The purpose of your conscience isn’t to make you feel guilty but to guide you to a lifestyle that is free from the chains of corruption. Fear hardens a human heart so that it can’t hear the conscience, but faith tenderizes it.

A hardened heart ignores and resists the conscience. A tender heart listens to and obeys it.

People with a hardened heart think, say, and do heartless things. Having a hard heart isn’t healthy. A hardened heart can’t see beyond the cataracts that engulf it. It’s out of touch with reality.

A hardened heart is weak and fearful. People who keep their heart tender are strong and courageous. A hardened heart causes dry eyes that are afraid to cry. The living Jesus wants to give you a heart that never hardens.

A hard heart beats like the slow bass drum in a funeral dirge. A tender heart dances to the joy of the Lord.

When the human heart is tenderized and sensitized by the Holy Spirit’s inner surgery and attuned to ongoing awareness of presence of the living Jesus, tears are no longer quenched, but easily flow. The pain and prison of pride and embarrassment pass away. Streams of repentance and forgiveness, rivers of love and compassion, and floods of joy and peace endlessly overflow from the circumcised heart.

A culture that promotes self-focus winds its way to confusion, conflict, and chaos. Hardened human desires, feelings, and opinions don’t create or alter reality, no matter how loudly people claim they do. No one has a right to mistreat another person, but everyone has the right to disagree with other people’s behavior.

Many hardhearted people want to be separated from God. He respects their freedom so much that He’s not going to force them to love and obey Him.

If faith as a tiny grain of mustard seed can move a mountain, surely you have the faith to cast tormenting and tempting thoughts, desires, and feelings out of your heart and mind! Do it every day.