Do you know somebody tenaciously unwilling? Perhaps the best way to describe that person is obstinate, stubborn, and unregenerate? It doesn’t matter whether this person does it with the best intentions or with the worse motives, it just matters that this person will and frequently stonewall people and their counsel to him/her and very rarely yields. It also doesn’t count if you personally know me to be all of these things I mentioned.

Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer. – Deuteronomy 10:16

To be “stiff-neck” is to see the truth of reality and yet be determined to go about life against reality. The people of Israel wanted to go back to their lives slavery after they had been liberated from it. They complained about how much better their lives were as slaves, where they had no opportunity for the hope of a bright future. The journey toward God’s promised land was hard, but the rewards of getting there were infinitely greater than being enslaved by a group of people who hated you.

Yet, they couldn’t see past themselves and stubbornly rebelled against the very God who loved them despite of who they were and how they lived. What stiff-necked ingratitude?! Goodness, you were dirty slaves and God set it to His heart to pour out His love and you can’t see it? Moses tells his people to “circumcise” their hearts– that is, to cleanse themselves spiritually. But it wasn’t cleansing for religiousness sake.

It is a cleansing because the journey toward a new life in God’s promise leads us into dirty situations where only clean perception from the heart would suffice for navigation’s purposes. Much like those people who are stubborn have tunnel vision and cannot see beyond what they forcefully see in a pseudo-reality, people whose hearts are not cleansed cannot feel what God wants them to feel in their life experiences.

We are all guilty of being stiff-necked. It’s time to circumcise our hearts, that is to let go of our past crimes, our mistakes, our pain, our anger, our anguish, our pride, and feel what God is moving in our hearts. It’s not about our struggle, it’s about our reception of God’s life through it. We all need to be stiff-necked no longer.