I failed to mention when I was writing about the 23rd Psalm that we are likened to sheep over 200 times in the Bible.  And yet, we continue to behave as if we know everything.  By the time a person is into their mid to late twenties, it is hard to get their attention on the important things that God wants them to know and respond to.  Last week, over 25 young people in Bible school chose Christ.  And all of them old enough to understand and know what that meant.  "A little Child will lead them." is what the Bible says.  So true.

They say that it is an extreme rarity for someone over 40 to come to Christ.  Many times because they have strayed so far off the path that God wants them to follow that they don't know how to get back.  Their friends are not people who can help them get there.  They are" hardened" in their minds.  Unable to humble themselves and admit they have been wrong and need to repent and return to a God that loves them.  "...they will say...we are going to follow our own plans and...(they) will act according to the hardness of their evil heart."  Jeremiah 18:12

"For the heart of this people has become dull, with their ears they scarcely hear, and they have closed their eyes, otherwise they would see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and understand with their heart and return,  and I would heal them." Matthew 13:15

Sometimes those verses describe the reason people refuse God's mercy.  But sometimes  God's voice no longer reaches them.  Their ears no longer hear Him.  Their eyes no longer recognize Him.  And there comes a point that they reach a place...so far away...that they are blind and deaf and God gives up on them.

I have said before, that for me the most horrible verse in the Bible is Romans 1: 28, "And...as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them up..."  God gave up on them.  No hope.  No eternal future.  No ability to hear His voice or see his truth.  Utterly lost.

"...God gave them over to a reprobate mind to do those things which are not convenient..."  Things which are not moral in the eyes of God.  He left them to themselves.  "And every man did what was right in his own eyes."  If that is where you are, turn around.  "Seek me, and you will find me."