Being here in China has been one of my favorite months by far! The kids, the teachers, the staff… everyone has been so amazing to work with. The kids here really took my heart. Today is our last day here and some of the kids wrote me goodbye cards. Reading them has been so hard. Having them ask you questions about where you are going and why you are leaving is so hard. They have softened my heart for them in a way I didn’t really know could happen.
Last Friday I shared part of my testimony in front of 30 high school students during their High School Retreat. The theme for their retreat this year was Hunger and Thirst. I was really excited to tailor part of my testimony with some hunger and thirst themes. It wasn’t hard. When the night came, I was really excited about what I had written out to share. The student speakers facilitating the event said a lot of things that lined up with the message linked with my testimony. Even the worship songs we sang beforehand worked well with what I was about to say. (God was moving!)
As I went up there to speak I felt good. Ready to go rock it. I’ve spoken in front of many people before. I was not afraid. I was ready! However, not even one minute into my sharing time all of a sudden I started to cough. My throat immediately got so dry I could barely get words out without coughing and crying. I have had this happen only one other time I was speaking in front of a group but that time was nothing compared to this time.
Even through the cough and the tears I stayed up there letting the words that were on my heart slowly escape my lips. So many times I thought ‘this is ridiculous! I should just stop!’ But I didn’t. I knew God had given me words to say and that the devil was just trying to stop those words from coming out. To stop those words from being implanted into the hearts of the future Kingdom builders for Christ. So I kept going. I was only suppose to speak for 20 minutes and I had prepared my testimony accordingly. However, because words were difficult to get out I ended up being up there for 30 minutes. I was excited that I made it through and it was finished but so discouraged that it didn’t go as I had planned. After I walked off I was still having trouble talking. It felt like I had gone to a concert and yelled for eight hours straight! Everyone around me assured me how powerful what I said was, regardless of how it was presented. That was encouraging to hear. About 5 minutes after I was done speaking and the next speaker started to speak all of a sudden, I was fine. My throat didn’t hurt at all and my voice was back 100%.
I think sharing my testimony actually served in more than one way for Christ. Not only did the students hear my words but they were able to see a spiritual battle right in front of their eyes.
— Here are the words I shared with the students. Even though this was just my writeup and not exactly what I shared on stage (God took it a few different places as well) this will give you a good idea of what I said and of what the devil fought hard for people to not hear. Hope you enjoy a little piece of my heart. —
Soften Hearts Testimony
Today I am going to share a little bit about myself and my story as well as talk about how to soften hardened hearts. I don’t want you to just hear some of my story but I want you to be able to learn something from my story as well.
There was a point in my life when I realized that I needed to soften my heart. My heart had been hardened by the world and I didn’t even know it. God revealed to me my hardened heart and that I needed to do something about it. In order to soften my heart I needed to seek and hunger after God’s own heart, not my own.
Now let’s look at the word HARDEN; to harden. This is a verb. Yes? A verb requires what? An Action, yes. To make something more hard. This indicates that the object was once not as hard or was at one point in time soft before it was hardened.
Similar is your heart. It can become hard, when it wasn’t before. Now what can harden a heart? If you can picture a cube of butter that is put in the refrigerator, will that cube of butter harden in the fridge. Yes, why? Because it is in the refrigerator. Because the fridge is constantly blowing cold air onto the butter, hardening it and keeping it hard.
Similar is your heart. The outside environment that you place yourself into and your heart, will effect the condition of your heart. The outside forces that you allow to blow and beat on your heart, in this example it was the cold air from the fridge, will be able to change the condition of your heart.
Now in the practical what type of things am I talking about…. friends, music, lifestyle, drinking, movies, sin, thoughts, our own tongues. These are the outside forces that are influencing the condition of your heart.
Now do you think it is a sudden hardening when the butter is put in the fridge? It’s not a freezer so it probably takes some time to harden. The change is probably pretty subtle, meaning it would be hard to see and feel the butter hardening. Similar is your heart. The atmosphere and outside forces that influence your heart condition will be subtle. It will be difficult to see the change that is taking place in your heart.
Some people may say well God hardened Pharaoh’s heart in the book of Exodus so Pharaoh wouldn’t let the Israelites go. So God hardens hearts, it’s not my fault. Are we responsible for our hardened hearts? Yes. In Psalms 95 and then again quoted in Hebrews 3, it says “Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.. “ (You) You do not harden your heart. Yes, we are responsible for hardening our hearts. Yes, we hold responsibility for our heart condition. By our actions, decisions, and our response to God.
Now, to my story of how I let my heart become hardened by this world and worldly desires.
I was raised in a wonderful Christian family in California, USA. I had lots of friends at school, got good grades, was a hard worker, did many different sports, and went to church every Sunday. I would have been considered by my peers as the “nice” one, the “friendly” one, the “responsible” one, who got along with everybody. The goodie good girl. You know what I mean right?
Even though I went to church every Sunday and did believe in and love God. I did not fully understand at that age what it meant to have a personal relationship with God. Christianity seemed more about a religion than a relationship.
Now even though at school I had many friends, when I got into my middle school and high school years I found it very difficult to make friends at church. I felt that the people at church were more judgmental than my non-Christian friends. I felt more comfortable with my non-Christian friends than church people. I started not liking church. Christianity, as a religion, was not super appealing or interesting to me.
I started to feel like I was living a double life. That at school I was one person and then at home with my family and on Sundays I was another. I started to feel like there were two truths. One at school with the rest of the world and one at home with my family and at church. God didn’t seem to fit in with my life at school and my life at home and church didn’t seem to fit in with my life at school. It began to be hard to separate what I knew to be true by God and what the rest of the world was saying.
I have two example that stick out in my mind. When I was a young girl, maybe 5-6 or so I remember watching on TV a kid show about Greek Mythology, about one of the Greek god’s that rode a chariot and brought the sun up every morning and how the sun first came to be. I said. “mommy, did you know that the sun was made my the greek god ___ and blah blah blah whatever it was that I learned. My mom said “sweetie, God made the sun remember in the creation story.” I had forgotten about that. Of course I knew the creation story and of course that’s right God created the Sun and the moon and stars. There were no Greek gods. I knew this but at that moment in time when that information was given to me I forgot about the real truth. And substituted a different truth for the real one. Why? Because that was what I was being fed. That was the information pounding on me at that moment.
Again, I very strongly remember in biology class in high school learning about humans coming from cavelike men that used to somehow come from monkeys blah blah blah. The way it was taught in school was that this was a fact. That I was learning the actual truth about where humans came from. Again I found myself having to pull my mind back from what I was being told and into a different truth. One that I knew was true.
Even though I knew the truth about God in my life. It was a continual effort to pull out the lies of this world and keep the real truth. The lies of this world are so subtle at times that you don’t even realize that they are changing the way you think and the way you live your life.
When I moved out of my parent’s house for college I started to get myself into a not so good lifestyle that didn’t focus on God but instead of things of this world. Now when I say things of this world, we all know what I am talking about, correct? Things of the sinful world and not of God. God has called us to not live like the world but as foreign citizens of this world. To live differently than the world… etc etc.. Okay good.
When I got to college I wasn’t very excited to find a Christian community to surround myself with. I didn’t ever really feel like I fit in to the Christian community I just came from, so why even try? There were many Christian clubs on my campus. I tried the first one I saw a flyer for. It was not for me. I did not fit in with these people, so I never went back and I never tried a different Christian club.
I started continuing my not so good lifestyle. I wasn’t doing anything super bad. I was still a goodie-good girl, especially compared to the majority of the world, but I was living just like the world. Listened and danced to the same music. Talked the same, thought the same, except on occasion. My focus and life purpose was the same as the world. The only difference was that I would occasionally go to church on a Sunday, maybe, and say a few prayers now and then. The sinful life I was living or just a life not focused on God, allowed garbage to creep into my life.
Because of my poor decisions in college some of my consequences were hurt, abuse, being taken advantage of, emotional and bodily damage. These experiences resulted in shame, guilt, depression, sadness, selfishness, and being money and success driven.
After my second year of college I was visiting my family at their church during summer. The pastor preached about how God is always with us no matter what are life was like. I really needed to hear that. Before I had said that as soon as I could get my act together and get on the right path then I could focus on finding God. Then I would be good enough and acceptable for God to want me back. But this message changed my thinking. Through that message God told me that I didn’t have to get it together first to be God’s daughter and that He had been with me all along. Right by my side waiting for me to see Him. Waiting for me to seek after Him and find Him.
After that, the last two year of my college career I really felt God calling me back to Him. He was romancing me. Seeking me out. I started to see Him actively working in my life. He was blessing me, reminding me He was there, and taking care of me. And I was even still living my sinful lifestyle. But still He was there.
After I graduated college I moved from California to Washington DC. Does anyone know where those two place are on the map of the USA. Yeah, the opposite sides of the country! Moving there was a BIG change! I had a part-time internship and a part-time job. I was living in a really cool apartment, about five blocks from the White House in DC with friends. I was to the world standards a success. Graduated from college with good grades, have the making of a good career, and a hip cool place to live in one of the most young, popping, and important cities in America.
Even with all this “success” was I happy, was I fulfilled? No. I was not. I looked around and saw the lie. The world says go to school, get good grades so you can go to college, and then get good grades so you can get a good job and have a family and be happy. But this purpose for life is a lie. Once you do those things and get there you are not happy, you are not fulfilled with those goals alone.
The life style I was living I thought only college students live like this and after college I would mature and live a normal adult life. Well that was not true either. In DC the life was go to work from 8am-5pm, then go to a bar for happy hour have a drink, go home have dinner, go to bed and do it all over again. I saw people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and etc doing this exact thing. The sAME Thing for MY WHole life! The only thing that we do! Not for me. Most people around me didn’t like their job they worked and complained about working all day just so they can then go have a drink or have some fun and then go back to work and complaining. Where’s the fulfillment in that kind of life?
This realization in DC was a turning point in my life. I realized the world had nothing to offer me for fulfillment. I knew that only God could bring that fulfillment. I also felt the garbage of the world. I felt my heart was hard. I felt and understood the difference of my heart before and now. Though no one would ever say I was mean. I felt mean. Not as nice of a person as I used to be. Not as care free and light hearted. I knew I was mean because I knew my thoughts. I knew my selfish desires and my focus on success and money. I became overwhelmed with the need to change my life.
I couldn’t do this anymore. I wanted to soften my heart again. I wanted God to be my everything in life. If He is real; which I knew He was. Then He is THE only thing that mattered in life. He was my only purpose in life, and He was my only fulfillment in life.
I sent off on a mission to refocus my life, to recenter, with God in the middle. I decided to move in with my parents who were living in Boise, Idaho at the time. I knew that I needed to be with family during this transformation. I called it my ‘spiritual rehab’ time. I didn’t know what I needed but I knew I needed to soften my heart and I knew that I need more of Jesus in order to do that.
When I was in the airport waiting for my flight to Boise, I wrote down these goals that I wanted to focus on during this transformation:
GOALS-
Focus your life for God
Become spiritually attuned- nicer, soften your heart again
Love on your family
Find/Follow His will
Be incredible
Do something extraordinary
Enjoy your work and make it meaningful
So here I am moving to Boise to change my life. To soften my heart again. When I moved to Boise I went to a Bible school for a year. I soaked so much in. I was so excited every class. I was learning things about God I had not ever known after 22 years of being in church. I was learning more about who God was and how He is suppose to be in my daily life.
I started an actual real serious relationship with God. Where I knew Him and knew that He knew who I was. We spent time together everyday and I couldn’t wait to spend time with Him. I started planing my future dreams with Him being the center of them.
As I was learning about God, I started to recognize the trash in my life. Recognize what was hardening my heart and what needed to change. See, God is the only one who can convict us of our hardened hearts and then soften our hearts but we have an active role in this. We need to decide to change and we need to take steps to go toward change.
SOFTEN, like harden, is a verb. What do verbs usually require. An ACTION. To soften something requires an action to do something to change the condition of the subject.
During my Bible school one of the sections was on Softening Your Heart. This was perfect for me! During this section I was able to really reflect on what hardens a heart and what are active steps I could take in my own life to soften my heart.
Here are some of the practical steps I took. Step 1- Delete The Bad. What does this mean? … This means we need to take the butter out of the fridge. We need to remove the cold forces blowing on the butter that is keeping it hard.
I recognized that I needed to suck out all the negative/bad/worldly influence out of my life. So how do you start to do that? Well for me I started with my music. I deleted majority of my music from my iTunes. Completely deleted. Anything that was about money, alcohol, drugs, sex, anything that made me feel sad, depressed, angry, promiscuous, etc… I also was careful about the movies and shows I watched.
This alone helped. You don’t even realize the effect music has you on. It can change your thoughts, it can change your mood, it can implant an idea in your mind. It has so much power. I soon realized that I had become so desensitized to such negative music. After I deleted most of my negative music when I would hear songs with nasty lyrics or terrible words in them it would make me cringe. I would think, “how did I ever listen to this stuff?” I DON’T KNOW! Because I heard it so much I was so de-sensitized to it. It wasn’t a big deal. I barely noticed it. My heart was hardened and it didn’t bother me. But when it was softened I noticed it and I noticed that it was wrong.
Step 2: Captivate Your Thoughts- Like negative music and movies your thoughts can be detrimental to your heart condition. Your thoughts can actually be the worst. The most influential decider of your heart condition. Captivating my thoughts meant that I would stop any kind of thoughts that were not good and get rid of them. Any thoughts that were depressing, negative, immoral, or false. My favorite verse to quote whenever these thoughts came to my mind was:
Philippians 4:8 “Finally brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable– if anything is excellent or praiseworthy– think about such things.”
If anything did not fall into those categories of thoughts whether they were directed at myself or other people I would try to say this verse, say a prayer, and think about other truths.
In Romans 12:2 it says, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
In order to not be sucked into living as the world lives, we need to daily transform and renew our minds. We need to stop the natural negative thoughts and replace them with good positive truths that God can offer us in order to be different than this world.
Step 3: Seek God in the Little Things- This means seek God in everything you do! Even in the little decisions. Before I thought God wasn’t very relevant to my daily life but that is such a lie! I started asking God about everything. What He thought I should do in a situation, what He was thinking about a person. And you know what? God started answering me. He started showing up and leading me.
I remember having to make a decision about whether or not I wanted to go camping with a friend over the weekend. I remember not really wanting to go but felt like I should to be a good friend. I prayed to God and said, “Lord will it be beneficial for me to go camping this weekend?” It was such a simple and pointless questions. Really, God probably didn’t care whether I wanted to go camping or not. He probably was pretty neutral. But I wanted the very best of His will for me. I wanted Him to start to be in all my decisions. I wanted to actively choose God’s will.
In doing this you can keep your focus more on God. Life get’s busy with the little mundane things you need to do about the day. We all have lots of responsibilities to preform. But if we keep God in all of our little mundane things He stays at the center of these things even if we aren’t at church, in prayer, or worship. He stays at our center. And with God at your center, it’s impossible to have a hardened heart.
Jesus softens hearts. He’s the only one who can. But we play an active role in this process. Practical steps to soften our hearts are??– get rid of the bad, daily renewing of the mind, and seek God in everything you do. These were my steps.
Jesus convicted and guided me to what I needed to do.. but I had to choose to change. I had to work at it to change. I had to hunger and thirst after Him to find Him. And once I did– everything changed.
