Hard-hearted people create hardship for themselves and others. They wind up shipwrecked within and yet they pretend that all is well. However, I have found that a tender heart gives me great energy!

The source of a hard heart is sin — the prideful human desire to do our own will instead of God’s will. God created the human heart to be intimately surrendered to and submitted to Him. When we shut down the tenderness or our heart and our awareness of God in our daily life, we have been created so that our neglect of God gradually hardens our heart. That’s why we can honor God with our lips while our heart is far from Him.

God doesn’t want human hearts to be hardened by sin. That’s why Jesus, the God-man, came to proclaim the inner government (kingdom) of God and call to people to repentance and full surrender to His will. He died on the Cross as the sacrifice for our sin and rose again so that “whosoever will” can have a new heart that is continually aware of and reliant on “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

A hard heart refuses to say and do what God commands. A hard heart quenches what God the Holy Spirit has to say because it doesn’t want to hear it, say it, or do it. Pharoah in ancient Egypt is an example of a hardened heart.

Pharoah was a cruel dictator, holding multitudes of people in the terrible bondage of life-long slavery and forced labor without pay — using them to build gigantic monuments to himself. Moses and Arron repeatedly came to Pharoah and offered him God’s way out of his hardened heart by telling him to set the Hebrew slaves free. Time and again, chance after chance, Pharoah refused to align with God’s will and his refusal led to God’s judgment. Don’t let a similar thing happen to you.

I saw a leaf moving down a road and I knew that the wind was there. Let people see Jesus moving you from within so they will know that He is there in your heart.

Being hateful
Is a stressful
Way to live.
Being prideful
Is deceptive.
Humble yourself.
Be receptive
To God’s presence.

People like to accuse
Other people of things
That they like to excuse
In their own behavior.

When you point your finger
In verbal attack
Three fingers
Always point back
And show that you lack
Heart-felt compassion.
Speak the truth with love.
It’s time we rise above
Speaking our opinions
With anger.

Be a fan of Jesus. Stay excited about Him day and night. Nothing and no one on earth can compare to His glorious splendor! When you become aware of the presence of the risen Jesus, no political leader is worth getting excited about!

Jesus is so much more than a Sunday message. He’s alive and well. He’s working in and through whoever will surrender to Him.

The American government has never been the cause or source of the growth of Christianity in the USA. Christianity has grown here because of mighty moves of God: The first and second Great Awakenings, The Layman’s Prayer Revival of 1859, The Azusa Street Revival/Pentecostal Movement, The Jesus Movement and The Charismatic Movement of the 1970s, and the thousands of local spiritual awakenings in individual churches and communities across the land. If we want lasting spiritual awakening perhaps, we need a reformation of the way we do church so the Spirit can directly lead us.

This picture shows how Jesus keeps my heart bright and tender.