Don't Follow Your Heart
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9 The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately sick;
who can understand it?
The bible tells us that our hearts as our spiritual center are the core of who we are and how we relate to our creator.
The truth is that our hearts will express affection for that thing we worship and adore the most.
NOTE : Lets take the heart test this morning.
Test #1 The Speech Test
Test #1 The Speech Test
The first heart test is your speech. This is a simple question to diagnose what the focus of your heart is. Jesus explains it this way.
34 You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.
The truth of this test is that our long term speech patterns do not lie. Therefore, the speech tests asks us, What do you spend most of your time talking about.
Test #2 The Alone Test
Test #2 The Alone Test
5 Let the godly exult in glory;
let them sing for joy on their beds.
John Piper said this:
“it says something if you sing in your bed. “that is, when you are all alone, and no one else is watching or listening, what do you do, Where is your heart.”
The alone test asks can you think right now, of the last or most recent time you talked to God by yourself. I have started cultivating a habit of both morning and evening times with God. Simply because I need to bookend my day talking to God.”
Test #3 The Puritan Test
Test #3 The Puritan Test
Diagnosing your heart is not merely a passive thing, but something should push us to active investigation. That said, active work should be done with care so that we don’t fall into unhealthy habits of introspection, or naval gazing.
This is when we think we are doing better than we are. There is always room for improvement gentlemen.
Here is what the Puritan Thomas Watson gave as a meditation on Romans 8:28 Test of love for God.
A heart that meditates on God. “Have our thoughts got wings.”
A heart that hates sin. Watson states, “A man cannot love health and love poison too; so one cannot love God and sin too.
A heart that longs for His return. Watson says that those who love Christ are joyful to think of his coming in the clouds…when our union with Christ is perfection in glory, then our joy will be full.”
These three tests allow us to assess our hearts and redirect them back to the main thing. Remember men who fail to plan, plan to fail.
DO YOU THINK YOU MIGHT BE HAVING A SPIRITUAL HEART ATTACK? HE IS GREATER THAN OUR HEART
20 for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything.