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People sometimes fall into a 'performance mentality,' in which they become so busy doing good works for God that their hearts never really change. How can we encourage people to let God mold their hearts and be transformed by His power?

Ministries Today recently met with Juanita Bynum, author of the best-selling book Matters of the Heart, and asked her to share why allowing God to mold our hearts is so important, and how we as leaders can help others realize the benefit of submitting to His deep work in our lives.

Ministries Today: What prompted you to write your book Matters of the Heart?

Bynum: I was dealing with some issues in my life. When I pulled my car into my garage one day, the Lord just spoke to me, "You need a new heart." He began to show me areas about my personality that were not pleasing to Him. I began to rend my old heart, and I told God: "I want You to take this religious heart that I have. I want to give it to You, and I want to experience Your heart."

That's what initiated the writing of the book, though I didn't even know it was going to be a book. I was just processing something the Lord was ministering to me, and eventually He began to tell me, "I want you to write this."

Ministries Today: Was this a process or something you saw change overnight?

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Bynum: When I asked God to give me a new heart, that was an instant thing that happened; I was in that car for hours. Immediately I began to see things about me change. Weeks came, and days went by, and with some of the things I would do, I would hear the Holy Spirit say: "Now, that right there is what I'm after. This right here is what you have to bring to Me in prayer." I can hear Him now really challenge my character in every area because I had received that new heart experience in that garage.

Ministries Today: The book has quickly become a best seller; it seems to have really struck a chord. Why has this message hit home with so many people?

Bynum: People really want to be sure they're not just having a church experience but a real experience with God. I think one of the things causing the book to sell is the fact that it is confrontational. It challenges you to stop and ask yourself, "Where is my relationship with the Lord?"

With 9/11 and the war, I think a lot of people now are starting to say: "Wait a minute. Am I really saved? Am I really where God wants me to be?"

Ministries Today: You encourage people to get a new heart. Can you explain what exactly that means?

Bynum: The Scripture says, "'Then I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within them, and take the stony heart out of their flesh'" (Ezek. 11:19, NKJV). I'm only encouraging people to ask for what God promised to give us. Jeremiah 17:9 says that the "'heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.'"

Ministries Today: How could a pastor learn from this book?

Bynum: Make sure your heart is right with God. And preach to the congregation about their hearts.

Your heart betrays who you really are. You cannot, for example, go around the church, and give everybody a hug and a kiss, and tell everybody that you love everybody, and then go up to somebody you really don't like and though you just said, "I love you," on the inside the love of God has not really been birthed in you for that person.

Ministries Today: How could the body of Christ, more broadly, be changed by this message?

Bynum: When they embrace the heart of God, they will begin to see and feel about sin the way God feels about sin. We in Christendom have a dislike for the devil, a bad taste in our mouths to the point we don't want to sin, but we don't have a hatred for Satan.

Since I got this new heart experience, I'm beginning to hate the devil the way God hates him. I think when you begin to have this new heart experience, you will begin to feel what God feels. You will begin to love what God loves and hate what God hates.

Ministries Today: What do you feel God is saying to leaders in this hour?

Bynum: Because of the hour we're living in, I believe the Lord is really trying to show some leaders that it's time now for them to stop majoring in minor things and minoring in major things. The major thing right now is that every leader has been given a responsibility to carry people in the spirit realm, and they have been assigned to a particular group of people. Their responsibility is to cultivate those people's lives to make them ready to stand before God in judgment, to hear Him say, "Well done."

Now is a very crucial time for every leader to preach the gospel to their people, to get them ready to walk in the Lord and meet the Lord. That's why I believe this book can become such a tool for leaders.

Ministries Today: What causes you the most concern when you look at what's going on with the body of Christ?

Bynum: My passion is to make sure the people of God are not having a church experience, but a God-relationship experience. A church experience doesn't cause your character to change. It doesn't provoke integrity. It doesn't provoke commitment. It doesn't provoke submission to God.

But a relationship with God will provoke a person to walk in integrity and character. My real concern is that the people of God would really begin to have a one-on-one relationship with the Lord.

Ministries Today: What gives you the most hope?

Bynum: In the natural sense, the fact that the book has sold so many copies in record time says to me there is a nation of people who not only have passion for real relationship, but who have relationship because they want it. There's a nation of people out there who have an appetite for this message, and that gives me hope. If enough leaders, preachers and evangelists begin to preach this kind of gospel, there's already a people out there who are waiting for it, who want it.

Ministries Today: About what do you think leadership should be most prayerful?

Bynum: There are so many things really, because you are a leader. I don't think you can pick one. But if I were to choose, one of the things a leader should be most prayerful about is that the word that he gets will be a timely word and received by those who have heard it, and that there will be an impartation that will provoke change.


Juanita Bynum is a sought-after speaker and author. Her new book, Matters of the Heart (Charisma House), is available at bookstores across the country or online at a special discount. Log on to www.charismahouse.com.

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