The Gift of a Tender Heart Toward Others

Ephesians chapter 4, verse 3: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in heavenly places with every blessing in Christ.” It begins by saying that we are a blessed people in the spiritual, heavenly, invisible, supernatural realm, and the Book of Ephesians ends in chapter 6 by saying that: “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers” and leaders of the forces of evil “in the heavenly realms.”

So the letter begins by saying that we are blessed in the invisible spiritual realm, but it also ends by saying that we have a struggle in the spiritual realm, that we are called to be a supernatural people, that we are called not to carry on as usual, but to be used as a spiritual instrument on Earth so that the power from on high may flow into this world. As the Church, we are called to be a diamond of God’s grace, demonstrating the manifold, multifaceted wisdom of God in the world, and for this the Lord calls us to raise our way of living, to walk worthy of the calling with which we were called; it is no longer time to play at Christianity as usual. It is time to say: Lord, I am part of something special, and I am not going to minimize my part; I am not going to let someone else do it.

I was deeply moved to see how everyone just stood up to intercede, knowing that I cannot depend on everyone else. I am going to be a voice before God; I have a part to play among the people of God; no one is going to warm the bench here. If you are here, you are here for a special purpose, amen? So it is time to walk worthy of the calling with which we were called.

Ephesians 4:17: “This I say, therefore, and insist upon in the Lord: that you must no longer walk as the other Gentiles walk, in the futility of their minds, having their understanding darkened, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they gave themselves over to sensuality, so as greedily to commit every kind of impurity.”

Verse 20: “But you have not learned Christ in this way. If indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, according to the truth that is in Jesus, as regards your former way of life, put off the old man, which is corrupted according to deceitful desires, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, created according to God in the righteousness and holiness of the truth.”

Verse 25: “Therefore, putting away falsehood, let each one speak truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. Be angry, but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, nor give place to the devil. Let the one who stole steal no more, but rather let him work, doing with his hands what is good, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.”

Verse 29: “Let no corrupt word come out of your mouth, but only what is good for necessary edification, so as to give grace to those who hear; and do not grieve the Holy Spirit, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, anger, wrath, shouting, and slander, along with all malice, be put away from you. Instead, be kind to one another, merciful, forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ.” Amen?

Father, I thank You that at Christmastime we celebrate the gift of new life, Lord, that we no longer have to be the same as before, Lord, that the Gospel truly works. I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes in Him; and Lord, You are still in the business of changing lives, and Lord, we want to be changed by You, Lord, so speak to us, we ask You during this brief time, in the name of Jesus, amen and amen.

The Lord is speaking, and through the apostle Paul He is not merely saying: “This I say, therefore, and insist upon in the Lord.” Change in the Christian life is not optional; one way or another, we are going to change. We are not going to remain as we are. This I say and insist upon in the Lord—the original Greek says “testify”—that before, we thought wrongly and lived wrongly, right? The problem begins here, and transformation also begins here, in the mind, in the way we think about life. Many times we live lost lives because we are lost in our thoughts. The Lord says: It is time to be transformed by the renewing of the mind.

To have a new spirit in the mind—do you notice what it says in verse 23? “In the spirit of our mind.” It is not only about learning new attitudes, but about allowing the spirit to go from my heart to my head, so that I begin to think like a Christian, so that I begin to see life differently. And many of us are still, many times, more in agreement here with the devil than with the Word of God; we tell ourselves lies. We tell ourselves: well, this is just how I am; I cannot change. This is just how I am; this is going to be a problem forever. And we convince ourselves of the enemy’s lies.

Sometimes we live our lives saying: well, this is my personality, and nothing can change it now. No, that is not according to the Word of God, right? This is just how I am; I am sad now; things go badly for me. A person thinks that bad luck follows them instead of believing the Word that says: “Surely mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for many days,” right? What are you thinking?

I invite you to listen to the inner conversation we have when we speak in discipleship; we talk to ourselves all day long. What are you saying—truths or lies? The Lord wants us to make up our minds now. It is a new year: out with the old, in with the new, right? I am not the same anymore; God has changed me. I am going to take off that old man as though he were an ugly coat that no longer fits, because that is no longer for me, and I am going to put on the new man because I am a new person, right?

We are going to talk about Baptism next month. The Book of Romans says that when we are baptized, we are buried into Christ’s death; that is why we do it by immersion. We respect other expressions, but immersion symbolizes very well that baptism is a burial—and you can be born again, but it is a burial. The old Gregory was left behind in a lake in Massachusetts, right? (laughter).

I always tell the story of the man who gets baptized and then takes a large rock and throws it into the lake. They ask him: why did you do that? And he says: well, that is my tombstone; the old Gregory is left there dead, right? I told this to some children once, and they asked me whether there were many dead bodies down there in Lake Hopkinton. They got scared—the things children think, right? You have to be careful.

The old me is gone. When we talk about putting off the old and putting on the new, we are not talking about something that is not true; we are taking off what is already dead. The word corruption is repeated in this passage. The old way of life was a corrupt way that took life away.

The devil’s lie is that if I live in sin, I will be happy, I will really live life. Maybe it is the crazy life, because it is not the life of God, and it takes your true personality away from you. I love seeing people finally put away their sin, begin to seek God and live without their sin, and their personality blossoms from within them, right? It bursts out of them: personality, humor, jokes, joy, songs, dancing. Now the real you is living.

Sin is like rust; it is like something that takes life away, that makes a person’s personality ugly. But holiness is beautiful, holiness is glorious; it makes you into the glorious person God wants you to be, amen? So we take off the old man, and we are going to put on the new. And your new man, the person you are—look at what it says in verse 24: “Put on the new man, created according to God in the righteousness and holiness of the truth.” The new you, the real you, is holy and beautiful, and glorious, and joyful, and humble, and true, and faithful, and righteous in the eyes of God. That is the real you.

But that is where the problem comes in. Many times I do not feel holy and humble, and joyful, and all those good things. I like honest people in discipleship who sometimes tell me the truth about how they feel, especially in level 1, right? “It’s just that, Gregory, I am bad.” There is a brother whom I have known here on the street for many years. He tells me: “Gregory, my problem is that I like to drink. If I am happy, I drink to celebrate; if I am sad, I drink to feel better; if I am bored, I drink to pass the time. It’s just that I like to drink.” I know this man is going to be here at the altar glorifying God, because he is honest, right? Completely honest, and then we can work with that.

Many times we feel ugly, we feel bad, and I have good news for you today: your feelings are real, but they are not your reality. My feeling is real; it is mine, but it is not your reality. Your reality changed the moment you received Christ as Lord and Savior. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. You are the temple of the Holy Spirit; you are—your members are members of the Body of Christ Himself on Earth. You are a son, a daughter of God. Perhaps you can say: I feel bad, but I am blessed in heavenly places through my Jesus Christ, because this is your reality.

We can be honest, but when you ask some brothers or sisters here, “How are you, sister?” “Blessed.” And I know they say it by faith; they are not trying to deceive anyone. They know that life is hard, right? There are difficult situations, but they are saying: in Christ, I am blessed. I am not going to listen to my feelings or to the devil’s lie; I listen to the Word of God, which says that I am no longer a sinner; I am a saint in Christ. I feel rejected, but the reality is that He chose me in Christ so that I might be spotless and holy before Him, right?

You are a son of God, a daughter of God; sin is no longer for you—it is not for you. You can say, as we do in the Church: it’s just not me anymore. Certain things are no longer for me. There is a new way of living, but you have to get used to it, right? You have to learn. Sometimes doing the right thing does not feel natural; it feels difficult, it feels somewhat forced, like something that is not genuine, but that does not mean it is not right.

In the recovery world, in the twelve steps, they have a saying for people who feel like alcoholics, like drunks. All these years they have told themselves: I am a drug addict, and that is who I am; this is my normal state. And they say: no, no, no, let’s pretend that you are a sober person. If you were a sober person, what would you do? What kind of life would you live? And you are going to pretend that you are sober until it becomes something real to you. But I thank God that He does not call me to pretend, invent, or fake anything. I am a new creation in Christ, and it is out with the old, in not with the new, but in with the truth of who I really am, because this old life is no longer for me.

So we are going to talk specifically about four things. We begin with truth, as we said. So verse 25 says: “Putting away falsehood, let each one speak truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another.” Falsehood is no longer for me; playing games with others is no longer for me, you can say. Some are used to the constant little lie, the pretense, the fabrication, appearing to be something we are not. Thank God you can take off the mask in Christ. You no longer have anything to prove; you can be honest.

I come back to discipleship. The person in the class who says: “Look, you know what? Sometimes I feel like sinning,” and is honest about it—now everyone else knows that we can be honest. We can be honest here because God truly can change us. So, putting away falsehood, let us take off the mask and say: I am a man of truth, and falsehood is no longer for me.

Sometimes the truth can cause you problems, but lies cause even more problems, because one lie leads you to another lie to cover the lie you told before, right? And then you have to tell another lie to cover the second lie, and you no longer remember: what was my lie? And you think: I need to write down the lie so I do not forget what I made up. What was the story we told them? Oh, I do not even remember. The truth is easier to remember, so, putting away falsehood, let us be a transparent, honest people; we can look people in the eye.

I am no longer a resentful person either. Verse 26: “Be angry, but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, nor give place to the devil.” Wrath, anger, is not a sin in itself. It says: be angry. Every human being is going to get angry, right? Some of us know that very well, right? Some of us have a slightly shorter fuse than others. It is normal; it is natural.

Someone steps on your corn and you say, “Ouch!” You get angry; that is normal. The sin is holding on to anger from one night until the next day, and then the following day, and the next day, and another month, and another year—generation after generation of anger that begins to grow like that, putting down roots. It becomes a root of bitterness, a weed that kills life, corrupts my being, my personality, and makes my personality ugly.

Stored-up anger also contaminates my personality, because I do not trust you, because I am still angry with that other person. Sometimes it is passed down from generation to generation. Children grow up bitter and do not even know why; it is because the grandmother passed the anger on to her son, and the thing goes on from generation to generation.

Brothers and sisters, I have good Christmas news: we can be free from that. Anger even gives the devil himself a place among us. I have seen people from whose bodies demons come out when they come to forgive, because they are no longer going to carry the sin that was committed against them; they are now free from the anger they have harbored year after year.

Brothers and sisters, even secular psychologists know that forgiving another person is the healthiest thing we can do to be healthy and free. Forgiving is not excusing, it is not minimizing, it is not saying that what they did to me was not wrong; perhaps it was indeed wrong. Nor is it protecting the person from consequences and allowing someone to keep hurting me; that is not forgiveness, that is enabling sin, right? The thing is that when someone sins against you, there is a debt that is before God and is between God and them, and God says to you: You know what? I am the God of justice; let Me settle the accounts. Vengeance is Mine, says God; you do not have to take matters into your own hands.

Sometimes sin leads to crimes, and the person has to pay their debt to society. Well, that is between them and the judge, but in my heart I cancel what you owe me; I decide not to harbor anger anymore, and I release it in the Name of Jesus, and I say: although you have hurt me, I am not going to carry that ugliness upon myself. I forgive you in the Name of Jesus, I release you from every burden and every curse, and I declare blessing over your life.

Now I want to make something very clear: there is a difference between forgiveness and reconciliation. Someone asked me: But how am I going to forgive them if the person does not want to be forgiven? Reconciliation is possible only when both people seek to restore the relationship. Forgiveness is something I do by faith in my heart. I may be forgiving someone who is not even alive, who died ten years ago, but I am still angry, and I say: Why am I carrying this? I release it in the Name of Jesus.

Forgiveness does not require reconciliation either. In fact, there are some people and relationships that are better left in the past, brother. There are some acts of forgiveness that you have to grant—you must forgive without seeking out the person who offended you, right? Because sometimes you have to leave the matter in God’s hands and no more—do not friend them on Facebook, especially if you are forgiving an ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend and you are already married. Okay, just leave that ex-boyfriend there in the Lord’s hands; you are living a new life, okay? Forgive him in the Lord so that you do not keep punishing your husband, but you do not need to look for him, you do not need to make him your friend on Facebook—no, no, no. That is in the past now, right?

And sometimes forgiveness is going to be a long emotional process; Pastor talks about that. There is forgiveness that is a decision made by faith, but there is also emotional forgiveness. Sometimes we forgive, but ugly feelings remain. I say it again: your feelings are real, but they are not your reality. We forgive by faith and repeat that forgiveness until the feelings change. It may take time, but the point will come when you no longer have that same hatred for the person. You may feel sorry that the person was that way, but you have forgiven them and you are free in your heart.

The key is that, you know what? Certain things, as this passage later says, grieve the Holy Spirit. Bitterness is something that hinders the flow of God’s anointing among us. Forgiveness removes an obstacle so that the anointing may flow within us.

And then there are two other things, and I ask you to be patient with me; I am going to talk about those other things. It also says in verse 28: “Let the one who stole or thieved”—I do not know what “thieving” is, so forgive me—“let the one who stole steal no more, but rather work, doing with his hands what is good, so that he may have something to share with the one who is in need.” You know, I do not want to accuse anyone of being a thief; that is not the point. But I do want to say something: the new man works in the Name of Jesus, amen?

For the new Christian, God’s anointing is not only for the Church, but also for Monday morning when you have to work, because in order to work, you have to deal with the difficult boss and the people in your office who bother you. But work heals; work is a blessing. There is a sweat through which neurosis and sin leave with the sweat of the workday, and in this way we have something to share with others. In Christ I can say that now I am not someone who steals, but someone who gives to others. Thank God, amen? That is part of the anointing.

One more, verse 29: “Let no corrupt word come out of your mouth, but only what is good for necessary edification, that it may give grace to those who hear.” The key word here is “corrupt”; it comes from a very clear word that refers to something rotten, like a piece of fruit that is already rotten. What happens when you put an apple that is already rotten with the other apples? What is going to happen, right? That is how words are. We speak a negative word, and it brings death into the air and into the hearts of others, but words of life foster life in the people around us.

It says that there are men whose words are sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise is medicine, amen? Brother, you have medicine for a sick world; you have medicine. If you ask Him, “Lord, give me words for this person,” there will be a flow of anointing through you in words of life, words of encouragement, expressions of gratitude, affectionate greetings, words of instruction as you preach the Gospel, and words of life in the home.

Brothers and sisters, I felt the Lord convict me very strongly about my words toward my dog, because I was not the one who wanted the little dog, right? I let myself be carried along, right, by all the, you know, pressure upon me: “A puppy, a puppy!” Now we have a puppy! And he relieves himself everywhere; he baptizes the carpet. And, well, some of my words toward him were not very good Christian words, and I felt the Lord say to me: He is a dog, but you are still filling the air with negative words, right? The air grows dark when there are ugly words, brother.

No more complaining, no more criticism, no more gossip. You know, I preach this, and then I always come to Church the following week and it is raining, it is cold, and I see a sister coming toward me all bundled up, and I say to her: “Oh, sister, what an awful day,” and she says to me: “Oh, I am not one for ugly words, words of death. I thank God that at least He has given me a coat,” and I say to her: “Oops, forgive me.” Every time I preach that, the Lord comes down hard on me, right? Because within an hour, oops! Another word of death slips out of my mouth again.

All of this has to do with the Holy Spirit. It says, very importantly: “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” The Holy Spirit sealed you; He is not leaving anymore. You are a Christian, but the Holy Spirit does indeed become sad. That is why there is no uglier feeling than praying and sensing that God is far away and sad with me because of my words, because of my bitterness.

The Lord says: No more. What you do affects Me; when you have done it to the least of these, you have done all of that to Me. So through your words, your life of giving, and all of this, you can make the Holy Spirit feel welcome.

And everything ends with asking God this Christmas for the gift of a tender heart toward others. “But be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ.” The very beautiful word here “for mercy” is a Greek word that, it says, is similar to the word describing what Jesus felt toward the multitude. In Greek the word is splanknas, because it means “inner being”—love and compassion that come from deep within you. This word is even stronger; it is éosplanknas: double compassion, double love, double affection, double tenderness.

Many times in discipleship we emphasize that love is a decision, that even when there are no feelings, you can love your children, your wife, and your brothers and sisters, amen? Love is a commitment: I am not moving from here, right? Until death parts us, even when we go through difficult things, right?

But do you know that love can also come from the heart? And it can also be a feeling. It can be a feeling, an affection like the father showed the little boy, and you look at others and think: Wow, I see this person through different eyes. The Lord is an expert at removing the heart of stone and giving us a heart of flesh, amen?

Brothers and sisters, all of this is the Gospel. God forgave us. At Christmas we celebrate that we did nothing to deserve salvation; we did not seek Him. Christianity is based on the fact that God sought me when I was not seeking Him. God demonstrates His love toward us in that, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

I did not ask God to be born in Bethlehem; God sent His Son to save us. He could have left Adam there among the trees when he sinned—hidden, miserable, naked—but instead, God sought him, clothed him, covered his shame, and gave him hope. And Christmas is the celebration of God’s grace. God sent His Son to me; He has changed me, He has made me new, so how could I not forgive others?

You can put on the new man. If God has been generous with us, if God is for us, who can be against us? If He did not spare even His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all. Freely you have received; freely give.

This Christmas I invite you to put on the new man, the new woman, and to give: give words of life, give money that you have worked for and earned, give a second chance to the loved ones who have offended you, forgive, and live in the Grace of God. And this is key to reaching the heights God is calling us to attain. Revival is coming, and this is no longer the time to play games with God. The Lord wants to be at home with us, so let us prepare the house, amen?