How To Pray For Someone With A Hardened Heart

We have all experienced preaching the Gospel to someone who does not want to believe it or follow Christ. Despite preaching the Gospel in the best possible way, in a very understandable manner, they still reject it. Some people want to stay in their life of sin; this is because they have hardened hearts. However, the good thing is that no hardened heart is too far from the grace of God.

Heavenly Father, I thank You because while we can’t change the hardened hearts of others, You can. What is impossible for us is possible for You. Nothing is too hard for You. In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen.

Why should we pray for someone with a hardened heart?

We should pray to God for someone with a hardened heart because, first, only God can change a person’s heart. In ( I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. Ezekiel 36:26), it is written that God gives us a new heart, not out of stone but made of flesh. However, one may still ask why we should even bother to pray to God for Him to change the hearts of others. It is because changing the hearts of others is absolutely necessary.

Every problem in this world comes from only one thing—our hearts. Our hearts are our innermost beings. Our affections, desires, thoughts, feelings, and choices are seated there. The problem is that our hearts are both evil and hardened. So, the very root of our sins is our hearts. Unless we deal with our sinful hearts, sin will always be a problem. In Matthew 15:10-20, Jesus teaches us that what defiles a person is not what comes into him or her but what proceeds from his or her heart.

Another problem we have regarding our hearts, apart from their being sinful, is that they are also hardened. So, no matter how much you preach for a person to repent and believe the Gospel, as long as his or her heart is hardened, he or she will never repent or believe. That is why the Pharisees, despite all their intellectual prowess, didn’t believe in Christ and even put Him to death—because their hearts were hardened. The same can be said in our modern-day age. Sometimes we preach the Gospel to people and tell them to leave their sinful ways, yet they still want to remain in their sinful lives. Sometimes, even if a person is intelligent, with all the logic and evidence that supports the Gospel, they are still skeptical. It is because the problem is not the mind but the heart.

That is why it is important to pray to God for those who have hardened hearts. God is the only One Who can soften their hearts and turn their hearts of stone into hearts of flesh. It is only the work of the Holy Spirit in their hearts that can cause them to be born again and regenerated, as written in (Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; Titus 3:5) and 1 Peter 1:3-9. It is God Who turns people into new creations, and this gives them new desires in their hearts—desires that long to live for God, grow in holiness, and hate sin.

A good example of this in the Bible is the Apostle Paul. Paul, who was once called Saul, was a Pharisee and a zealous persecutor of Christians. He brought many Christians to prison and their executions. He was hardened in his heart to the very core. However, he encountered Christ, and the Holy Spirit worked in his heart, turning it into a heart of flesh. The rest is history, and we came to know him as Paul, who wrote several epistles of the New Testament and is one of the greatest examples of being a Christian.

Heavenly Father, remind me never to try to change a person on my own but to rely on Your grace, which is at work in a person’s life, turning his heart of stone into a heart of flesh. Thank You because it is You Who causes us to be born again, to see Christ for Who He is, and to make us new creatures whose desire is to glorify You. In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen.

How can you pray for someone with a hardened heart?

You pray for someone with a hardened heart by asking God to turn the person’s heart of stone into a heart of flesh. It is as simple as that. However, when you pray, you pray with faith and humility before God. You pray to God in faith, knowing that He is sovereign and capable of changing people’s hearts. You also humbly pray, knowing God’s work is in a person’s life. You may preach the Gospel to a person, but God will still do the work in his or her heart.

Heavenly Father, I pray for [name of the person] that You will soften his heart and turn his heart of stone into a heart of flesh. No matter how hardened his heart seems, I know that no hardened heart is too hard for Your grace to work. Soften his heart, Holy Spirit, so that he may believe and receive the Gospel, humble Himself, and turn from his sinful ways. In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen.

The fact that it is God Who works to change the hardened hearts of the people gives us comfort and relieves us of the burden in the sense that whenever we preach the Gospel to a person, the pressure is not upon us to change them but on God, Who works on his or her heart. Also, just because a person’s heart has been turned into a heart of flesh does not mean a person has become perfect. A person may still sin from time to time. However, the difference is the desires of the heart. If, before, an unconverted person loves sin, now he or she hates sin and desires to live a holy life. That is why the Holy Spirit is still sanctifying us. The Holy Spirit’s work in our lives is not yet done; we hope that someday it will be completed as written in Philippians 1:6, and we will all be a hundred percent like Christ.