It’s another great day here at BYUI; however, it would be better if you were here with me. My hope today is that after I share with you some things that I have learned, that you too will feel a stronger connection to our Father in Heaven and experience the greater peace and joy that comes from this connection.
I love the scriptures. I love the timeless lessons that we can learn from them. I love that I can learn about and draw closer to the redemptive power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ by studying His life. Mark records an experience that Christ had with the Sadducees and Pharisees as He entered the synagogue one day. They had been trying to trap Him for doing unauthorized work on the sabbath. In this case it was the healing of a man with a withered hand. Mark records that Jesus “looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts,” then went ahead and healed the man. [1]
This condition of a hard heart was not new to Heavenly Father’s children in Jesus’ day. In the time of Moses, the Lord had commanded the children of Israel to “not harden thine heart.” [2] Paul taught the Hebrews to “harden not your hearts.” [3] Nephi spoke of the trouble that his family experienced with hard hearts, for he too was grieved for the hardness of Laman and Lemuel’s hearts and could not understand how they could be so “hard in [their] hearts.” [4]
Why is the Lord so concerned with the condition of our hearts?
Marvin J. Ashton noted:
The heart is a synonym for one’s entire makeup. We often use phrases about the heart to describe the total person. Thus, we describe people as being “big-hearted” or “goodhearted” or having a “heart of gold.” Or we speak of people with faint hearts, wise hearts, pure hearts, willing hearts, deceitful hearts, conniving hearts, courageous hearts, cold hearts, hearts of stone, or selfish hearts. [5]
Our heart represents our spiritual condition. The scriptures describe a hard heart as being a result of our attitudes or responses to our experiences. It appears that whether we have a hard heart or a soft broken heart, it is a choice. The Lord invites us to not choose a hard heart but to choose to allow him to soften our hearts. Ammon describes how thankful he and his brethren were for being able to receive a soft heart as he declares, “I thank my great God that he has given us a portion of his Spirit to soften our hearts.” [6] It seems that by allowing the Lord into our hearts, He can soften it; He can dwell within. When we choose to have a hard heart, we have chosen to cut ourselves away from the influence and love of our Heavenly Father. Alma declared that “He that will harden his heart, the same receiveth the lesser portion of the word; and he that will not harden his heart, to him is given the greater portion of the word.” [7]
Have you felt the conditions of a hard heart? After Laman and Lemuel were identified as having a hard heart, [8] they were described as being “past feeling.” [9] Have you experienced this condition, being past feeling?
What is this condition? What can lead to hard hearts?
Laman and Lemuel saw miracles but would not allow those miracles to soften their hearts. When counsel was given them by their father, they regarded it as naught. When their family members begged them to change, their hearts grew harder, to the point of not even being able to feel the influence or presence of our Savior.
How do you know when your heart is getting hard? None of us desires to ever be past feeling; however, many of us have been there or are there now.
Perhaps you have experienced some of the seeds or fruits of a hard heart. They could be some of the following: You no longer look for and believe the best in others. You find that you become quickly frustrated over small things. You stop looking for ways to feel Heavenly Father’s influence, maybe you no longer seek out prayer or scriptures. You feel a loss of passion. You feel that everyone’s advice is wrong or bad for your situation. Forgiveness for others does not come easy, if at all.
When I was a young boy I used to love spending time with my grandpa. I grew up on a ranch that his father had homesteaded. From the ranch we could see the area where the cattle grazed on summer pasture. It was up the river in the mountains. In these mountains my grandpa owned some ground that was planted into alfalfa. I remember sitting outside his home watching storm clouds pass over where these fields were located. He would often say during these storms, “It looks like we are getting rain up the river.” I would look up and agree but was really wondering if the fields really were getting rain. My grandpa, however, had learned to train his eye to see the difference between storms that were close to the fields and storms that were over the fields. This was because of another practice I observed. Whenever we would drive up the river to the mountain fields, the first thing that he would do after driving through the gate was to stop, get the shovel out of the back of the pickup, push it into the ground, and pull up a shovelful of soil. He would then look at the hole. You could not only tell if it had rained there but you could identify how far the rain had penetrated and softened the ground. You see, it didn’t matter what we thought was happening up the river; we could look at the ground and know whether or not it had rained or rained enough to soften and moisten the field.
This is the way it is with us. We can and often do spend time wondering if our hearts are right, wondering if we are responding to life’s challenges in the right way, or trying to convince ourselves that the way we are responding to something is justified. But all we really have to do is look at the condition of our heart, just like the ground. Is it soft? A soft heart has identifying characteristics; it has the influence of the Holy Spirit. You may ask yourself if you feel the influence and the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, and peace. Alma asked his friends, in his day, if they had these feelings or if they had had these feelings. He asked, “If ye have experienced a change of heart, and if ye have felt to sing the song of redeeming love, I would ask, can ye feel so now?” [10]
It can be easier to see the ripened fruit of a hardened heart than to see the seeds.
While I was learning the art of training horses, I had the opportunity to learn from a very accomplished horseman. He had several apprentices who worked under his direction. He told me of an experience he had just had with one of these apprentices shortly before our time together. The apprentice, who had been working under him for several years, had come to him with questions regarding a horse that had been entrusted to him for training. The apprentice explained the struggles he was having with the horse and then asked the horseman for ideas. The horseman, who had been watching the struggles that this apprentice was having, listened, asked some questions, and then offered some suggestions. The apprentice listened to the advice and responded that what the horseman had suggested would not work because he had previously tried the suggestion to no avail. The horseman then had offered an alternative suggestion. The apprentice once again explained to the horseman why the suggestion would not work. With the wisdom and experience this horseman had acquired, he was confident that his suggestions would be of great benefit to the horse and thereby benefiting the apprentice. A third time the horseman suggested a way in which the apprentice could help the horse progress, and again the apprentice identified why that would not work with this particular horse. The horseman then wisely responded that he didn’t think that he could help him with the problem he was having. The apprentice agreed and went about his day. A short time later the apprentice mentioned to the horseman that he thought it was time for him to go out on his own as a trainer. The horseman had agreed that he had probably learned everything he could from him.
I have reflected on that story often. It wasn’t that there wasn’t more that the apprentice could learn from the horseman; it was that his heart was no longer soft enough to receive the counsel in the right way, from the horseman. The feeling I had as the horseman shared this story with me reminded me of how I always wondered how Christ felt when He said, “How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!” [11]
The seed of a hard heart begins with not following counsel and then in justifying why we did not follow the counsel. The best counsel comes from the Holy Ghost speaking directly to our hearts. But as Joseph Smith was taught while he was in the darkness of Liberty Jail, when we “undertake to cover our sins, or to gratify our pride, our vain ambition, . . . in any degree of unrighteousness, behold, the heavens withdraw themselves; the Spirit of the Lord is grieved; and when it is withdrawn, amen to the priesthood or the authority of that man. Behold, ere he is aware, he is left unto himself, to kick against the pricks, to persecute the saints, and to fight against God.” [12]
The fruits of a hard heart are the feelings opposite to the fruits of the Spirit. Instead of love, joy, and peace, we may feel anger or are left to feeling nothing but emptiness.
I do not feel we need to dwell on the conditions of the hard heart anymore. We all know what they are. We have all felt a hard heart. We have all experienced the results of a hard heart. We have felt the times when we are walking with the Lord, and we have felt the times when we feel lost and lonely.
My invitation for each of us is to be quick in identifying when we have planted the seed of a hard heart, and change. We must push away the belief that somehow the condition we find ourselves in must be the cause of someone or something else. For even if the beginning of our tribulation did come from something other then our own choices, the way that we respond is what allows for a hard or a soft heart.
We learn great lessons about how to have a soft heart from the many wars recorded in the Book of Mormon between the Lamanites and the Nephites. Please remember that it is a choice to have a soft heart as we consider this example. Moroni pauses his narration of one of the wars that had been going on for the “space of many years” [13] to describe how these wars had affected the hearts of the people in different ways. “But behold, because of the exceedingly great length of the war between the Nephites and the Lamanites many had become hardened, because of the exceedingly great length of the war; and many were softened because of their afflictions, insomuch that they did humble themselves before God, even in the depth of humility.” [14]
In any situation we choose to either harden our hearts or we can allow Christ to soften it. Truly there have been and will be many more situations in our lives that we will not have, or feel a soft heart, if it were not for Christ taking away the pain, the hurt, the confusion, or the lack of feeling and replacing it with a new, soft heart.
Christ desires to soften our hearts, but we need to let Him do it. He can carry the truth unto our hearts, but only our actions can open our hearts to let it in. He softened Nephi’s heart so that he could understand his father’s counsel and be prepared to understand the “mysteries of God.” [15] A Lamanite king describes how the Lord changed his heart while he was facing contentious wars and declared, “I thank my great God that he has given us a portion of his Spirit to soften our hearts, that we have opened a correspondence with these brethren, the Nephites. And behold, I also thank my God, that by opening this correspondence we have been convinced of our sins, and of the many murders which we have committed. And I also thank my God, yea, my great God, that he hath granted unto us that we might repent of these things, and also that he hath forgiven us of those our many sins and murders which we have committed, and taken away the guilt from our hearts, through the merits of his Son.” [16]
Imagine being able to feel forgiveness and guilt taken away even in the midst of our battles. The first step is to believe that He can soften our hearts. Perhaps some of us are not as strong in our belief as we wish we were. This is the condition that a father found himself in when he had asked Jesus to heal his son. “Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” [17] Sometimes we do not feel worthy enough to receive His Spirit into our hearts. These feelings usually come from sin or listening to the lies of Satan, who desires us to be miserable like him.
Our hearts can become hardened by going through difficult experiences. Even then, however, it is a choice. Often, we make that choice before we realized that we were even making it, like a habit. That’s why you must check your heart often for the signs of a soft or hard heart, because if it is hardening, you have a chance to change it, with Christ’s help.
A soft heart allows you to feel Heavenly Fathers love. A soft heart can help you share that love with others. Our Father wants to be near each of us. He is consistently telling us what the next step is to draw closer to Him and to feel His influence. It is the small promptings we feel from the Spirit. We must choose to act on these small impressions that are whispered to our soul in order to achieve a soft heart, the feelings of love, joy, and peace.
Our hard hearts can block all of that.
A worthy goal is to be able to maintain or restore a soft heart while traveling through our mortal experiences. Just like every other lesson learned, however, success is usually discovered through small wins in different areas of our lives. It is possible to be able to maintain a soft heart and experience the feelings that are a result of that in one area of our lives while having a hard heart and experiencing those negative feelings in other areas.
Three areas to consider while trying to maintain a soft heart are:
- Personally, the battle within
- Relationships
- Your influence in the world
First, the battle within. President Ezra Taft Benson noted that “some of the greatest battles we will face will be fought within the silent chambers of our own souls.” [18]
If softening our own hearts begins with letting Christ and His words enter, it is no wonder that we must consider the current state of our own heart. Criticizing self-talk, failure to repent of what the Spirit has shown us that we need to repent of, and refusing to acknowledge our Heavenly Father’s hand in our lives fosters a hard heart. Just like the shovel check that my grandfather would do, check yourself. If you do not feel the fruits of a soft heart, you must ask why. While you are trying to discover the answer for this, remember that you might not need to be stopping a behavior or a thought, but you might need to be allowing something to happen. Sometimes your next step might be allowing the atoning influence of Jesus Christ to work within your heart. Give up and allow Him to take away your broken parts, your heartaches, and your natural-man inclinations and allow Him to replace them with new parts, a new heart, and a new life, truly a new birth.
Second, relationships. Once you allow Christ to help with your battle within, you will be more successful in winning the battles without. These are the relationships that you have. They may be family or friend relationships, colleagues, or just random people you meet during your daily walk. It seems easy to have a soft heart during interactions with new people you may have just met. It seems harder to keep a soft heart with those whom you have a more intimate relationship with. These are people with whom you have opened your heart to, and had it broken. You may have had experiences in these relationships which have left you feeling justified in creating a hard shell around your heart to keep it from breaking again. We all want to avoid those experiences and make sure that we do not experience that pain again, but be cautious if this is the thought of your heart, because when you begin to harden your heart in one area, it begins to harden in all. This hardness not only blocks the pain but will surely begin to block the happiness as well. Your desire to no longer feel pain by hardening your heart also inhibits your ability to feel pleasure. This is why we have to have Christ to help us. It might be true that nobody else knows your pain, nobody else has experienced what you have in a hard relationship, that nobody else has had to have your struggles—nobody else, that is, but Jesus. Let Him in to heal you. Let Him into your relationships. Allow others to change as Christ allows you to change, to grow and to find happiness.
Third, your influence in the world. The world scene right now is full of brothers and sisters with hard hearts. One hard heart encourages another heart to harden, and the cycle grows. You can be the change in the world by checking your heart.
Brothers and sisters, we can have a soft heart and allow peace to fill our souls, if we want. Regardless of our personal struggles, our relationships, and the crazy world around us. Again, I invite you to be quick in identifying when we have planted the seed of a hard heart, and change.
In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
[1] Mark 3:5.
[2] Deuteronomy 15:7.
[3] Hebrews 3:8.
[4] 1 Nephi 7:8.
[5] Marvin J. Ashton, “The Measure of Our Hearts” Ensign, Nov. 1988.
[6] Alma 24:8.
[7] Alma 12:10.
[8] See 1 Nephi 17:41.
[9] 1 Nephi 17:45.
[10] Alma 5:26.
[11] Matthew 23:37.
[12] Doctrine and Covenants 121:37–38.
[13] See Alma 62:39.
[14] Alma 62:41.
[15] 1 Nephi 2:16.
[16] Alma 24:8–10.
[17] Mark 9:23–24.
[18] Ezra T. Benson, “In His Steps” Ensign, Sept. 1988.