Follow Your Heart?

Watch any chick flick, read any secular novel, and pay attention to the lives that culture and media put on pedestals and the common message is clear: “Follow your heart!” Most of us have been given this advice a time or two and we naively believed it for even the briefest moment. Even the modern Christian voice has embraced this mantra. Popularity of message does not equate validity of message. God’s Word, the only message of Truth that this world has ever possessed, stands in stark contradiction to the popular belief that hearts are naturally good, emotions are reliable, and both should be followed without question.

“The heart is deceitful above all things,

and desperately wicked; who can know it?”

–Jeremiah 17:9

Far be it from us to follow something that, when left in its natural condition, is “desperately wicked.”

David, a lowly shepherd boy turned King of Israel was not a man who followed his own heart. The Lord Himself said that David was a man after His own heart (see Acts 13:22). David was aware of the wickedness found in his heart when not submitted to the Lord, as we can see when he prayed,

 

“Search me, O God, and know my heart;

Try me, and know my anxieties;

And see if there is any wicked way in me,

And lead me in the way everlasting.”

– Psalm 139:23-24

David humbled himself before the Lord and opened his heart up for examination, knowing that it is the Lord who purifies and leads in the everlasting way. Rather than blindly trusting our emotions and following our hearts, we are to examine them based on Truth – the Bible.

“Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you? – unless indeed you are disqualified.”

– 2 Corinthians 13:5

“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable

for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,

that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

– 2 Timothy 3:16-17

“Keep your heart with all diligence,

For out of it spring the issues of life.”

-Proverb 4:23

Emotions themselves are not wrong. In fact, I believe that it is emotion that gives life zest and meaning. If we could not feel anything, we would be robotic. However, emotions are vulnerable to all sorts of influences. All influences are not trustworthy. As David exemplified and as the Bible instructs, we must submit our emotions to the Lord and allow the Holy Spirit to provide discernment so that it is the guidance of the Spirit that we obey rather than the unsound guidance of our feelings.

I don’t know about you, but I certainly am tired of the instability of my heart when I don’t submit it to the Holy Spirit through the study and application of Truth. When I get caught up in my desires, my wishes, and my ways I begin to reason with the Lord as if I can somehow make Him act in accordance with my selfish will. That is not His design. I am to cast my desires, my wishes, and my ways at His feet, allow Him to fill in the now empty space where my will once presided, and obediently live in accordance with His heart.

To the unbeliever, such a notion sounds imprisoning. They wonder how someone can love a God who says that we must die and allow Him to recreate use if we are to be saved from sin. My heart aches for unbelievers because they do not realize that sin is what imprisons us and Christ is Who sets us free! He freely has saved me from myself and does so on a daily basis! It is through unconditional love that Christ gave Himself to save me from myself; it is through unconditional love that Christ desires to recreate me. Once I am a new creation in Him, I am no longer held captive by my old self and its sin.

Christ-transformed gentlemen and ladies will be known in this world not by their submission to selfish emotions, but by their stability in emotional circumstances. When we are new creations in Christ, we exhibit His heart in ways that the world cannot help but notice.



Sanctified and Surrendered by Caitlin Marie Stacy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.