 2026

Day 24 (Year 2)

Humbly Asking God to Open the Eyes of Our Hearts

“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.” (Matthew 13:15 NKJV)

In the Psalms, “heart grown dull” refers to those who speak proud and false words (17:10, 119:69-70). In Isaiah, it refers to those who deliberately refuse to listen to God’s Word and are judged by Him (6:10). In Acts, “heart grown dull” refers to those who do not believe that Jesus is the Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament (28:27). In Matthew, Jesus explains to His disciples why He speaks to the crowds in parables, to point out that “whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him” (13:12b NASB). It means for those who have no faith in Jesus’ salvation, the words of God in their minds will be taken away. The phrase “ears are hard of hearing” refers to the inability to hear God’s words (Isaiah 59:1). From this, we see that we must clear away all of pride, falsehood, disobedience to Jesus, and unbelief in His words.

Clearly, some people live a life without God yet feel self-satisfied. They delight in a comfortable yet wrongly oriented mindset. This must first be disturbed before they can receive God’s salvation. Sometimes, difficulties that come upon unbelievers can lead them to reflect thoroughly on themselves. Jesus said that the eyes of their hearts and ears need to be opened, and then their hearts to understand, so that they can turn back to God and be healed. People must turn back and thoroughly live a life of obedience to God before they can receive His complete healing. Thus, everything hindering God’s words from healing us must first be cleared away, including hardness of heart, self-satisfaction, resistance to change, and relying solely on human strength, before we can truly turn back to God’s Word and receive healing.

Some people have not received God’s healing because they have not turned to Him and understood God’s Word. Conversely, my experience is that the more we understand God’s words and resolve various problems with His truth, the more we turn to God and receive more of His healing. In this process of turning back to God, we must strive with the eyes and ears of our hearts to understand spiritual truth, obey God promptly, and deal with evils such as pride, self-satisfaction, falsehood, disobedience to Jesus, unbelief, and resistance to improvement. The result is that we receive more of His healing.

Reflection questions:

1) Do you sense problems such as pride or falsehood in your heart? If so, how do you want to deal with them?

2) Are you willing to spare no effort to understand God’s words? Right now, what do you need to give up so that God’s healing can flow onto you abundantly?