How you experience God’s Grace (Energy) depends upon the disposition of your heart. Since God has created you with the freedom to use your will, you choose whether your heart will be humble, soft, obedient, and open to God’s Grace or, conversely, whether your heart will be prideful, hard, self-willed, and closed to God’s Grace. In other words, you determine whether your heart will be like wax or like clay. When the same sun shines down on both wax and clay, the wax softens, but the clay hardens.
When the Holy Scripture speaks of God hardening someone’s heart, understand that the same Grace that hardened the heart of one person would heal and sanctify the heart of another. Again, you choose whether or not to allow the Divine Grace to work within you.
If your heart is humble like wax, God will impress his seal into your heart so that you may be conformed to His likeness and act according to His will.
Read: Exodus 7-15
Text copyright © 2018 by Fr. Symeon D. S. Kees