Follow Your Heart

What’s in your heart?

There is a lot of talk about feelings. There’s even a song called, ‘Feelings’. Sadly, there are some people whose faith can be described by the first line, “Feelings, nothing more than feelings.” Many of our decisions are based on how we feel at the time. You’ve heard the phrase, “If it feels good; do it.” Some people direct their lives by how they feel. “Just follow your heart”. But should we be putting so much emphasis on how we feel? Should we disregard our feelings altogether? Let’s see what we can find out about our feelings and how we should deal with them.

We’re taught to follow our heart. Whatever you feel in your heart is the way you should go. Whatever your feelings tell you is the right thing for you. But, we need to see that our heart cannot be trusted.

Well how many times have we said this one? This is one of the more popular ones that many people say when it comes to justifying or encouraging someone going through a time of discernment.

We often hear this when we are troubled, trying to make a decision that could be life changing, switching careers, relationships or when we are just trying to justify what we are pretty sure is not going to be a popular decision and we are looking for assurance, looking for anything to give us that little push we need to take that leap.

Often it is when we are faced with these decisions we are trying to reinforce a decision that we have already made and we are second guessing ourselves and we are looking for anything that we can use to let others know, or to let them know, that the decision being made is being made the way God intended it to, but it’s not there.

This is another one that is kind of a half truth because there are some verses in the Bible that look similar to this but they are totally different and we are going to look at that but first we have to look at what the heart is that we are following so diligently.

Jeremiah 17:9 ““The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?”

When Jeremiah wrote this, Judah was in trouble. Babylon was growing in power and would eventually defeat Jerusalem and Judah, the people were turning back to idol worship and following their own ways, looked for comfort and protection from whatever source they deemed worthy and gave them even the slightest glimpse of hope. The world had turned very bad and by most all accounts this time period was the worst 50 year span in the history of Judah and the people were desperate. Jeremiah is trying to guide them in the direction of God and trying to warn them about the dangers of following their own heart and just how deadly that can be.

Follow your heart has become a post-modern mantra that has gained popularity that is used to make it ok for us to do whatever we want in life, no matter who it affects or who it may hurt as long as we get what we want and we feel good about the decisions we make no matter how poor those decisions may be and our needs are met. Often times the “follow your heart” matters are irrational because ‘reason’ is left out of the process because we are seeking self gratification, the status, power or influence, praise or attention that we need.

Have we any experience following our heart? How did that turn out for you? Don’t forget that your heart is deceitful and wicked and will lead you often to a place you never wanted to go so we must guard our hearts so that we can know that the decisions we make in life are what is best and our hearts are focused on what is important.

One of the reasons our hearts can lead us astray is because we often get our hearts confused with our imaginations. Peter Kreeft in his book, Christianity for Modern Pagans titled “Pascal’s Pensees” says this,

“We often take our imagination for our heart and often believe we are converted as soon as we start thinking of becoming converted.”

We can easily mistake our hearts for what we want to imagine. We can imagine, think of, contemplate an idea and began to confuse that imagination with our heart’s desire and follow the wrong thing. We can be attracted to the idea of ourselves being a christian, a saint even and giving ourselves to God without actually doing it and think we have done it because we have imagined it and just like that, we have turned ourselves into an idol and worship ourselves.

That is just how easy it is to follow our heart and our heart becoming our destruction. We can think we love God when we are only dreaming about loving God. If you want to test this idea, you can try this to different degrees, have you done anything, given up or avoided a single thing today for the sole reason because you believed that God wanted you too?

The wise Christian will not let his assurance depend upon his powers of imagination.

A. W. Tozer

Men may love a God of their own forming in their imaginations, when they are far from loving such a God as reigns in heaven.

Jonathan Edwards

A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (18th century)

Jonathan Edwards (American Evangelical Preacher)

If we are not careful we can deceive ourselves into hell and be happy on the way there. Our hearts can become our demise if we don’t guard it against the sin of the world. John Wesley said this,

A Treasury of Great Preaching The Deceitfulness of the Human Heart (John Wesley)

And if men thus deceive themselves, is it any wonder that they deceive others also

One of the driving factors in letting our hearts mislead us is the need to seek out what we want with our life without having to commit to a life with God because if we can talk ourselves into believing that following our heart is what God wants us to do then this saying rates right up there with,”To thine own self be true.” which isn’t in the Bible either, that one is from Shakespeare.

Proverbs 4:23 “Keep your heart with all diligence, For out of it spring the issues of life.”

We have to take the time to get to know God and ourselves to make sure that we are lined up with the will of God and not trying to get God to conform with our will. With the heart we make the fundamental choices of life, of ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to God and thereby determine our eternal identity and our destiny (Kreeft).

The heart of the problem with our life is our very hearts. Where is yours? Have you a heart of God or for yourself? We must come to a place in our faith where we can look at these things honestly and be able to answer these questions and to know where we stand and for whom our hearts beat. A heart for God is a glorious thing but to have that means we must make sacrifices to be able to give our heart to God, that the very giving of our heart must cost us something because for where there is no cost, there is no sacrifice, there is no salvation.

Psalm 37:4 “Delight yourself also in the Lord, And He shall give you the desires of your heart.”

Notice it doesn’t say that He’ll give you whatever your heart desires. Instead, when you surrender control your life to the One who created it, and He becomes your greatest passion, He’ll literally give you new desires. He’ll then fulfill those desires (the ones He gave you) when you take delight in him.

The bottom line is this: when you have God’s heart, He’ll give you the desires of your heart. That doesn’t mean God hasn’t already put certain desires in you or created you with certain gifts or inclinations. But only when those things are surrendered to Him and devoted to His purposes will you become everything God created you to be.

When we give God our heart, we give him all that we are and we seek to live for him and not for ourselves. Our life becomes not what we want but what God wants. Our hearts are designed to naturally want to be united with God but when sin came into the world our hearts became more like the world and less like God, we have to make the decision to give that back to God.

This great gift of God, the salvation of our souls, is no other than the image of God fresh stamped on our hearts. It is a “renewal of believers in the spirit of their minds, after the likeness of Him that created them.”

John Wesley (Founder of the Methodist Movement)

Give your heart to God, an offering necessary for the gift of salvation and when we have done that, then our hearts will want what God wants, ourselves united with Him for eternity and we will spend our days living and serving God and God’s people.