When Amazement Is the Problem

There's a verse in the Gospel of Mark that most people read right past. It sits at the end of one of the most dramatic miracles in scripture — Jesus walking on water, calming the storm, the whole boat full of terrified disciples. And you'd expect the commentary to be something like, "And they worshiped Him." But that's not what Mark wrote.

Mark 6:51–52 (NKJV) says, "And He went up to them, into the boat, and the wind ceased. And they were greatly amazed in themselves beyond measure, and marveled. For they had not understood about the loaves, because their heart was hardened."

Read that last line again. Their hearts were hardened. Not Pharisees' hearts. Not atheists. The disciples — the twelve men who left everything to follow Jesus.

A Revelation at 30,000 Feet

Andrew Wommack tells the story of reading this passage on an airplane, flying over the Great Lakes. He had been sitting with the text, letting the miracle sink in. He looked out the window at the clouds below and found himself imagining what it would look like to see Jesus walking across them. He was in awe.

And then he read verse 52.

The awe he was feeling — that sense of being blown away by the miraculous — was the very thing Mark called evidence of a hardened heart.

That hit Andrew like a dagger. Because up to that point, he thought a hardened heart was something that belonged to people in rebellion against God. People who hated God or didn't care about Him. He never would have described himself that way. He had loved God his entire life.

But this verse wasn't talking about rebellion. It was talking about being so accustomed to the natural world that the supernatural overwhelms you when it shows up. And that gap — between what God can do and what we expect Him to do — is where hardness of heart lives.

What Happened in Omaha

This revelation didn't come out of nowhere. Two years before that airplane moment, Andrew had an experience that shook him.

He had just seen a man raised from the dead. His faith was through the roof. He walked into a meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, saw a quadriplegic on the front row, and thought, "If God can raise the dead, He can heal this man." He could hardly wait to get through preaching.

He jumped off the stage, grabbed the man by the hand, pulled him out of the wheelchair — and the man fell on his face. Because he was a quadriplegic, he couldn't catch himself. The room went silent.

Andrew put the man back in his wheelchair, blessed him, and went back to his hotel room. And for the next two years, one question haunted him: "God, I know I had faith. I know it's Your will to heal. So what went wrong?"

That question is what led him to Mark 6:52. And the answer wasn't what he expected.

Faith and Unbelief Can Share the Same Room

One of the most important things Andrew teaches from this passage is that faith and unbelief are not opposites that cancel each other out like a light switch. You can carry both at the same time. And unbelief — even a small amount mixed in with genuine faith — can block what God wants to do through you.

The disciples in Matthew 17 tried to cast a demon out of a boy. They had done it before. They had the authority. When it didn't work, they asked Jesus, "Why couldn't we do it?" The question itself proves they believed they should have been able to. So it wasn't a lack of faith. It was something else running alongside their faith, undermining it.

Andrew had real faith in that Omaha hotel. He didn't hesitate. He fully expected the man to walk. But something in his heart — something he didn't even know was there — was working against the very faith he was operating in.

That "something" is what scripture calls a hardened heart.

He Would Have Walked Right Past Them

There's a detail in Mark's account that's easy to miss. When Jesus came walking across the water toward the boat, verse 48 says He "would have passed by them."

He wasn't rushing to rescue them. He walked close enough to be seen, and then He kept going. Not because He didn't care. Because He was waiting for them to respond.

Andrew connects this to Ephesians 3:20 (NKJV): "Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us."

Most people stop after "above all that we ask or think" and conclude that God can do anything. And He can. But the verse doesn't end there. It says according to the power that works in us. God's ability to move in your situation is connected to something operating inside of you. If there's no faith working, no demand being placed on His power, He has the ability but won't override your passivity.

The disciples had to cry out. Jesus didn't force the miracle on them. And when they did respond — when He stepped into the boat — John 6:21 says the entire ship was instantly transported to the other side of the lake.

The power was always available. It was waiting on a response.

The Question Worth Sitting With

Andrew describes the hardness of heart teaching as having three parts: the crisis (what a hardened heart does to you), the cause (what produces it), and the cure (how to reverse it). This episode deals with the crisis — and the crisis is this:

A hardened heart doesn't make you stop believing in God. It doesn't make you angry at God. It makes you shocked when He shows up. It makes the supernatural feel abnormal instead of expected. And it creates a gap between the faith you carry and the results you see.

That gap is worth paying attention to. Not to beat yourself up over it, but because there's a way through it.

This post draws from Hardness of Heart by Andrew Wommack. Watch the full teaching series on YouTube.