Do you have a soft heart?

Do you have a soft heart?

11.23.2025

Introduction

It is going to take a soft heart to be able to hear the Lord speaking to us as we enter the days just prior to Jesus’ return!

In a day of harshness and compromise all around us, it’s easy for us to become hardened inside.

Matthew 24:12 (NKJV)

And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold.

Matthew 24:12 (NLT)

Sin will be rampant everywhere, and the love of many will grow cold.

Matthew 24:12 (NIV)

Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold,

Matthew 24:12 (Int’l English ERV)

There will be so much more evil in the world that the love of most believers will grow cold.

Matthew 24:11 (MSG)

In the confusion, lying preachers will come forward and deceive a lot of people. For many others, the overwhelming spread of evil will do them in—nothing left of their love but a mound of ashes.

For years I have said as I age – I want to have a teddy bear heart and alligator hide…

How would you answer if someone asked you – Do you have a soft heart?

Do you ever open up to God about the things deep inside that bother you?

Many times, the previous challenges of family life and relationships have hardened us inside.

It’s easy to wall your heart life off and harden it when you are hurt by or taken advantage of by people.

It is important for us to allow Jesus to soften the hard places in our hearts.

It is so easy for us to become crusty inside – and when that happens, we become surface level in our conversation and don’t allow ourselves to connect and deal with what bothers us and keeps us from closeness with others and with the Lord.

Hosea 10:12 (NKJV)

Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the LORD, till He comes and rains righteousness on you.

(Fire Bible Study Notes)

Unplowed ground is soil that has been so neglected and become so hardened that it cannot receive seed. The people’s hearts had become that hard spiritually (v. 13). They needed to break up and soften their own hearts and minds through sincere humility, sorrow for their sin and true repentance. In other words, they needed to have such a change of heart and attitude that they were willing to admit their sin, turn from their selfish ways, surrender to God and follow his purposes for their lives. They needed to begin planting seeds of goodness and righteousness by renewing their relationship with God until they once again experienced his faithful love and mercy.

Example: As a boy growing up in rural South Carolina, the ground in the fields around my house was hard and crusty. Some of the fields were in the federal land bank program so that certain crops would not be over planted and affect prices. Some were not plowed for years. Other fields were plowed and planted regularly.

When a shower of rain came, the water would just not soak into the ground in the unplowed fields. It would bead up and stand on top of the soil or roll off. It was fallow, unplowed ground.

Fallow ground is also a crusty heart that nothing is allowed to penetrate. That is a dangerous thing to have today.

If our hearts are fallow and not open to God, then we become open to the hurtful things around us that move us away from God and into hurtful ways of living.

Hebrews 3:12-13 (NKJV)

Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God; 13 but exhort one another daily, while it is called “Today,” lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.

In a hard heart, pain looks for pleasure.

In a soft heart, pain looks for God.

Psalms 16:11 (NKJV)

You will show me the path of life;

In Your presence is fullness of joy;

At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Proverbs 4:23 (NIV)

Above all else, guard your heart,for everything you do flows from it.

Jesus said that our hearts are like soil.

We determine what we plant in it and the condition of our heart determines how what is planted in it grows.

The Word will respond in your heart just like a seed planted in soil.

Prepare the soil by allowing God to search you:

We see life through the colored glasses of our own experiences.

We often cannot see in us things that need to change!

Chip Judd Quote

God wants to identify, challenge, and change any patterns of thought, belief, or behavior that are contrary to His will. Many of these patterns are so much a part of us that we can’t see them without the revelation of God’s Spirit and the help of other loving Christians.

Proverbs 27:5-6 (NKJV) Open rebuke is better than love carefully concealed. 6 Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.

Proverbs 28:23 (NKJV)

He who rebukes a man will find more favor afterward than he who flatters with the tongue.

God wants to speak to us and help us as He shows us what He sees in us!

Are you willing to put yourself in a position to hear what God may be saying?

When I was 18, for the first time in my life I allowed God to deal with me inside. For the first time I was honest about what bothers me in life, my insecurities and things that bother me.

If you allow Him, God will help you deal with hurt, pain, loss, misunderstandings, fears, and such.

Psalms 139:23-24 (NLT)

Search me, O God, and know my heart;

test me and know my anxious thoughts.

24 Point out anything in me that offends you,

and lead me along the path of everlasting life.

Psalms 90:8 (NLT)

You spread out our sins before you—

our secret sins—and you see them all.

Psalms 90:8 (AMP)

Our iniquities, our secret heart and its sins [which we would so like to conceal even from ourselves], You have set in the [revealing] light of Your countenance.

2 Corinthians 5:10 (AMP)

For we must all appear and be revealed as we are before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive [his pay] according to what he has done in the body, whether good or evil [considering what his purpose and motive have been, and what he has achieved, been busy with, and given himself and his attention to accomplishing].

I began to pray prayers for myself based on these scriptures in the 1980s and at first little happened.

But then, I noticed a nudge within. I became dissatisfied, on edge, and just did not know why.

God was pushing me out of my comfortable nest so that I could grow out of thoughts and response patterns to life that kept me from changing.

Today, I want to give you an opportunity right now to begin to allow the Lord to soften your heart and open you to Him inside so that you can hear Him and obey Him.

Action Points:

1. Are you willing for God to show you things that you don’t know about yourself?

2. Are you open to making changes in how you live as God deals with you?

3. Are you willing to allow a trusted friend to speak into your life and encourage change when they see a real need?