A Message For You II

‘Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life. Avoid all perverse talk; stay away from corrupt speech. Look straight ahead, and fix your eyes on that lies before you’ Prov.4:23-25.

The Holy Spirit’s second message for you is you need to develop a thick skin and a soft heart. Pain is inevitable. You will hurt and I assure you that you will hurt badly but don’t get hardened. Learn to develop a thick skin and a soft heart and not the converse. The typical thing for many people is they go through things and develop a hard heart and a thin skin. With a thin skin, they get irritated at the slightest thing. They are suspicious of everybody, even the people that mean well. They a hard heart because they still remember what that person did at 12pm on the 15^th January in 1977. God is saying, for you to make your dream work, you must develop a thick skin and a soft heart. Let things that happen, bounce off your skin, and not mean anything to you. Don’t be hypersensitive. And have a soft heart because your heart is your most important asset with God. When the heart is polluted there is a problem because you see everything in the colour of your heart. We tend to see things in the filter of our hearts. ‘Above all else, guard your heart, every thing you do flows from it’ Prov.4:23 [NIV]. How you respond to issues is out of your heart. So God is saying in order to make things work you need to develop a thick skin and a soft heart. So what if people are criticizing you? You shouldn’t be worried if people are criticizing you, you should be worried if people are not criticizing you. Think about it!

Pain is the constant companion of dreamers. And I can give you scriptural examples from Abel, to Joseph, then to David, Daniel, Jeremiah, James, John, Peter, Paul, and to Jesus. Pain is the constant companion of dreamers. If you are to dream, engineer your dream, and bring it to fruition you must be accustomed to pain. Let me rephrase that, you must be comfortable irrespective of the pain. You know they are two very different things. When you are accustomed to pain, it means you are numb. I am not talking about been numb. I mean inspite of the pain you are able to function because people will criticize you. Your best intentions will be read as a bad heart. People will call you names, people will lie against you, and people will cook up stories. But guess what, that’s the portion of the dreamer.

Prayer: Father, today I circumcise my heart so that I will not grow hard-hearted or become stiff necked. Teach me to grow a soft heart and a thick skin, in Jesus Name.