The Tender Heart by John Belt

The Tender Heart

Eph 4:31-32
And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ forgave you.

Yields

The beginning in our walk with God is to yield to Him. This means that we make an effort to stop and hear His voice. When He calls, we answer by yielding to His voice. The Holy Spirit does not intrude on us. He is very patient. He waits for our invitation to let Him come and guide us in everything that we do.

Eph 4:30
And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.

When you pull up to a “yield sign” what do you do? You slow down. When we want to posture ourselves in such a way as to make sure that the Holy Spirit’s activity is involved in our lives we must switch our gears into the slow position, slow gear.

Psalms 23:2
He makes me to lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside the still waters.

I want to purchase a piece of equipment for my electric guitar set-up. The name of this piece is “slow gear”. What it does is slowly and softly eases in the sound of the note being plucked on the electric guitar so that it is not abrupt, but has a beautiful flow of sound. This is what the Holy Spirit desires. He wants us to push on the slow gear pedal of our lives so that His sound will come in with a pure flow of life. Yielding ourselves in a place of reception before the Lord allows this beauty and glory of the Spirit to be released in our lives.

Sensitive

Psalm 139:7
Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?

The heart of Jesus was so sensitive to the Holy Spirit. He knew that the Holy Spirit was the source of power and the guide. Jesus lived as an example to us by the life of the Spirit of God. To walk in freedom and power there needs to be an incredible sensitivity to the Holy Spirit. This is not the place of noise and hype. We are not to try to force God’s hand to come down. He lives in us. Abandonment and awareness of the Presence of the Holy Spirit is what we are after. There are 3 levels of consciousness:

1. Self-Conscious
2. World/People-Conscious
3. God-Conscious

If we are to live in the Spirit, being led by the Spirit, we will walk in God-consciousness. We will walk in a keen awareness of His Presence. We must realize that apart from Him we can do nothing! Anything we do apart from the Spirit has no eternal value. The Lord wants us to have eternal treasure in heaven. As we stay in a place of tenderness to the Holy Spirit, we can know that there is eternal treasure being stored up for us when we obey His voice.

Rom 8:14
For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.

Luke 12:34
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

When you hear the Spirit’s voice don’t harden your heart. The opposite of a tender heart is a hard heart. If we think we have a tender heart and yet are unkind and are not carrying the love of the Spirit in our hearts toward one another, we are living in a lie.

1 John 4:20-21
If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? 21 And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also.

There is much done in the name of spirituality, gifts and power. But if there is no love of God, then it is all in vain! Faith works by love. Love works by having a tender heart of mercy towards all people. We have no rights to pick and choose. With man this is not possible, only with God. It takes God’s perfect love flowing through us to love others. We are simply a vessel. He is the substance that flows through us. God is TRUE substance. He is the substance that we all need to live!

Gal 5:6
. . . but faith which works by love.