Supernatural Transformation: Change Your Heart Into God’s Heart (13 page)

3. The Removal of the Presence and Power of God

Even after you have hardened your heart, God’s presence may remain over your life for a time. However, if the condition continues, His presence will lift, and His power will cease to operate through you. For example, Samson was a judge and warrior in Israel, but his heart was not fully aligned with the Lord’s, and he repeatedly surrendered to sin. At one point, Samson went too far, failing to respect the calling God had given him, and the Scriptures say of him that
“he awoke from his sleep, and said, ‘I will go out as before, at other times, and shake myself free!’ But he did not know that the L
ord
had departed from him”
(Judges 16:20). What ultimately happened to Samson—losing the gift God had given him; being captured by his enemies; having his eyes put out; being mocked and humiliated; and, finally, when God restored his strength, destroying his enemies and himself by bringing down the Philistine temple of Dagon on them—is one of the saddest and least illustrious ends of a man chosen by God.

4. A “Seared Conscience”

The apostle Paul wrote,
“Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron…”
(1 Timothy 4:1–2). To have a “seared conscience” means to come into a state of indifference to sin as a result of continuous, willful transgression against God’s commands. The person with a seared conscience sins without remorse because his heart has become callused. Eventually, he turns his back on the Lord Himself without any remorse.

It is essential to understand that “searing” is a process. No one who has experienced a genuine encounter with Jesus will deny Him suddenly. The process begins when a person starts committing a sin in a certain area, or when, after being hurt by someone, he continues to hold on to bitter feelings without releasing his hurt to God and forgiving the offending party.

In the beginning, the person’s conscience will bother him, and he may experience conviction from the Holy Spirit that he is not in a good place. However, if he doesn’t repent, then the next time he sins, he will feel less bad; the following time even less; and so forth, until his conscience stops rebuking him because it has been seared.

The searing process is similar to what occurs when a callus develops somewhere on our physical body. For example, when a person starts learning to play the guitar, the act of fingering the strings will be somewhat painful and will cause the tips of his fingers to become red. But then small calluses will form, and he will stop feeling any pain, because that part of his skin is no longer soft and sensitive but hard and insensitive.

Spiritually speaking, when a person starts to harden his heart, “calluses” will begin to develop on it. If the process is allowed to continue, the individual will come to regard sin as something normal, because he is no longer sensitive to the prompting or conviction of God; he no longer has a reverent fear of the Lord, and he has given his sinful nature free rein. The person will now justify his sin, and his seared conscience will conclude,
I have a right to do this
, or
God won’t care if I do this.

The Scriptures warn,
“For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins”
(Hebrews 10:26). At that point, we can say that the person has fallen into “apostasy”; he has abandoned the faith after
“
[having]
tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come…”
(Hebrews 6:5). In other words, after knowing and experiencing Christ and receiving God’s supernatural works, he denies and rejects them, perhaps even mocking what he used to consider holy. He completely walks away from the Lord. In military terms, such a person would be called a deserter.

The Condition of Your Heart

After more than twenty-five years in ministry, I have seen the above consequences in the lives of church leaders and other believers who chose to maintain their hardened hearts and not allow themselves to be changed by the Lord. What is the condition of your heart today? Could it be that you no longer feel the presence of God, so that you have fallen into the mere formality of religion, and faith has stopped flowing in you? Do you observe others closely for the purpose of finding a reason to judge them? Have you gone back on your commitments to God and to His people, so that you no longer serve them? Is there rebellion in your inner man, causing you to close yourself off from others and to refuse to recognize God’s delegated authority in your life? Do you find your heart centered on the desires of the sinful nature, so that you have begun to enjoy activities and practices that offend God? Do you recognize an area of your life that is not responsive to God’s love, will, and authority? Do you find it hard to offer heartfelt worship and generous offerings to the Lord?

If you recognize in yourself any of the above signs of a hardened heart, I pray to God that you will decide to place yourself in His hands, that you will allow Him to operate in your heart to transform it through His Holy Spirit, so that His favor and grace can continue to flow in your life. Stop thinking about it—do it! Stop prolonging the agony that causes your spirit to be separated from God in any of the aforementioned areas. Today is the day of your transformation!

The following is the account of two sisters whose hearts became full of pride. Their condition led them to turn away from God while allowing coldness and self-interest to take over their lives. One of the sisters, Luisa, writes, “Although we were raised in a culture dominated by Catholicism, our entire family met and accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior while my sister and I were still children. We began to attend church, and we served in various ministries during our childhood and adolescent years. When we entered the university, our faith was criticized, and this criticism threatened to block us from becoming professionals, making us feel very rejected, sad, and angry. It was then that the demands of school seemed like a good excuse to separate ourselves from the church and, consequently, from God. We focused on our careers, goals, and commitments.

“After more than ten years of struggling, we graduated with honors from important universities. My sister studied literature and nursing. I studied art, literature, and philosophy. In our search for greater professional accomplishments, we moved to the United States, where
we were able to fulfill our dreams. Our lives seemed to be wonderful, but the truth was that, regardless of all the good things that surrounded us, we still felt out of sorts. Without God, our lives seemed destined for ruin as we trusted more in our abilities and knowledge than on Him.

“But then a crisis entered our successful world. Not knowing what to do, we started to look for a church where we could receive spiritual covering. We knocked on many doors, but none filled our void until my sister saw a King Jesus church service on television. We attended the church and became reconciled to God and to our parents—their prayers had finally reached us. The experience was like being reborn, like breathing again after being underwater for a long time. However, as we got closer to God, adversity increased like a river until our ‘castle’ tumbled down. We lost many material things, but the hand of God helped to keep us strong as it polished our hearts. We died to the pride that had built our lives; we surrendered to God and learned to obey Him. Finally, He restored us. He equipped us by teaching us to fight through prayer, to live by faith, to stand on His Word, and to seek His face and wait on Him. He gave us back even more than what we had lost. Today, God is, once again, the Lord of our lives and of our time. He is our true Provider and, more than ever, the center of our existence.”

The Cure for the Hardened Heart

There is a cure for the person who has a hardened heart if he will surrender to God, give up his “ego,” yield his intellect and reason to God, and allow Him to transform him. If your heart has become hardened, you are not lost, because God can
“make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert”
(Isaiah 43:19). He promises,
“If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land”
(2 Chronicles 7:14). Let us explore the path that leads to the cure for the hardened heart.

“Circumcision” of the Heart

In the Old Testament, physical circumcision involved cutting off the foreskin of the male reproductive organ, symbolizing that the individual was a member of the covenant people of God. In the New Testament, after Christ shed His blood on the cross for our sins and was resurrected, circumcision became a spiritual act in the human heart—although a spiritual application was also relevant under the old covenant. For example, in Deuteronomy, we read,
“
Therefore circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and be stiff-necked no longer”
(Deuteronomy 10:16).

Therefore, from the onset of the practice of circumcision, it was clear that God was primarily interested in the human heart. We must be fully aware that heart circumcision has to be maintained, because when a person stops seeking God’s presence and His transformation, that individual will become stagnant and begin to backslide—he will start a reverse journey toward engaging in old habits and justifying his sin, rather than repenting of his sin and giving it up. Paul wrote, “For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter; whose praise is not from men but from God” (Romans 2:28–29). We must die to our sinful nature if we want to once again be sensitive to the voice of God and the ways in which He is working today.

When our heart is circumcised, we renounce our trust in fallen human nature and begin to trust totally in divine grace.

True Repentance Provides the Only Access to
Heart Circumcision

Every sin or wrong attitude that we fail to repent of contributes to the hardening of our heart. Genuine repentance is necessary in order to restore our heart from its hardened state. What is repentance? It is a complete change of heart and mind that leads to a change in behavior. Accordingly, true repentance involves a new frame of mind that reflects a change in attitude. When we realize our hardened spiritual condition before God and the rebellious nature that has led us away from Him, repentance is the decision we make to turn 180 degrees and walk in the opposite direction—toward Him. Repentance also indicates our decision not to rule ourselves any longer but to be ruled by God, according to His Word and will.

Therefore, if your heart is hard, you need to repent of sin, whether it is sin you are currently engaged in or a generational curse that was passed down through your family line—such as may be manifested in an addiction that cannot be broken or in persistent depression. Repentance will enable you to enter into God’s presence again. When you turn from your sins and wrong attitudes, you allow your heart to soften toward the Lord. Without repentance, your faith will be void. For example, a thief can try to believe that God forgives the sin of stealing, but if he doesn’t repent of his thieving, the faith to receive forgiveness cannot operate in him, nor will God’s power be able to work in his heart to transform him.

The areas in which our heart is hardened are those
in which we resist God.

Only the Holy Spirit Can Circumcise the Heart

It is vital to recognize that the only One who can circumcise your heart is God’s Holy Spirit. He knows you, and He has the power and the love to circumcise you without hurting you. I pray that your eyes will be opened so you can see the true state of your heart. Although your heart may not be fully hardened, there is surely some area of your life you need to surrender to God so that you may be transformed. Don’t deprive yourself of this blessing. Don’t be afraid of losing something that you have, because what God wants to give you is a thousand times better!

I pray that you may experience true repentance, allowing the Holy Spirit to circumcise your heart from wrong mind-sets, wrong thoughts, and wrong habits that have created thick calluses, making you unable to feel or perceive God’s presence, and making it difficult for you to establish healthy relationships with other people. I pray that the Holy Spirit will remove the “heart of stone” within you—including the wounds, pain, and feelings of rejection that have caused you to harden your heart—and will give you a “heart of flesh”—one that is new, soft, and tender; one that restores your innocence. If you will allow Him to, God will cleanse, purify, and sanctify your heart. Choose to be circumcised by the Holy Spirit, and receive an anointing from God like never before.

Realize that your heavenly Father wants to do a “heart transplant” within you right now. If you will open your heart to God, yield yourself to Him, and give Him permission to do this spiritual surgery, He will remove your heart of stone and replace it with a heart of flesh.

Reaching the fulfillment of our purpose in God involves surrendering our will to His.

Benefits of Circumcision of the Heart

The following summarizes some of the benefits of allowing the Holy Spirit to circumcise your heart. Heart circumcision…