Episode Transcript
[00:00:18] All right, here we are. Hey, we are almost into Christmas here. We're going into.
[00:00:26] By the time you hear this, this will be the week of Christmas in 2025. What a year it has been, has flown by for sure.
[00:00:36] And I hope that you've had a good year. I hope that you have been blessed by the Lord. And hey, you know, I get it if you're a super sensitive person. And this time of year can be a real struggle for people who are highly sensitive, which we talked about last week. I'm going to expound on that this week.
[00:00:53] So. But just in case I didn't mention it, this is Grace and Grit mindset podcast and I'm Shanna Williams and I you for joining me. And I just want to just jump into this Today we're talking about being tender hearted by design and what it means to be sensitive in the, in the kingdom of God. And I really want to break that stigma off of being a sensitive person, as that means being weak.
[00:01:19] If anything, it is tremendous strength to be a sensitive person because it means that you are so in alignment with the heart of God because you sense other people's pain and you empathize and you generally, generally, probably respond in compassion, which is one of the reasons it's so hard for you to be in these super stressful, painful environments where things are loud and hurried and bustle, hustle and bustle and dither and yawn and it's too much for you to try to take in. So I really want to just continue in this series of just kind of setting you free and myself free too, to know that just because you're sensitive, it doesn't mean you're weak or it doesn't mean something's wrong with you.
[00:02:09] It actually means God made you with a specific heart wiring that is so empathetic to other people.
[00:02:19] And, and sometimes that can be a challenge because you neglect yourself, which I talked about that last week about how when you're highly sensitive, you neglect yourself. But this week I'm kind of talking about like, spirit, like, you know, we're talking about being tender hearted because that's really the way the scriptures describe a highly sensitive person. Like our modern language is an hsp, but in the scriptures, it's more called being tender hearted.
[00:02:49] And this was, you know, one of the ways that Jesus was characterized in some of the descriptions of him. He even talks about himself this way.
[00:02:59] Isaiah prophesies that he will be a man of many sorrows, well acquainted with grief.
[00:03:06] So he's very in tune with other people's pain.
[00:03:11] Yes, he was the son of God, but he also felt the overwhelming.
[00:03:18] You know, the price that you pay for that gift is feeling so much pain of other people.
[00:03:24] So his is magnified a billion times to what we feel, if we're. If we're sensitive, cannot even imagine what he. He felt. But he describes himself in Matthew 11:29 as being low.
[00:03:42] He describes himself as being gentle and humble of heart. He says, take my yoke upon you.
[00:03:47] You know, my yoke is easy, my burdens light. I am gentle and humble of heart.
[00:03:53] You know, I wanted to, like, really understand why he says gentle and humble because those are kind of close ways to describe yourself. So when you look at. At the word, the first word, which is gentle, it's prayers. Prius is how you say it.
[00:04:13] I probably just destroyed that. If you are a Greek scholar, please forgive me. Yeah, topanos is what it actually. No, that's not right. Sorry, Hang on a minute.
[00:04:28] One second.
[00:04:32] I probably have to fix this because I'm messing it all up. I'll have to edit that out. Okay, so this word, prayers is. Is the word where he says, I am gentle. It can mean, like, mild, of course, humble. So he already. He says humble in a minute. But this word also means humble.
[00:04:51] But it actually, it. We don't really have this full meaning of this word in our English language because it kind of brings together strength, but under control. So it's like this strength that, you know, you have the power to change something, but you choose to remain under submission to God's control.
[00:05:19] It's. It's like. It's not. It's not weakness, but rather refers to exercising God's strength under his control.
[00:05:27] So it's like he could have called down angels.
[00:05:30] He could have called down judgment anytime he wanted to, but he didn't. It was this gentle mildness that he had.
[00:05:37] And I think this is a trait of a person who's really sensitive.
[00:05:41] Why? Because their genuine care and concern is for other people around them, and they don't want to hurt them.
[00:05:50] I think this governs so much of what I do and say.
[00:05:54] And I've had to learn how to balance this because I have, to my own detriment, you know, not protected of myself or said things that probably should have been said because I didn't want to hurt someone else.
[00:06:08] And so it became avoidance, and it became, like, damage to me to the point that I lost myself, if that makes sense, trying not to hurt other people. So that's not healthy either. And that's not what, what we're talking about. What we're talking about this, you know, just this ability to exercise control over yourself. And then he also uses the word. So he says take, take this yoke of. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and I am humble in heart.
[00:06:42] So this other word, humble is topanos and it means to be cast down, humble of low degree.
[00:06:50] It actually can mean depressed too. But I don't think it's depressed in the sense that we like clinically depressed. It means to figuratively in circumstances or disposition to cast down to humble or to be of a low degree. And basically it's describing the person who depends on the Lord rather than on their self.
[00:07:16] So Jesus is describing himself as a person who's very mild, who has a lot of strength, but it's under control.
[00:07:26] But he also says that I depend on the Lord rather than on myself. I choose not to be self reliant.
[00:07:34] And I think those are. That's also, you know, a characteristic of someone who is. It can be a characteristic of someone who is highly sensitive.
[00:07:46] Just this ability. And I think it comes with.
[00:07:50] Because you are so aware of other people's pain but you're also very aware of your own limitations. I know that I am. And I think this goes along with this personality or this, this trait of being highly sensitive is I'm very aware of my own shortcomings and faults and failures to the point that I could really beat myself up about it. But you know, just getting spiritually mature enough to not do that, but to rather say, hey, you know what?
[00:08:19] I choose to.
[00:08:23] I choose to allow the Lord to fight for me in this area. I have strength and I can do something. But I'm not, I'm not a person who wants to hurt other people just to get what I want. I think is kind of, you know, what I'm getting when I read this scripture, when I apply it to my own life now I see it in through the lens of Jesus being that kind of a shepherd too, right?
[00:08:48] Of being so tender hearted towards us and so sensitive to our needs. The high priest who is very well acquainted with our griefs and sorrows, right, because he had them himself. So that is a beautiful reminder. But also knowing that he's so tender hearted towards me that he's not angry, that he's not waiting to just drop the hammer when I mess up, you know, or that he's also telling me you're safe with me. Like I'm not going to intentionally hurt you and wound you.
[00:09:18] And so I think seeing it through that lens, but also realizing that if you are a sensitive person, this is probably your heart as well, is to be a person who doesn't hurt other people and you're, you're so sensitive to them, their needs. So that's a way just to get us started here about, you know, what, what it kind of feels like to be a sensitive person.
[00:09:44] It's not, you know, it's not a problem. There's nothing wrong with you. And it's not a modern invention or a personality issue.
[00:09:53] It's not something we suddenly developed in our generation. The Bible is actually full of deeply sensitive people.
[00:10:01] And what I love is that you see this through scripture. God has always work tender hearts. And every time I'm thinking about tender hearts, I think about Mary, the mother of Jesus, how tender hearted she must have been and how much it really cost her to. Yes, she gets to be remembered and honored as the, you know, the mother of Jesus, but she had to also watch him suffer and die. She had to raise him knowing, you know, what was going to happen to him. I cannot imagine. I was just watching a documentary and I was crying because it was about the birth of Jesus and just very humanistic way of seeing it humanly, whatever. It was a very kind of normal. Like what were Mary and Joseph really like? They were just normal people there. Probably, I mean, she was probably 13, 14 years old. I mean, she's so little and tiny and her heart obviously must have been such a tender hearted person for the Lord to trust her with that. And that's kind of the point I want to make is like, if you are a very tender hearted person, God's entrusted you with something beautiful. I know it doesn't always feel like it. I know it can feel like people always hurt you, people always abandon you, reject you, betray you. And I, I get it. Because some of the people I have helped the most are the very ones that have hurt me the most.
[00:11:25] So I get it. But even in spite of all of that, it's still a gift that God has given. And I think what we have to learn to do is to let him bind our wound up for us when we go through these things. And he knows how to do it because he's been there. But also let him teach us how to have boundaries because he's not asking us to be Him. Essentially, he's not saying, hey, I need you to sacrifice your own self for this person over here. Because he already sacrificed them, we can't save them. So that's where you have to learn how as an empathetic, highly sensitive person, you can't save someone else. So I'm not saying go out and, you know, save other people and destroy your own life because I've done this and the Lord's had to help me. And so there's a balance that we have to learn. Okay?
[00:12:14] But, you know, we see. We see really tender hearted people in scripture.
[00:12:21] We see them being soft hearted, broken and contrite, discerning, but watchful too. Ezekiel 36:26 says, I will give you a heart of flesh and remove your heart of stone. So this is like this heart of flesh is this idea of being a soft hearted, tender hearted person. Psalm 51:17. David writes, A broken and contrite heart you will not despise. And he wrote Psalm 51, if I'm correct. I believe I am. This is after the Bathsheba incident. So he is extremely broken and tender hearted. And I think this is one of the reasons that God so loved David. He said he's a man after my own heart. What he was saying, I think is he's tender hearted towards me, like he loves me.
[00:13:05] And I think that's what we're like when we're highly sensitive.
[00:13:11] So I'm still wanting to just encourage you that there's nothing wrong with you. Because actually God, God never praises hardness. He heals it. The heart he forms is responsive. It's not armored. It's okay for you to be tender hearted. I have read some horrible things that a lot of people post on Facebook who are wounded, who have probably been through something horrible like I've been through.
[00:13:36] And you know, they're just like, you don't need nobody else. I'm independent. I don't need you. And I, hey, I've been there.
[00:13:43] I've said those kinds of things. I don't need a man.
[00:13:47] I got this. You know, and obviously I couldn't stay in that because there's all kinds of unforgiveness. But also it's not healthy. It's not healthy to live like that.
[00:13:58] It is true. I technically don't need a man. I have the Lord. The spirit behind that is offense and anger and closed offness.
[00:14:08] The heart is becoming super closed off because of a defense mechanism. And I get it. I have been there. Defense mechanisms are real and we use them to protect ourselves, but they don't serve us well. They may serve you well in the moment, but what they end up doing is Completely messing you up in a way that you are using an unhealthy coping mechanism that is not bringing you healing, it's actually keeping you trapped.
[00:14:37] Okay, but so we're talking about God and this tenderheartedness. God is drawn to tender hearts. And I just said this a minute ago, David, he was drawn to David's tender heart. David was emotionally expressive, since sensitive, deeply aware. I literally feel like, like I could just sit down with David and someday and just be on the same page. Because I get it, man, I can read the Psalms and I get it. Any, anything he says, I'm like, yes, that's how I feel. And I think that's because of the. Just because I'm artistic as well and emotionally expressive, you know. Jeremiah was constantly overwhelmed and weeping and deeply affected. Hannah, the mother of Samuel, was misunderstood, emotional, but deeply sincere. And then of course we talked about Jesus, how he was moved with compassion, he was grieved, he was present in sorrow.
[00:15:32] He didn't block his heart off and harden it. And that's a temptation, that's a real temptation. When you have this personality because of pain, because of trauma.
[00:15:45] If you're not careful and you don't get the healing that you need and you don't allow the Lord to work that out in you, the temptation will be to harden your heart towards the Lord and other people. I've seen so many people fall from grace, walk away from their relationship with God because they harden their heart.
[00:16:08] And if I could say one thing in this episode, it is do not harden your heart.
[00:16:13] And when you're a highly sensitive person, it's even more of a temptation to harden your heart because you are hurt so much quicker.
[00:16:25] It's more profound and I don't know, profound is the right word. It's more destructive to you when you are highly sensitive. Things that most people who are not real sensitive can get over a lot faster than a highly sensitive person. I mean like a betrayal or a. Some kind of trauma or wound to a highly sensitive person or tender hearted person takes them longer usually to overcome it. And it's not because they're weak. And I'm telling you that it's not because you're weak. It's actually because you're so.
[00:16:59] You're actually strong.
[00:17:00] You're actually incredibly strong. Especially if you're not using things to medicate that away. You're not getting drunk every night because you can't deal with the pain or doing some drugs or you know, looking at pornography or whatever it is that you might try to do, to deal with the pain because you don't want to face the fact that something is hurting you if you're actually facing it and it hurts really bad.
[00:17:25] You're actually a very strong person.
[00:17:28] You're a very brave person too, because you're willing to face it.
[00:17:32] You're not trying to use addiction to numb the pain. You're actually facing it and you're saying, this hurts really bad. But I want to be healed. I want to be whole.
[00:17:48] So why.
[00:17:50] Why do sensitive people fall out of place?
[00:17:53] Why do you feel out of place? Do you feel out of place because you are sensitive? Do people constantly say things to you at work or at home or whatever? You know, friends, like, just make you feel like there's something wrong with you. And I'll tell you why. It's because there's a pressure to toughen up. I think it comes straight from the pit of hell, to be honest with you.
[00:18:14] And there's just a lot of pressure, especially for men. I feel bad for men who are highly sensitive because they're not allowed to have emotions. They're not allowed to say how they feel. They're really not allowed to cry.
[00:18:25] So there's a pressure there to toughen up. But it's, it's on women too, you know, just pull yourself up by your bootstraps and just suck it up and deal with it, you know, and just stuff your emotions down. It's fine.
[00:18:36] The reward system of the world is speed, productivity, hardness, climbing that ladder, doing whatever you got to do to do it, putting your career first, not caring what anybody thinks, not caring how you hurt them, you know, that kind of stuff. And so if you're a sensitive person, that makes you feel really misaligned, right? Because that goes against everything you are in. The core of who you are is like, I can't live like that. And so that can really cause friction in a person.
[00:19:11] And again, if you're highly sensitive and you are pushing yourself to be tougher and to just be faster and more productive and hard hearted, that's going to be really, really hard for you to live like that. There's gonna be a lot of friction because it, it's not aligned with the core of who you are. The core of who you are is a very soft hearted, kind person.
[00:19:35] And you have to embrace that, but you have to build boundaries. And we'll talk about boundaries probably in the next episode. So I'm not leaving you hanging here and just saying, hey, you're sensitive. Just, you know, so sorry, good luck Next, next year, you know, good luck with the rest of your life and just let everybody in and let them hurt you and let them, whatever. That's not what I'm saying.
[00:19:57] Because the Bible does talk about being wise as serpents but harmless as doves. So there's a discernment and there's a wisdom and there are boundaries that we need to use and put in place.
[00:20:09] Being sensitive doesn't mean everybody has access to your heart.
[00:20:14] It doesn't mean that you allow everybody in to just trample on you. It doesn't mean that you are wide open to everybody everywhere, all the time. That's not what it means. Okay, you have assignments from the Lord.
[00:20:28] You know, if God moves upon your heart, then that's when you say, okay, I feel God moving me on my heart in this particular situation for this particular person.
[00:20:38] So I'm going to allow him to move through me. But if you don't, and it's just guilt trying to make you do something that could even be the enemy trying to, to use your kind heartedness, your soft heartedness to distract you or bring destruction into your life. So it's super important to know the difference between like discerning. Is this a God moment, a God situation that I need to allow, you know, this situation into my life if it's an option? Or is this a, is this a moment where God is saying, no, this one's not for you. You just, you know, so allowing, giving yourself some grace and like you're not a bad person because you don't help every single person that you ever everywhere. And you know, I mean like, you can only do so much. Okay, so I'm gonna let you off the hook there. Like let yourself breathe. It's okay. You don't have to save everybody, right?
[00:21:35] So here's the thing. You may, you may feel out of place not because you're weak, but because you're not designed to live hardened, right? You're not designed to live in such a way that you're a cruelty taskmaster. You know, that's just not how you're wired. You're never going to be able to live like that. You would have to completely disconnect from your whole personality to do it. So my advice is just to embrace who you are.
[00:22:02] But, but build boundaries and get some wisdom, Gain some, gain some wisdom about how to, how to support yourself and protect yourself.
[00:22:18] Let's talk about sensitivity and discernment. We've already kind of talked about that. But you know, one of the things that you're probably wired to do and may not realize it, or maybe you do, is that you can sense atmospheres, but you don't always know what exactly you're sensing.
[00:22:35] You may be in the. You know, that's a gift from the Holy Spirit, you know, but you may be sensing other people's pain. There's been times in my life where I have discerned something so painful, I have felt someone else's pain that it was debilitating towards to me, like, I could barely function and I didn't know because I was immature in this gift. Because I think for me, this goes along with the gift of intercession. Because really, if you understand the reason that you're sensitive is so that you can intercede for people. Right? That's a whole other episode as well. But I have not understood the gift, been immature, and thought there was something wrong with me and, like, racking my brain, crying out to the Lord, begging God to help me, thinking there's something wrong with me. But really what it was is I was sensing someone else's pain or suffering and sensing the atmosphere. Like, even going places and think, you know, something is not right in this atmosphere, whether it be demonic witchcraft stuff, which, you know, most. I think people that are in tune with the Holy Spirit can sense that as well. So, you know, noticing things that noticing shifts that others miss. Like, have you noticed things that other people miss? Like, that's probably a great indicator that you're super sensitive. Do you. Do you kind of sense these? I would say they're small nuances to other people, but to you, you're like, no, that's something. Yeah, I'm sensing something. You know, like, that's. That's part of your sensitive sensitivity and discernment. And oftentimes it's because you're super spiritually perceptive. It's kind of your. Your gift, your. Your superpower is that you're spiritually perceptive. And God wants you. Wants to teach you how to use that in such a way where it's not overwhelming. It's like, okay, I'm sensing something is not right now. What?
[00:24:41] Well, you don't succumb to it and say, okay, well, I guess something bad's coming, or, I don't know, I'm just gonna just roll around in this pain for a while. You actually, that's where you take authority. If the Lord's saying, take authority over this spirit, take authority over this situation, or if he's asking you to intercede on behalf of the person in the Pain. He's asked, he's asking you to be that point of intercession where you connect them, because maybe they don't have the faith to do it or they don't understand.
[00:25:12] So you're just kind of a vessel that God moves through to reach them and touch them. That right there is. Is really. I think the call of the sensitive person is to be that intersecting point, is to connect the person in pain to Jesus, right? You can't save them, but you know someone who can, don't you?
[00:25:36] And so your job is to say, okay, I'm not going to let the situation overwhelm me. I discern it. I see. I feel the Lord, show me, Lord, like, what is going on here? And then you connect them to the Lord through prayer, through intercession, through your words to them.
[00:25:55] However the Lord may lead you. You have so much power in this.
[00:25:59] And I just feel like there's. There's a handful of people that will listen to this sometime. And, you know, I'm. I'm saying these things for you to teach you how to use this incredible gift that you have and stop seeing it as you're messed up, or it's a curse, or I can't ever get healed, or I don't know why I'm so exhausted from being around people, or I don't know why I'm not normal, quote, unquote.
[00:26:27] Because you're wired to be a point of intersection between the Lord and other people. You sense their pain, you sense what's going on. You invite the Holy Spirit into the moment. I promise you, if you invite him into it, you just open your mouth and you start to invite him into it. And ask him to reveal to you what needs to be revealed. Ask him to bring healing. Ask him to bring deliverance, whatever it is.
[00:26:55] He loves that.
[00:26:57] And he will show up in those moments if you invite him in. That's your superpower.
[00:27:04] So kind of getting ready to wrap up here.
[00:27:08] Let's talk about stewarding a tender heart, not hardening it, right? Because the temptation, like I said, is to harden it or to be so scared of this gift that you're just like, you know what? I'm just gonna disconnect from society altogether. I'm gonna quit going out. I've done this before. I'm just gonna sit around and watch TV and Netflix, binge watch and. Which there's nothing but trash on there pretty much anyway. But so here it is to bring. I want to bring balance here because. Because tenderness needs wisdom, right?
[00:27:36] God doesn't ask us to be numb to ourselves. He doesn't ask us to numb ourselves.
[00:27:41] He doesn't ask us to expose ourselves. Without boundaries, sensitivity must be guarded, not suppressed.
[00:27:51] Proverbs 4, 23. Above all else, guard your heart, for from it flows all the issues of life, right? So guarding your heart doesn't mean closing it, but it does mean caring for what God's entrusted to you. So, you know, that's where I think a sensitive person struggles is because we're so sensitive to other people's pain, we oftentimes don't take care of ourselves. We oftentimes will kind of lose ourselves trying to help other people.
[00:28:24] So that's, that's definitely a place that requires wisdom that the Holy Spirit has to give.
[00:28:31] And, but I want to, I want to just give you some hope in this because if God trusted you with a tender heart, he's also going to teach you how to live with it.
[00:28:40] You know, how do we live with this beautiful gift? Because it doesn't always feel like a gift.
[00:28:47] So I am going to just keep going. In this little series, I probably am going to talk about how to guard your heart, how to create boundaries without hardness, how to incorporate rest and rhythm into your life. Because if you're, if you're super sensitive, tender hearted person, rest and rhythm are going to be so important to you.
[00:29:10] How to live gently without shrinking back. You know, I mean, I think about a lot of sensitive people are prophetic people. You know, you look at some of the prophets in the Bible, they would go, do these amazing, crazy, bold things and then run, run for their lives.
[00:29:27] So I get it, I get it. And I just don't want you to feel bad about yourself. I actually want to be encouraged. After you listen to this, you're not alone.
[00:29:42] I think embracing this personality, embracing this sensitivity that God's giving you, if you can embrace it and learn how to let it work for you and not against you, how to guard your heart, how to rest, how to discern, how to be wise, you're gonna realize that this is a beautiful gift and it can help so many people if you know how to steward it well. So I hope that blessed you this week. I pray you have a beautiful Christmas and hey, I'll see you back next week.
[00:30:18] Bye.
